I'm so close to having completed
my first fairly large drawing, granting that only a portion of the
page is being utilized. I've tried going large before, this will be
the first one I didn't abandon. Smaller might end up being my thing
after all.
However, I have not been able to work
on it for two weeks now. A family situation has arisen that has
everyone struggling to cope. There's not going to be a happy
resolution to it. It's a slow-motion unraveling that no one is
prepared for. The issue at hand is a medical one centering on my
father. The hospital and various insurance agencies are determined
not to render care, and are trying to take our every last cent. I
do not wish to discuss it here, nor with anyone. Jesseca knows. I
have no intention of announcing it on Facebook as...well, I hope this
doesn't sound dickish but people will want to be kind and wish us
the best. And it means a lot, it does, but I can't deal with that
now and have no intention of inviting it. This is a very bad time for
everyone involved, and I do not see how it works out.
The drawing I am working on has two
small areas left to complete. One should be easy. The other I
attempted twice the same night and found that I was not on my game:
after trying two different approaches and erasing both, I was in
danger of ruining the paper for future efforts.
* * * * * * * * *
Some progress today. Worked about two and a half, three hours on this. Stopped hopefully before a headache could set in. Because this is a sketch, I'm not being overly carefyl on precise details of hair or the folds of her jacket. I also will not be adding her earrings: she is wearing earrings in the source image but I cannot make out the details. Maybe when the rest is done I'll find a pair online and fake it. It would add a nuance that's missing.
Also did an hour on a color (ink)version crude and overly vivid. Not a display piece, I hope to blend it with the pencil work in an art program, see what I come up with. there are at least two other variations I would like to try, and perhaps blend each of them. If it the final blend turns out well, I'd like to get it printed on that metal paper I haven't looked into yet. It does not yield a metallic image, rather something about the base lends itself to images that are more colorful and have deeper black levels than regular photographic prints. Entries in the Gresham Art Committee showings have been done on this paper, and I'm eager to try it out.
I would like even once to be even half
as much a surprise to Dana – a positive one – as she has been a
constant surprise to me throughout my life.
She once wrote in a letter to me that
remembered how cruel kids at school could be. I don't know what it
might have been that prompted her to say that, something I wrote
maybe...but I wondered at the idea that she had been targeted for
that. I'd certainly had my share of it, but Dana – wasn't she one
of the popular kids? Not one who got treated that way, I'd have bet.
Many years later I spoke to someone who remembered her, and he
related that Dana had been the one treating him that
way. So maybe she was speaking ruefully from the other perspective
As presumptuous as it is to imagine I
know anything at all o what's going in in Dana's head...fuck it,
she's given me free license to think whatever I want. Why not?
She's hardly objecting, is she?
What I think is this: when she imagined
in me certain biases, I think she was projecting on me the beliefs
she herself had grown up with. Maybe, possibly, she even saw herself
that way – someone who had done wrong, someone who'd earned
condemnation. And when I happened across her, it never occurred to
her that I could see her any differently then what she was seeing.
So she burned me before I could burn her. But if she was afraid of
me judging her then, I sometimes think that ever since she has
been even more afraid that I won't judge her – that I will
accept her with love for whoever she really is.
I don't know what's left to say about
Dana. There are more dreams I would like to place in context but
nothing I care to make public for various reasons. I'd like to say
that it will never be too late for her to talk with me, but...it's
pretty late. I can't even see my own future let alone whether
anything she has to say would make any difference later.
Should Dana want to write me, she can
get my home address from Moony. Moon is on FB, she can reach him
there. He also has my phone number, though I'd advise that all calls
are screened and she'll get an answering machine first...that, and I
really don't like talking on phones. I would love to have a
letter from her.
If it's the last thing I ever say
publicly about her (unlikely but ya never know), let it be that I'm
proud of being her friend.
This is not acceptance of the loss.
This is just saying I can't do any more.
