bouncing around hallowed ground

Once again Sunday serves for Monday, the awareness of having to ride much earlier to get to the farther away San Marcos kids now stimulating me to get tomorrow morning requirements checked this late Hallows afternoon. Couch Surfing for instance. There’s a bag of ‘Reese’s Cups’ on the kitchen/living room counter, I picked it up at Target in Ocean Beach earlier, disregarding my housemate being clear this place – closed off by a secret-code-fence to the street – has historically been trick-or-treater-less. The thought of sad eyes looking up at me from behind some courageous mask, though, made me spend the dough. Meanwhile, I’m soon walking down B to the corner of 25th, three blocks, and scoring two slices of pepperoni from the quite famous and stand-in-line Luigi’s, having made the decision to eat pizza on Halloween – pizza nearly always absent from my keto diet – when I heard one of the kids say that’s what he was doing. So, despite walking more than enough today, and noting I feel sick as a dog (not my housemate’s sweet tail-wagging pit) I’ll follow my plan. My physiological storminess likely post-acid-reflux related, last night’s evil little surprise, and a typical day-after reality of feeling trampled by 38 water buffaloes on their own way to Luigi’s and back, say, seven times. Yes – I feel that bad.

When I wake tomorrow – put that in the context of 1967 Boston’s WBCN’s, “If the creek don’t rise and there ain’t no meltdown” – something I’ll be feeling, contributing to my Monday weather, is the need to find and rent my own art studio space. Last Friday I paid $10 for an hour’s worth of painting time in a studio/classroom/art lessons business six blocks away. Certainly a good price, but too many rules. Way too many rules. Do this, wear that, stand here. I’d already decided I’d be one and done 20 minutes in, packed up well before the hour. But I felt the pull, the so-amazing feel for swishing and slathering paint across a canvas. Colors. Colors. Art only I can make. Man, I remembered that feeling – I do right now – I’m an artist. Means I need a place to paint, my home’s got no space, it’ carpeted, it can’t happen here. The fact is I got spoiled back there in the studio on Nehalem Street in Portland. Back when there were Oregon Cushmans. When life was easier, and not everything I thought.

I’ve posted my art space need on “Next Door”. I’ve posted on “Craigslist. There’s really no one to mention it to, but once there is, I will. In the past week I’ve found – through much focus and devotion – a new (to me) desk, bureau, and bookcase. I have a real room. Joe S in Medford, Massachusetts paid for it, and I called him and thanked him. I’ve joined the San Diego Museum of Art and visited twice. I have also formally begun the gathering of bloggish materials and files for what will be my next book – “Weather” – and have giddily predicted to myself it’ll be published and available before the new year. Which tells me this necessary studio space, now my life’s uncertainty and stress having taken a step back, that feels possible. Turn my headlamps in that direction and rave on. Second star to the right.