Satie and sateen

Tuesday,

Tomorrow is up-early-cleanday. 8 am says the sign next to my door. 8 am for a cleaned room and new linens. If only I had brought more underwear and socks I could avoid laundry entirely for at least another week.

I forget to breathe.

Sometimes when my subject heats up under the lights and the smell of it wafts up, coupling with the smell of turpentine and woodsmoke, I think it is the painting that is giving off the odor of salt fish or lemon or moldering (smoldering, molding) passionfruit.

I bury the fish in the snow. their tails stick out like the two ribbon ends of a bow.

Naps…

Here I sleep a lot, or think of sleeping, or have sleep urges. The daily conversation at the dinner table revolves around naps. I have a beautiful studio and a warm room to sleep in. I listen to Satie and Debussy and think of summer, even if the music seems to go so well with the grey. I feel quiet, not unpleasant. I don’t trust it and wonder if it is some low grade depression brought on by lack of sun. at least the ascents and descents let one know one can feel.

I will spread the ashes on the ice to keep from slipping.

I paint – though I feel it is going slowly – I do spend hours at it though. I came up here to shuck the image away from my canvas, but instead I find I hold tight to it. I paint things: fish, eels, oysters – slippery things. I keep a cooler in my studio and I tend it, filling it with snow twice a day, like filling the cat bowls. Even here, I find things to tend: the cooler, my trashcan-makeshift-eelaquarium, the woodstove…

The days seem very short.

Here is a collage sent to me from someone I know, mad by another person I know, incorporating parts of a poem I wrote (which I don’t think the first person knew though certainly the second) Hmm, reminds me of that Shakespeare sonnet, double meant: ” therefore I lie with her, and she with me, and in our faults by lies we flattered be.”