This is the first abstract painting I’ve done that I really like. When I was young, I loved Impressionism, which showed the world distorted by reality. Then I started painting dreams, landscapes, and still life – but I was always painting real people and objects. As I did this, I found I understood abstraction as the ultimate artwork that underpins realistic painting since there is always the need to consider the placement of objects, the texture of brush strokes.
Retirement is wonderful! I recommend for everybody. I abruptly retired from a stressful job as a speech-language pathologist in public schools because we were ordered to return to in-person schooling when vaccines weren’t available. I was 62 years old at the time and had asthma. Although I planned to work until 65 years of age, it seemed silly to risk death just as I was reaching retirement age. I had no idea of what I would do next.
At first I just enjoyed laying in bed, sometimes until noon, idly reading and journaling in a notebook. Then I realized I wanted to learn how to write better. I enrolled in a Masters program for Creative Writing at Towson University. It was fabulous! Not only did I improve my writing, but I found a community of writers. I was intellectually stimulated and met new friends. Many of them are younger than me with different perspectives and wisdom.
After graduating I continue to write poetry and short stories. I’m a journalist for the Peninsula Post, a local newspaper. I also draw cartoons, paint, and play guitar. It is amazing to have tons of time to create and socialize. I have energy for exercising and cooking healthy meals. Along with the time when I was raising my sons, retirement is the best period of my life.
I wander around my community appreciating all the personal touches my neighbors have done to their houses. Forsythia and crocuses are in bloom in pots outside the row houses. Tulips are making their large-leaf appearances. Daffodils abound.
This afternoon I talked with an environmental activist involved in a community garden, neighborhood events in Fort McHenry, a national park up the street. It is wonderful to find good people making the world a better place. I feel blessed.
During this time of chaos and turmoil, I find peace in the rough bark of trees, the dancing scurry of squirrels, the opera of birds, the sun on my face, the canvas of dark night and sparkling stars.
This site is supposed to be about writing, art, and creativity. But I’m so disturbed by current events my creativity is seeping through the cracks of my distress to scream alarms at the people of my nation.
It’s nearly midnight and I’ve already called all the relatives I have in the West a day or two ago because I couldn’t go to sleep on previous nights. I can’t sleep because my country’s politics seem so extreme, so crazy, so like Hitler’s Germany which my Jewish mother fled from in 1938. Now I know what an existential threat is – it feels like the nuclear war will explode any second now, I’m going to step on an ordnance planted on my native soil, someone will suddenly lift a gun to their shoulder and shoot me.
But it is necessary to be optimistic even now. The seeds of destruction of the United States were planted before our independence, with genocide of Native Americans, with slavery of Africans transplanted to this ground, with the oppression of working class and poor people, squashed by the Calvinist ethic that if you are poor, you deserve your fate. At 66 years of age, I am closer to the end of my life than my beginning, and yet I’ve never seen anything like this in my country. Okay, I have. Racism, class discrimination, oppression of women, and approximately 1/4 of our children living below the poverty line, not knowing where they will sleep or if they will eat today.
I am not Charles Dickens, nor John Steinbeck, not even Studs Terkel. The people of the United States either have to resist the rise of an autocratic dictator or we will be crushed.
Hope lies in our independent spirit, our distaste for authority. Getting Americans to rise up may be like herding cats but if we join hands we can maybe find our way to a true fair and equal democracy. If we dream it, it can happen!
#Resist
Today I drew Cybele, the ancient Anatolian goddess of fecundity, of motherhood, of protection. In my mind she is linked with Kali, the Indian goddess of destruction. I seek to channel them, to worship them, to lead to the warmth of the woods and a sunny tomorrow.
gaia mouse 