Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Things in the Past, Things in the Future- Stop and Pick a Strawberry

There's been a lot going on for me. Ever since Cinco De Mayo, things have been sorta psychotic- and not in a sexy, blurred eye liner kind of way. In kinda draining, "look ma no hands" sort of way.

For starters my aunt passed away and that just flat out sucked. You have all these conversations you never want to have like "what color coffin do you want"? I will do a future post on my ideal funeral just to put it down somewhere, but I am too exhausted tonight.

But I did get to see family memembers I haven't seen in forever. And it was a Greek Orthodox funeral and it was like she was lullabied to sleep. I liked that. All these memories I leave behind as an "adult" flooded back and I have yet to process them all out. But many of them are good...

Then it was on to LA cuz Jaclyn bailed out on me and everyone else, actually, in search of herself or something. She moved without telling ANYONE to San Diego. Pretty much sucked for me since that gave me approximately 10 days to move out, go to this funeral, and well, figure out how to be homeless for a while. I was pretty pissed, but I'm getting better. I went down to LA and had a really good time with Caroline and the Red Paintings (especially a particular drummer) and it was really good to see Jac- she is one of my best buds and its just not cool to suddenly have to disconnect a strong friendship like that- made me feel super abandoned.

I came back and had TWO days to move out. TWO! All I gotta say is, thank God for Grandma, Dad and the Rempels! Yeesh!

After that I pounded out 17 hour days to pick up the delegated pieces people screwed up for the Compassion Unleashed Conference. That was a pretty crazy experience! The power went out TWICE! So from a tech standpoint, we had to get pretty inventive. My favorite invention of the day went to Josh Rempel who engineered electricity from his van in the parking lot and brought light to the building! Also triumphant were the 200 candles we lit for a rather romantic morning.

Right now I'm painting and trying to sleep off this cold that's been lingering too damn long.

I have so many things going on creatively- its awesome and I'm just trying to keep up! I move into my new studio on the 15th.
Before that I have the Haiti Comedy night that I'm supposed to create some form of booth for and an art piece to auction off- what I've been currently painting is somewhat dark and I'm not so sure it's event appropriate. Hmmm...
On the 13th is the next Artist Quarters and I will be performing the second day of creation... I kinda want to skip ahead to a different series of seven- the seven deadly sins- but I don't really have the brain capacity tonight...

With all that is ahead and behind me, I was really grateful for this story Brennan Manning shared in his recent book on Tenderness- its about a monk who is being chased by a lion. He slides to the side of a cliff. He starts so slip and sees the jagged rocks below. Should he go back up? He looks up at the snarling lion. No, that wouldn't work. So what does he do? He looks around and sees a patch of strawberries growing. He reaches out and picks a strawberry and says, "Mmm, best strawberry I've ever had".

I probably butchered that story, but I like it right now. Mmmm... the opportunity to write... Mmm... bubble bath. Mmmm... fun cuzzies house with Wii and DDR games... Mmmm... fun things to paint...

BTW, if anyone wants cherries, there's a ton on this tree out here and they'll prob only last the week... come and get it!
XOXO

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