Tick Tock

Past 3:30 AM.  Been lying in bed for four hours unable to relax into sleep.  Come on, get it over with.

***************
(earlier)
Wednesday evening.  Have not been getting much sleep.  No work done for two days.  I must get back to it soon before the frame of mind passes again.  Finish Sharon Mitchell, Finish the hair on Dana's portrait finally, and hope the paper isn't too compromised.  The edges yellowed with oil from my hand resting on it while I worked, and I've tried to hide it with the darker background I wasn't going to add.  That and trimming  the edge off has altered the symmetry of the image and ruined the effect I was going for...although I do love the way her face emerges from darkness in the photo.  It might still work.

No dreams suggesting Dana may have looked in.   Sometimes I'll have a dream as if she has read from here and had a reaction, but nothing this time.

I did have a dream with an odd passage about a youngish man, thin with short hair, a stranger.  He knew me and asked "Do you want to see my watch?  Jeff?", and held his forearm forward.  He was not wearing a wristwatch. 

I've had proxies stand in for her before but got no feeling for her presence with this one.  The watch is the only aspect that stands out.  It was such a strange thing to ask, do I want to see his watch?  That he's not wearing one would seem to indicate the question wasn't meant to be taken literally.    I once dreamt that Dana and her husband were here.  Her feelings seemed deadened - not just to me but for everything in her life.  Dana showed me a  pocketwatch she owned that had stopped working many years ago.  The knob/key that wound it had broken off and disappeared.  It turned out that I'd had it all this time.  I gave it back to her and she got the watch working again.  The husband tried to appear  polite and happy for her but was seething inside. 

I made an avatar out of that dream and another I'd had of Dana reconciling with me.
I've always wanted to believe that the watch symbolized her heart.  Well, 'heart' doesn't necessarily mean romantic feelings does it?  The watch is what 'makes her tick', a thing I still have never discovered.  Yes, I do very badly want to see Dana's watch.  Does she honestly imagine it could make things worse?  My own heart is already broken.  At least let me learn why.  Is she married again?  Still?  Is her husband dangerous? Then let him end my life.   I'm ready.

****************

Mod Podge is a gooey mess but I'm wondering what I could do with it were I to mix it with fine sawdust or other dry, powdery substance.  Could this be a filler material of the kind I've wanted?   Hoping someday to try a lifesize bust, I built a simplistic paper model of a skull.  Cardstock not being durable enough to build on, I'm plastering over it with Mod Podge and cheap paper napkins, the kind one finds stacks of at fast food places.  It got me thinking I could make an entire mannequin like this, and it would be pretty lightweight.    for smaller-scaled work, Sculpey refuses to adhere to pipe cleaners (I'm unsure of baking those, too - what are they made of and willy they give off toxic fumes in an oven?)  but Mod Podge would stick like crazy.

Must find where those small wooden dowels are that I bought, I have an immediate use for them.