wild cats? or not

last night went over well.
stayed out in the workshop late into the night painting. finished one more.
this one called "i said i am out at f.hollow"


i also began repainting the dwarf statue that david had out in the yard...i am giving him a fresh outfit for when the weather gets better.
fed the cats again before i went to sleep 'cause they were out and about and i felt they deserved a snack.
watched them eat it from the window, tried to indicate that i was their friend by not getting strong eye contact and saying "don't worry i am your friend". i think most of them understood...some were more eager to have a human friend than others...in the middle of the night, i heard a few of them meowing and that could have been what it was about, my friendship.
in the morning, a surprise on the front step. i thought "oh my god, what have i started? the cats have killed the bird for me to show appreciation, but the poor bird"

then david came home and i asked him about it. he said no way, the bird just hit the window. some times i have such an imagination. i like that about myself, my life is debatably more entertaining and rewarding as a result.
nonetheless; the moral ...the bird thought he could fly further than he could and he ended up dead. kaput. but it is a beautiful bird which made me sad.

spent morning meditating; trying to summon love from within which was a struggle, i just couldn't get it, then reached out to the world to see if i could just pick some of it up from out there...but nothing strong was swinging my way at that moment. oh well, something to work on...i just kept coming back to tea and how much i love drinking and preparing tea. to quote myself from 2000..."tea, love it or leave it".
meditation goals sparked a lunchtime conversation about love with david. what is love? love is gravity, a connection between two people...but david, sometimes connections can be bad, that is not love, it can't be, love should only be nuturing and good...
that is the pot of gold at the end though. it is more complex, multiparted, when you love someone or they love you...sometimes it nutures, other times it drains. it is tight though, it pulls you and you can't escape it...hope for a balance of love's components for good health and balanced happiness. that is the quick rough raw summary. so i will meditate again after this and maybe tea will come up again, maybe not.
then david and i will meet for a tequila by the fire. i am gonna burn on of my old bras rhen...i hit my limit with it today when working on the ladder on the skeleton. the strap just kept on falling down and i thought, when i finish this i am taking this bra off and it is going in the trash
...then a lightbulb.
better yet the fire. i am gonna burn my bra, just like the good ole days, which will be the pre-dinner entertainment at fox hollow.

after lunch i began a bigger project, one i have had a vision of for at least 8 or 9 months... a skeleton painting in the stairwell up to the top floor of the house. i traced my bodyparts so the result is to-scale of me...which i think is cool. it has more work coming to it for sure but i made some solid progress.
today was the first day in days that it didn't snow.

still with the crazy weather

hail, snow, rain, sun...whatever, it is march 30th and it is still going on.
it is significantly cold.
yesterday was another productive day...work for the colleen and david collaboration.
which we have decided to call "spRk & sl8 between things", the collaborative effort that is.
today?
bfast = olive bread and goat cheese, a grapefruit and a pot of tea.
then i worked on decorating the fruit and veggie bins in the refrigerator
with sharpees* by the fire. (*you can basically do anything here out on fox hollow and it is supported...unless you are an asshole)
lunch = quesadilla with salsa and avocado, emergen-c.

so the wild cats out here are numerous, as i think i have mentioned before. there are at least 6 that live under the workshop and my cabin. i got them some cat food in town on friday because the weather has been shit and i am sure they could use the additional support...usually they have been eating david's and my compost trash that we put outside everyday which has no meat in it and is heavy on the grapefruit skins, which i am not sure is adequate, they are probably on the verge of getting whatever the opposite of scurvy is...so i fed them some cat food again after my lunch and they were happy i think. they drag the plastic dish of food under the cabin after i put it out just like animals.
then i worked by the fire on the bins some more.

david came back from town and brought the sunday crossword with him and worked on it in the kitchen while i consulted from the fireside.
oh re: the cats, on his drive he saw one of our cats in the field across the road making a kill...pretty nice! i would like to take credit for that i think that having provided them with a snack yesterday they had the energy to strike out into the hunting arena once again.

wrapped up the bins around 4


...then started a fire in the workshop (so it will be warm when i go out there to paint after this with a pot of green tea)...then some yoga and meditation and here i am.
sunday night alone at fox hollow.

snow?sun? hail? march.

woke up this morning to it snowing. watched it fall out my window from bed.
wanted to fall back to sleep but it was hard to pass up watching, so i did.
the waxing and waning of the current of snow flakes and of my mind.
then such a productive day so far.
breakfast, tea, mild yoga and meditation then a long meeting with
david starting at 10:30.
we each had pulled a tarot card for the day; david got the magician (echoing the reading i gave him last night, which was his outcome card, the archetypical man who understands and wields the powers of the world),i got 6 of wind, clarity (echoing my most recent reading, where it fell into the position of my current strength).
the meeting was discussing our various projects...all books of some sort...and their respective futures and our role in them (their respective futures).
it was productive and positive. then we finished with lunch...david made eggs,potatoes and veggies and i made accompanying quesadillas. more tea.
computer time.
then the sun came out.
next some hydration, some reading and another short meditation to get me in the right mindset to head into town later.

