Crash Bang

I've been trying to get to my computer. I was going to dazzle you with a two-fer, beginning with my alien encounter...

We had a staring contest but then it occurred to me she might not have eyelids. Plus she has 3 weensy eyes between those two freaky ones. Seriously, why do I know this. Part two involved finding a curious wooden bead in my pants drawer. Only it wasn't a bead. It was a small unripe tomato. The suspected portal to hell in my backyard has apparently moved to Dresser Drawer #3.

Then Sunday happened.

Yesterday was going to be relaxing after weeks of busy crap & the kind of the stress that doesn't kill you but has you thinking things like Happy thoughts, hm...at least I'm not dead, stupid or yeasty. And hey, South American bandidos haven't stolen my spleen for the underground organ market. It's not like I've actually seen my spleen but I'm pretty sure it's there. Well, and certainly not in South America.

Anyway, Rene & I took a drive along the coast. What I like about not going to the beach very often is that when I do, it feels like a revelation. Seventy degrees, hazy like a vintage photograph. Rolling along Pacific Coast Highway, everyone in the distance becomes a part of the narrative of images in my head...the surfers with their longboards, the sailboats littering the horizon, the little girl in her red suit, squatting in the sand like a comma. Endless summer.

We were on a 4-lane stretch of PCH. Lots of cars cruising at 45 mph, plenty of space so it still felt like a day-trip drive, not a commute. Suddenly our lane chokes up & Rene puts on the brakes hard enough to snatch my attention from the beach. Just hard enough for me to note the tail end of the car in front of us and have one of those quick flashes that don't mean anything...loose images of metal crunching, glass breaking, the distant thought I saw a movie yesterday with a slow-motion car crash scene, is that why I'm thinking about this---Rene's hand touches my thigh, we're still stopped, his hand has a nice weight, just resting there. As if we could stay in this fat second forever.

I'm thinking this even as I hear a bang, the accordian crush of metal collapsing, another bang, closer like a train arriving...so fast, and time enough for me to wonder if my imagination has created a more-real-than-real soundtrack, time enough to reject this & wait for the sound of screeching brakes, to remember not to stiffen since brittle things break. A split second later, we were hit.

We're sore but fine. I managed to hang onto my caramel latte. We bounced off the car in front of us but after a quick check, the guy nodded that his rear was fine, scanned the cars behind us with widened eyes, and promptly took off. So officially we're the first car in a 5-car pileup...or the last if you count from the initial collision. A good place to be.

The Ford SUV behind us left a Connecticut license plate impression on our white bumper, which crunched in a bit, but the damage was tame. The Ford's rubber bumpers remained intact, although the entire front end of a brand new Lexus hybrid was impaled on the Ford's rear trailer hitch. The Lexus had it rough, as it was sandwiched between two Ford SUVs. The second Ford SUV received the full brunt of impact from a large Chevy truck. An Asian couple was inside that Ford, fine enough to walk, a bit bloody, a lot bruised.

No skid marks. The driver of the Chevy appears to have been in the throes of loving his Subway sandwich, and didn't look up until he was slamming into another car. He also was fine, but so shaken by what he'd caused he didn't say much during the two hours of clean-up. He was wearing a T-shirt that yelled: Real Men Sing Real Loud. And sandals with tube socks.

That last part is going to really haunt me.

It was a sane group of people, and Santa Monica PD handled it well...they have extremely good-looking cops, which coupled with the beach just steps away & the Porsches & Bentleys rubbernecking past made it all seem surreal. David Hasselhoff was going to jog up at any moment reeking of beer-sweat & indignant mediocrity.

Of course I'm grateful no one was seriously injured. It was scary walking back to those cars, you see the twisted metal & your stomach tightens for what you might find inside. It's a good day when everyone walks away well enough to be agitated by the material damages.

I took a few lackluster pics with my cellphone...

the highway



yay for bumpers



ouchie Lexus



Tubesock's truck

Just another day in paradise.

