I'm too familiar with this word for the week. I came home from work the other day feeling
like I had worked a month of Mondays and felt like I had to unclamp every
muscle in my body in order to sit down and pet the dog.
Since out there is stressful, I've been improving my habitat
lately and decided to get new living room curtains. I wanted a floral, white and green and summery. It seemed so obviously attainable, it didn't
occur to me that stores wouldn't have them.
In the end I bought a paisley, but the tops weren't right, and the
length was too long. I dragged out the
sewing machine.
I made the curtains what I wanted them to be, which involved
all sorts of things that I don't do: ironing, pinning, sewing... and the
curtains turned out to be a lot like the old ones, but I'm happier.
I made Sculpey flowers and pinned them on, and put Grandpa's
bells on the tie-back. I ran Sculpey
through a pasta machine and made feathers too.
(Not to be confused with my previous Sculpey feathers.) It's a whole lot of nothing for nothing, and
the kind of thing I get into. It's my
world, my space, and I can do whatever I want in it -- and sometimes that's
really necessary when the world makes me too tense to pet the dog.
I've been continuing with my linoleum blocks too. This sun was just fun for fun. I don't have any plans for it. Some day I'll be tired of looking at Sculpey
flowers and feathers and they'll go to the basement. I don't know if anyone else will ever want them, and the bother
of trying to sell them takes away from my fun in creation. Sometimes I wonder if my relatives will
throw all of it away when I die, and what's the point of any of it. Sometimes I can go too far into the whole
existential philosophy of why bother with anything at all? Maybe I should mention that I went to
another funeral this week. That kind of
thing spurs existential angst.
I told my brother the word for the week is
"tense". He drew tents in a
military encampment. I observed that
his tiny 1 1/2" drawing didn't really show the tents well enough so he provided the
enlargement detail.
Making stuff is one of the ways I deal with life. Some people cook, knit, or make furniture in
the garage. It's good to bring
something new into the world. I know
other coping skills too, like watching ripples on the river or waves in the
ocean, meditating, reading, tv, planting something in the garden. Whatever feels good to us is what we should
do unless it goes against someone else's happiness.
