January 18, 2011

Up much too early, the darkness stretching and stretching and no sign of change in the east. Yesterday was awful, though its awfulness kept getting altered by my running into people who were having worse days than I. One of my downstairs studio mates was in the office by the elevator while I was hauling paintings down. I said breezily, “How are things going?” She responded, “Not so well. . . I’m unemployed, broke, and about to be homeless.” Visited Marco in his new space on Short Coxe (unending fun out of that) to discover that he was still paying off $78,000 in credit card debt that a former girlfriend (my sometimes cat-sitter) had rung up, and for which he had taken noble and quixotic responsibility; that he had been paying for school for his next girlfriend for several years while she was unemployed; that they too had split up, and she had gotten the house he had spent time and money getting into shape, that he was building a house when his jackass employer–the guy who runs Frugal Framer, may it speedily decline–fired him for dating a women in whom he had himself once had interest. On top of that, he insisted on paying for the coffee. I maintain that my woes are comparable, but, I must admit, a whole lot less immediate.

Marco looks terrific, though. I wonder if he enters that on the plus side.

Alex was sitting upstairs in the studio with his wife and baby, Ella. When Ella laughed, everybody else laughed too. It was beautiful.

Drank at Avenue M in celebration of Kyle’s birthday. My paintings were not yet hung, but they were arrayed against the wall in the lounge area, and attracting favorable comment. That made me happy. Even sold one, a still life of apples, to Leland. A six year old boy with the most soulful eyes found a swordfish in one of the abstracts. When I looked, lo and behold, there was in fact a swordfish, self-begotten out of the miasma of imagination.

Re-read “Queen Mab” for class today. It is still a dangerous book. Terrifying. If there were fewer fairies and less gauze, it might be the universal guide to revolution.