January 8, 2013

Two sessions at the studio yesterday. One at twilight was quite productive. Finally driven away from that by my neighbor’s puppy, abandoned in her locked studio, howling piteously, like a wounded child. I make my visits to the studio too efficient, doing what I meant to do and then taking off. The real work began to happen yesterday after I lingered at an unaccustomed time, taking the different slants of light that come with evening. Perhaps if I made the studio more comfortable, I would take more leisure in it.

Curiously frantic beginning of the year.


The Y is jammed now early in the morning and rather late in the afternoon, when I’ve found myself there. I assume it’s New Year’s resolutions, and the hordes will disappear as quickly as they came. Evenings at the Woodfin Y is overwhelmingly Hispanic.

In a lull in my writing in the café, I picked up two of the local women’s publications they offer to patrons, Verve and Sophia. If I were a Martian and this were my first look at the situation of women on Planet Earth, I’d deduce that women are equally obsessed with recipes (often involving chocolate) and with losing weight, a tragic paradox if ever there was one. I’d detect that half the articles encourage them to be happy with exactly who they are, while the other half (and all the advertisements) suggest make-overs, diets,  plastic surgery, and New Year’s resolutions for the New You. One notes also that any article containing the word “truly” is going to be crap.