It's hot.

Photo by Lauren Rivers

Just as I was doing the bills, safely inside, away from the 90+ steamy weather, the doorbell rang.  It was Lachlan, Alexander's friend from down the street, asking if I wanted  some lemonade.  He and his friend had a stand in front of their house, but he had come to my door instead, knowing in this heat that I probably wouldn't be going out to walk by any time soon.

Smart fellow!  So on his bike he came to offer, then deliver, a cup for me.  

While Alexander and his dad have been enjoying the cool, beautiful scene-scapes of Alaska, summer here has come in on a fast, fierce heatwave (what a change for them when they return!).

I have the fans on and the air set at a degree lower than usual.  Writing this on my desk tucked away in a corner of the back room, shades closed, is also unusual; I'm usually on the porch, cup of coffee at my side, ruminating in the light and breeze.  But porch weather is now very, very early in the morning or later in the fading solstice light of evening.  The coffee is iced.

The move to indoors has me conjuring up a few projects, though...one of which (I'm jittery even as I admit this) is the reluctant idea for an art show here at home in the early fall.  My neighbor, on my telling her that the other day, had a look of horror on her face and said, "Is it because you need the money?"  I quickly disabused her of  penury.  No, I told her, I'm doing it because there is art stacked up all over the house...paintings, books, hangings...and I don't have another inch to display or store it.

Showing art is a real pain for me...there is no other way to describe it.  I love working the art itself, but I hate having to offer it for open sale.  If someone admires it, I'm happy to let it go. And I do give some as gifts, but those go only to people I suspect/hope would actually want it...often, it has been created with them in mind. 

Even the physical acts of choosing, framing, cleaning, setting up displays, sending out invitations, don't inspire me.  It's like that box of writing I have stored somewhere...a novel, some stories, a few collections of poems...once I'm finished with them, I'm done, and on the shelf they go.  I don't, I'm afraid, have the necessary commercial bone in my body.  (I do admire Lachlan for his lemonade stand.)

 Truthfully, if I could, I'd build a hall only to keep my art hoard safe from having to do something with it.

Frankly, the chance to sit down at the worktable and see what rises out of paint, paper, words, wood, metal...good or not so..is the best of my ordinary days (except, of course, when Alexander comes in the door, and once in a while he sits down with me, too).  Then, I'm finding myself in art.

 It's like a cocoon, where I grow into something bigger than myself, something even I can't conceive at the moment; it sometimes takes years to see what I've been in art.  I wish the cocoon of making were all there were.

Stay cool, you all.   Have a taste of some lemonade.