In Progress

I took a few days off painting to play with the boys so I haven't finished, but I do have progression photos. I've been teaching Rene how to play volleyball. At first he took issue to partially squatting like he's going to poopy in the woods. I just told him he looked really sexy & when I could finally say it without laughing, he started to believe me. Men are like that.

I warned him the ball would sting at first b/c the delicate underside of our arms just don't get much action. He didn't believe me b/c he thinks he's made of rawhide, bristle, and teflon. His arms turned a pretty shade of hot pink after 10 minutes, then it looked like he had poison ivy. After Day 2 he was swollen from wrist to elbow with matching rainbow bruises. It looks like someone beat him with a fish.

For months I've had this hazy image of a woman in a bathtub kicking around my head. I never envision a whole painting, or even parts in great detail...I catch glimpses, a whiff of perfume, the silence after a gunshot...and fragments of a story start to roam around on their own. I don't build a story with a painting. It's kind of like remembering the whole experience of a torrid love affair you had the summer you were 17, and condensing the essence of it into a single image.

Rene paints forward, he builds from nothing Something. I start with too much & whittle down. It's easier to explain when I think of it in terms of sculpture...the way one sculptor feels he's building a woman from clay, and another feels he's revealing a woman from inside a slab of marble.

Click to enlarge the pics in a pop-up.

I start with a birch panel. This one's 3-1/2 feet wide & 3-3/4 high. I tint water to make a wash & rub it in to stain the wood.

Most of my paintings have strategically placed drips & splooches. The ceramic dish works great for a palette b/c dried paint just peels right off.

This mess is the start of clouds, which happen to be the floor. The blue tape keeps the floor straight.

Finished clouds. The depth will show up when it's varnished. Sketches of the pinwheels, and the tub & woman in the upper right.

Here the tub is finished & the woman needs work.

Babydoll had too many cosmos. She needs a smoothie, a slap, & some lipgloss.

Better.

Painting flesh is my favorite...there's a moment when it takes on life & everything just buzzes.

Thanks for looking! I'll post a photo when it's done. And if Rene's arms swell up any more I'll take a pic of that too...maybe when he's sleeping. Poor monkey, nothing is sacred.

Remember Me?

Sweet Jesus, that took a long time. I feel like Brad Pitt in Legends of the Fall...one minute he's Mr. Sunshine, the next he's running around the woods pretending to be a bear.

Thanks so much to the bloggie friends who sent me Are-you-stuck-under-something-heavy? messages, it means a great deal to me. I'm sorry I've been such an assholey blogger. I've missed you all so much...every day I think I'll be back the next day but things have exceeded me.

We've been dealing with a lot of big changes & what seems to be a daily rollout of decisions & complications, the good, the bad, and the WTF. I still haven't achieved a state of normal, but as long as things are going to be kooky for a while, I may as well learn to write from the asylum.

No dream house yet. It's a mixed bag---what's good for our money has us waiting until January, but I had a tantrum about the possibility of losing the house before I was able to see the sense in that. Even with the wait, the sellers want to work something out, so we'll see what happens. I feel good about it, less like a desperado circus monkey jumping through hoops.

Rene's mom gave us a real scare last week. First there was shocking talk about a mini-stroke, then the huge relief that her tests came out fine, and just when our guard was down she was hospitalized & had an emergency surgery. It went very smoothly, she was home in a day, and is bouncing back as though she just had a tooth extraction. She's a firecracker & the biggest issue is whether she'll get enough rest before running about town again.

J survived his football Hell Week. The first day he came home with a lump on his forehead & a lot of bloody scratches. Apparently he attacked the stuffed dummy & the dummy won. But then he got him back real good, that's my boy! Joking aside, he's hanging tough & really loving it.

I'm painting a lot, the new series has me all caught up in a creative inferno. I've been taking progression photos so you can see what a gloppy mess it all looks like in the beginning...those should be up in a week unless a portal to hell opens up in front of my board. Anything's possible.

That's it for me...time to catch up with everyone. XOXOXO