I'm in the mood to write these days, relief that prosaic papers and tutorials haven't sapped all my thoughts and channeled them into dry ditches. So I will flow with it, despite laundry needing folding, dishes in the sink, bed unmade.

One of my few girly vanities is that my toenails have to be polished, always. I don't have pierced ears, I can't pull off accesories, my fingernails are always short and bare. But my toes have to be red or pink or sparkly. It has become harder and harder to lean over and de-polish and re-polish these days, surprisingly exertive, involving great puffs of breath and the occasional squeak. Today I had to pace myself: swab polish remover on one toe, sit up for a minute, attempt the next toe. It was tedious. But I saw a small book of poems on my desk that I'd gotten from the library and hadn't cracked yet. So I would read a poem, lean over to attend to a toe, swoop up, out of breath, and read another poem. Really, not a bad ritual at all. Necessity creates the best moments, I was thinking, and turning the page, there was an epigraph to the next poem, a quote from Picasso: "If you don't have red, use green". Exactly! I got a new cell phone in the mail the other day, I guess because we renewed our plan and they were upgrading us. (I called to activate it finally yesterday and the poor call center worker had to end her call with the following script: "Thank you for your family's combined loyalty to Credo - formerly Working Assets - of 6 years and 4 months". I felt terrible for her, why do we make grown-ups say such meaningless, scripted things in the name of service, it's so damn humiliating - I know, I've had to do it for a living...anyway) My old phone does kind of suck but given that I hate the phone and use it only to tell AH where I am and how we can meet up, it doesn't matter too much to me. But here, unbidden, a new phone which needs a new charger system, a phone-book thick manual, pages of warranties, two boxes - another endless pile of Stuff so I can be Upgraded. Which sent me off on one of my patented rants to AH. This one about Making Do - and how that spirit is utterly lacking in the modern world and is the cause of most problems. Later at a coffee shop, I scribbled my thoughts down on a my bookmark, reproduced whole cloth here:
Make! Do!
A Way of Life
A Manifesto
Get by with what you have - resist the urge to upgrade.
Embrace a Depression mentality.
A good kitchen sink dinner is more praiseworthy than the best ingredients shopped for and assembled by rote.
Make do - but also Make! and Do!
Limit options and it will expand your creativity.

It is all very well to have these thoughts and scribble them down, harder to implement them. I am also reading a book about the philosophy of conciousness and the heading of my current chapter is "Who shoves whom around the cranium?" and goes on to ask: "Who shoves whom around in the tangled mega-ganglion that is your brain and who shoves whom around in this teeming "bulb of dread and dream": that is mine...Do dreads and dreams, hopes and griefs, ideas and beliefs, interests and doubts, infatuations and envies, memories and amnbitions, bouts of nostalgia and floods of empathy, flashes of guilt and sparks of genius, play any role in the world of physical objects. Do such pure abstractions have causal powers?"
Indeed. Yes.
Unrelated, but related, in kind of a low mood the other day, I took myself off to Duke's Nasher Contemporary Art Gallery which is small but thoughtfully curated and always cheers me up. But instead of standing in front of the Rothko's or hanging out in the Olafur Elliason light installation, like normal, I found myself in the Ancient gallery - sculptures and paintings from the 1500's mostly and I suddenly felt soothed. Better about bringing a kid into this world. There has always been art. There will always be art. Drought, war, recessions, fear, violence...and art.

See what happens when my brain is left on its own for a few days?