I am swimming laps every morning before the office officially opens. Its been great-- a little stunning how it shuts your brain off almost entirely except for the ability to breathe and count the laps...(even the counting can be a little shaky. I have thought that getting a little knitting counter and pinning it to the front of one's bathing suit might be the goofy answer. Or having a handful of rings that you move from one finger to the next. To be honest, I have tried...and almost just given up counting...making it a time based experience. We'll see.) I am feeling spoiled to have this glamourpuss place to go to with lovely lockers, glass doors on the showers and all sorts of amenities along with all the weights and machines if you want them. I hope I can keep it up as I have more energy...and thats what its all about. Coffee only gets you so far. This really is much better. My shoulders hurt. I swam daily through college and the first few years of work at Corning. Then walking...And to be honest, I like swimming the best. I somehow think that as we, as beings, are made up of so much water that there is a balancing that goes on with swimming and lake paddling. Chlorine gets in the way of the total flat line (brainwise). That's all for my non scientific babbling.
Spent the better part of the day on the almost Memento Mori project for a client using some of the scrap from my first phase of drawings--filling in the time while things print or save drawing octopus and skulls. Be YouTiful...hard and wiggly. Rigid and organic. A wealth there. I dont know if it is true to the Memento Mori...or as hard line as the rest, but I write the rules...and the more out there I go, the work gets more interesting. Did a nice star of david and cross. Not totally calligraphic, but inspired by the thicks and thins.
Gotta get started on the stuff I want to send down to Corning's 171 Cedar Street Christmas Bazaar--art and cards from the Ithaca Art Trail, and some new things in frames. Barbara compiled what we sold, quantities and total dollars on each "sku"-- so we actually have "data". Maybe a tiny bit of cash there too. Who knows. Erich says he thinks the cards will sell. I agree.
Am re-reading the Great Elizabeth by my all time favorite historical biographer, Carrolly Erickson--a great writer who tells a good story studded with bits and pieces of life, lifestyle, intrigue, gossip and sidebar information that somehow makes the individual she is writing about absolutely breathe. She has written about Elizabeth, Henry, Ann Boleyn, Mary Queen of Scots, Marie Antoinette, Catherine the Great (of Russia). You get the jist. Its terrific. I should also go the library ( here in Tburg, our library is a Philomathic Library..is yours?) and get a new, hot off the presses book. They always have things that I never thought I would like...and do.
Memento Mori continues. Today with Octopus. I have been working with skeletal hands...and have a little groove happening with them. You know...this work is evolving. Wow.
Gotta sleep.