I’d lived in downtown Manhattan for 35 years by the time I finally left. There was a brief period in the East Village, and a month of sleeping on a rollaway bed in the stockroom of the boutique where I worked. Mind you, the year before I’d been living in a shack in the Ozarks that had no running water or electricity, so a lamp to read by and a toilet were luxuries. From there, I had a tiny two room walkup that measured 14’x14’ with a shower and kitchen appliances in one room and a sleeping loft in the other. I lived there for several years and finally moved into the building next door when I married my soon to be ex-husband. Once he was gone, I stayed in my rent-stabilized apartment for 30 years until my landlord paid me to move out. When my landlord made me his offer, I called a friend who lived on Cape Cod and she told me her friend who had a store there needed a salesgirl. I was on the Bolt bus two days later and was hired the following morning. I also looked at an apartment I’d seen on Craig’s List on the way back to my friend’s house. It was in a basement but had decent furniture, a big TV with cable, and free WiFi. I shook hands with the landlady and called my New York landlord to tell him I would take the deal. He gave me six weeks to vacate my apartment. I sold almost all of my furniture and gave away a ton of books and clothes. And tore up 30 plus years of journals, which was liberating. By the time I left, the UHaul wasn’t even half full. My parrot, a Senegal named Pacino, sat up front with me in his travel cage for the ride. I arrived in Yarmouth Port on Halloween and lived and worked there for six months. In the meantime, I met up with some artists from the gallery in Provincetown and they offered me the job. That was 14 years ago this month. There’ve been a few snags, I’ve had five addresses and six jobs since leaving New York, but doors kept opening. Now, as I contemplate how to move to the UK to be with my beau, I once again am faced with an apartment full of furniture. There will be no UHaul this time but I don’t need to deal with that today. I have a place to live both here and there, I’ll just have to wait for the next door to open. And while I wait, I’ll enjoy this little beach town before the tourists take over this summer. So yes, Onward.

Last Thursday, I set off for my followup with the optometrist at my cataract surgeon’s practice. I had anxiously anticipated this appointment because although the surgery had corrected my distance vision, it did nothing for my double vision, and it made my closeup vision worse. This means I can’t see my phone or laptop much less paint even with reading glasses since they don’t help with the double vision unless I shut one eye. And the glasses that do correct the double vision are my old myopic prescription that now makes everything blurry. So I had high hopes for this appointment. But half way there - it’s over an hour away - I got a call saying it was cancelled because the optometrist was sick, and once I was home again, I got another call saying the earliest they could fit me in was July. As the office would be closing on Friday for the Easter holiday, it was suggested I call back on Tuesday to see if anything sooner had become available. Up until then, I’d been reminding myself that new glasses would fix the problem, and I could deal with it until I got the revised prescription last Thursday. Needless to say, I did not have a pleasant weekend. I even called another optometrist closer to home but since I am technically under my surgeon’s care until I have my followup at his office, they were reluctant to see me without his permission. In the meantime, since it’s a struggle to paint but also a struggle not to paint, I decided to rework another piece I wasn’t happy with yet. I pulled out the Loon I did last fall as a favor for a friend who wanted it as a giclee. I had thought of it as a commission but my heart wasn’t in it. Not that there was anything wrong with the piece, it just didn’t sing to me and once the giclee was done, I put the original away. Luna’s singing now, in spite of my not being able to get a good shot of her since she’s so shiny. I finished her on Monday. And then on Tuesday when I called the surgeon’s office as suggested, they squeezed me in with a different optometrist in the practice for May 6th. Only another two weeks, I can handle that. There might even be another bird to repaint. Onward.

I don’t invest in the stock market but I am afraid of the chaos. And I can’t be the only one nervous about traveling with my laptop and phone. One of my mindless activities lately is cleaning out my techno storage and drives, which is more useful than playing Spider Solitaire ad nauseam. Today, I deleted dozens of individual chapters of two novels I wrote and rewrote several times in between the Angels series and the Birds. It was similar to ripping up thirty years worth of journals while I emptied out my Soho apartment when I left New York. I have no regrets about doing that, in fact it was incredibly freeing. I also, for the record, tore up four large garbage bags full of art I unearthed while cleaning out my studio. It was stuff I never bothered to photograph, because frankly, it was weak and had to go. As did those novels. I was in love with one of my characters, and friends who read the books liked them, but now I cringe at the idea of anybody else seeing them. So - bye bye, Kitty and Danny, off you go. I also felt like that about Abraham, the bald eagle I posted in February. My fiancé is a painter as well, and he often comments on how quickly I work. His paintings can take ages to finish but we’re still each other’s critique partner regardless of our different processes. So when I decided to rework Abraham, he was all for it. That’s the newest version above. He’s better, no? Finally, I’ve noticed a drop in my internet numbers. Website hits are down, likes on Instagram are too, and last week’s Substack reactions to Persephone were surprisingly low. I’m not taking this personally, I know it’s because shit has gotten too real. Hey, I just gave my phone 53 gigabytes of storage space and cut what’s saved on my Google Drive in half. I grew up military, I lived in Germany during the Berlin Wall crisis, it was terrifying. When my father came home and burned documents after memorizing them during the Bay of Pigs, our tornado cellar became an atomic bomb shelter. Later, I lived less than a mile from the World Trade Center. 9/11 was very personal to me. I get it. This is PTSD territory. If you think you are over-reacting, you are not. Be kind to yourself. Stay in the moment. Onwards.

Finally, the heron, titled Persephone, is finished. I see her as one of my breakthrough pieces since she is much bigger than usual and the hot greenish yellow background is shockingly new for me. In fact it was that background that slowed me down, she had copper as a backdrop until I changed it on a whim. Then I had to sit with her for a while and decide what to do next. I’m very happy with the results, I particularly like the beak, and the shadow under her eye sings to me. In other news, as I debate how to budget the grant money, I’m in discussion about a Pop Up show in July at a gallery here in Provincetown. I planned to use Persephone as the centerpiece, but I just had an inquiry from Europe about her as well as three other recent pieces, so I’d best get cracking on something new. Perhaps a turaco. Are you familiar with them? The first of my birds to get into a juried show was a green turaco I took artistic liberties with titled LeRoi. He’s also the only one of my juried show paintings that I still own. I’ve been toying with the idea of reworking him a bit, maybe give him some shading, but I know from experience that could ruin him and that I should start something fresh. Anyway, away from the studio I’m trying to ignore the news whenever possible but I did watch the last six hours of Cory Booker’s speech. He made me cry. Can’t say why. Onward.