Friday, July 17, 2009

One of my two best friends from high school,


with whom I had a kind of Three Musketeers relationship, is visiting this weekend. We did the math and realize from the current ages of our children it's been twenty-five years since we were together in the flesh. We've written and e-mailed over the years to stay in touch, but this is the first real reunion we've ever had.

She's a minister now. When we were girls, she was a Goth before there was such a thing, a real Wednesday Addams, down to the long black velvet dress she often wore and her torrent of waist-length, black hair. When she was called to the ministry and went to seminary I said, "Seminary is surprising. If she had said she was joining a coven of witches or becoming a Satanist, I would have said it wasn't surprising."

It's so odd to think how our two lives have turned out. And how both of us, viewed as "outsiders" or outcasts as girls, both of us fatherless, have ended up spending a life in service to others: she to the members of her congregations and I to students. No one who knew us in high school or taught us then would, I think, believe this turn of events. Except, perhaps, our art, ballet and drama teachers.

It is rather astounding the way the lives of that bunch of hippie kids from a sleepy, dusty backwater Texas town eaten up with religion turned out: one got another Grammy this year, one was a fashion model, one is a composer who makes works for choreographers, one is an opera singer in Australia, one is a recording artist, one is a recording engineer, one was an actor off-Broadway, one is a famous Egyptologist, one is a world-famous concierge, a few are painters and professional musicians. When all is said and done, I guess, we are all alike in one way: we left and followed our youthful passions and dreams. Tonight I feel a little sorry for everyone we went to high school with who stayed behind. High school may have been the best years of their lives, their golden years. For us, the outcasts, the slow starters, it was a place and time we could not wait to leave far, far behind.

Thursday, July 16, 2009

I Planned to Die in the Arms of my Soul-Mate (La Bohème)



The Epilogue series is complete. Twenty-one drawings. The best work of my life.

And now, perhaps, I sleep again.

And travelogues of Dublin and someplace else -- Assissi? up on Somnambulit.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

The final drawing of the Epilogue

...is going just the way I dreamed it. But I had an eerie experience late last night as I drew feverishly. I very distinctly heard my refrigerator door open and close, as if there were a ghost in my kitchen, or as if my own fierce drawing energy had caused a poltergeist to come into my space. My hair stood on end. I had to call Ali and talk for a few minutes, and go outside.

I was having really intense thoughts as I drew about the concept of "soul mate" and I had even been crying a little about having missed mine in this incarnation, and about how very near he often seems to me. I just can't seem to break through to him. I miss him so terribly sometimes. Sometimes my heart hurts for both of us, since we can't seem to find one another this time.

It's probably the sadness of dealing with the very final emotional dregs of my most recent romance's ending that caused this metaphysical event. My mind and my heart are so strong. I was finally able to weep last night, after all these months, and admit to myself how very sad I am that I was wrong, that Felix was not my soul-mate after all, as I had once thought. And to acknowledge that I feel sad that in being wrong I was "unfaithful" to my real soul-mate in giving Felix the love I meant for him.

I probably shouldn't even write such things because it probably sounds like total craziness to everyone but me. But my past-life love is always hovering so near me, and I am so near him. I must have loved him so much I can never escape the vestiges and echoes of our love even in this incarnation. I feel I have long lived my life as his invisible widow, grieving the loss of the love he and I shared.

I know: Goth. 19th Century Romantic. Wuthering Heights. Yes. It is exactly like that, and I feel it, always, keenly, exactly like that. For me, it is always real, always tangible and so, so bitter-sweetly sad.

My darling, if you can read what I write here through the dimension that separates us, please, please be waiting for me at the end of time. I have searched for you for forty years, and I am so sorry about my recent mistake, thinking that, in Felix, I had finally found you again. Please forgive me, my darling. Open the refrigerator door all you want to, to remind me you really are there, loving me always still, and always waiting for me.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Working on a four-day drawing...

which I hope to finish tonight. Then one last drawing to go, and the series is finished.

I already know what I'll do next: a series based on Sacher-Masoch's Venus in Furs and on Boito's Senso. I have to re-read both of them to figure out how to integrate the books to do the drawings. But doing so will give me a couple of week's break from incessant drawing and staying up half the night, which I probably need. A change of pace, catching up on my sleep and a battery re-charge is probably a good idea now, and I have out-of-town guests coming until the end of this month.

The Anti(dote)Wedding exhibition and performance plans are coming together really nicely and I'm actually looking forward to performing. Suze's daughter, Frankie, has agreed to accompany me on cello for one piece. It's always natural for me to want to close any cycle with a performative action, a kind of public ritual. And any excuse for a party.

Oh, and just about everything I planned to include in my writing archive is now up at
www.somnambulit.blogspot.com
It may still be a little rough because I haven't given everything a final proofing and polish yet. Desolé.

Monday, July 13, 2009

Somebody said if they owned both Hell and Texas

...they'd move to Hell. And I know why. It's forecast to be above 100 again today. Maybe not as bad as last week's 105. But not less than 100 either. It's unbearable, and I have to set the alarm for the crack of dawn to even get poor Buster any kind of walk at all without risking his life from heat prostration. I guess, starting this week, I just walk alone. I don't think he can take the heat, even in the stroller, when the air temperature is over 100. Which it still is at 7:30 p.m. these days.

I'm working on the second to last drawing of the Epilogue. I should be completely finished with the series by mid-week. Wow. I think there are twenty-two of them, and most are twice the size of the original LTRH suite and all are in full color. The in-house show and no-wedding performances are definitely happening; Suze and Jack were "in" immediately, as is Jimmie. I need this performance ritual to close the circle and this chapter of my life completely. I think I'm going to call it the Anti(dote)Wedding. And August 14 has always been my very favorite day in the year, for reasons I never knew myself, from childhood on. That's the day I would have chosen for the wedding.

Sunday, July 12, 2009

Epilogue Frontispiece Finished.



L'épilogue de Dangerose
Dangerose as Carpacci's Lion of St. Mark's Venice