think i may have exited (or at least begun to exit) a funk yesterday by way of painting and personal reflection/clean up...also i went on a run in the woods which didn't hurt (well actually it did, i am sore today) but back to the funk...
been very recluse of late, having a hard time interacting, feeling very "leave me alone"/"i just want to be by myself"...perhaps it came to a peak yesterday afternoon during phone conversation with craig by the fire...very difficult/frustrating for me to interact successfully in the funk...the complex creatures that we are; simultaneously wanting two seemingly contrary things or not knowing what we want or being afraid to own what we want...all of these things and then the ones we love, the ones closest to us, they see the struggle and they get wrapped up in it or we try to keep it from them, as we pull them in to us with our arms and kick them away with our feet...nonetheless, after that something clicked as i spent the majority of the day in the workshop painting.
i love painting.
so yesterday i finished another painting called "out on fox hollow"

get out of town, now it is hailing!!!

this day is all over the place. i guess march is getting out all it can before it has to wait 11 months for another chance.
who would blame it.

snow in the morning

yesterday was the hump.
the second part was hard to get through.
the party was slow...or i was slow, or maybe i was too fast...i am not sure.
no one will ever know that but what i can say for sure was that we (the party and i)
were not in sync. and it was significantly apparent and uncomfortable.
guess it could be in part to my introspective lifestyle out here...but it felt very detached,
foreign to me...couldn't engage in small talk...only could make broad all encompassing abstract
comments about humanity...i.e. "what do we really know anyway?" comments and delivered out of context.
in otherwords, you and your friends are camping, long beautiful day marvelling at nature, engaging your body in a hike, building a fire etc...you stare into the fire slightly buzzed and exchange such ponderings as "what does it all mean?" "is there a collective consciensiousness?" etc. and it is an appropriate forum for it...the contrasting picture; i am in town at a 60th birthday party in a duplex, cheese and crackers and dip, black cherry soda and wine, the crowd is very mixed; in age and background, religious, education or otherwise. i am wearing tight black pants and green high heels and grey off the shoulder sweater with green tank underneath (what i deemed to be appropriate "in town" clothes)...people ask questions like "does anyone know where the bathroom is?" and i respond cynically from my slouched position in a chair that is too big for me "who knows, does anyone know fucking anything anyway?"...people don't know how to respond in that situation, maybe a nervous laugh, i couldn't really help them either...so i was in the wrong element and it was felt.
nonetheless i ate cake, had a glass of wine, which was too much, considering i was already
tripping a bit...so i pounded 2 mugs of water and barely made it to a respectable exit time.
today, as the title claims, i woke up to snow on the ground which makes sense cause it was really cold last night.
have a fire going in the workshop, gonna paint for the day, then go on a run later.

settling in

was just snowing outside for a bit, now it has turned back to rain. a heavy rain day.
where to begin?
easter ended with a bang, if by bang you mean ended up with me getting sick in the bathroom. vomiting.
but the dinner before that was good, at least in company. david and i met his friend heidi in town who is an artist/tarot/astrologer. she clarified what a "psychic" was upon
my inquiry, the conversation also gave me some confidence/clarity to my current intentions/aims.
getting sick? no one will ever know why. my guess is that alot of stuff used to be going on around me and some has still been going on in me and then i was putting much more in and my body was having trouble keeping up...so it expressed itself. david has to remind me that i am going through a major life transition and it takes time to decompress. i guess i agree, but i want to be infallible and productive.
mmmm, delicious, i just made a great pot of tea. milk aroma oolong with a little bit of sugar and milk. nice.

the following day was a recovery day, much napping and fire time. didn't have an appetite, was a bit tired and down. david hung with me periodically by the fire and kept me afloat with a combination of light joking, deep affirmations and cynical ponderings. went to sleep early. some days are like that and you can't beat yourself up about them. well you can beat yourself up, but you are a jerk for doing it because only jerk beats a dead horse and death is inevitable.

aha! the rain has turned back to snow. it is so beautiful and slow, coming through the trees all around the kitchen.

i took some photo documentation the other day since i woke to sunshine and 2 wild female turkeys pecking outside my door. they come and go.

here is david too painting some molding to frame a bunch of cool paintings he bought in new york


and then a picture which sort of displays my set up here. i am actually still living in the "closer to the house" cabin as opposed to the one up on the hill without electricity. think i will keep that one more as a "retreat" from the retreat and maybe spend a day or two up there soon.


on monday, david was doing work in the garden and i went out to visit him in the early evening and walk around the garden when we were paid a visit by his neighbor, Duane. Duane is like in his early forties and has the most ridiculous mullet i have ever seen live. see figure 1(*sorry for the roughness of the image, i don't have my mouse with me right now). he rode up the driveway to us on his off road honda motorcycle. he is missing a few teeth and has a hand gun strapped to his side in plain view. nice guy though. just majorly a "country person" and very surreal for me. he is a lonely guy, works all the time but had the day off, obviously was bored shitless and saw us milling aorund the garden and wanted to come check out the action. david had to gracefully say "well, great seeing you duane, moving on" several times..."well you guys know, just holla if you need anything, anything at all, just holla, i will hear you". which is nice of him.

the next day was yesterday. we had a big day...we packed up david's truck with an old carpet from the guest room and a bunch of other trash and took it to the dump. which was a novelty. then we hit the grocery store and lunch. we hit the grocery store to get the supplies for our dinner that we had last night. my ultimate friends CJ and Missy came over and we had a Baked ziti type dish david makes. then we played ping pong in the workshop...oh but when we first went in there, there was a bat flying around, so i ran out, then i went back in while missy and david tried to get in out, then i went under the ping pong table, then i came back out cause i felt stupid since i was really the only one reacting like that.
always falling to peer pressure.
oh so then figure 2 (*) shows what i remember of the bat (i told missy i would make a figure for that one). the bat stayed in there with us, he went up on a shelf to sleep. david says he is probably in there all the time with me sleeping.
ping pong is fun. i really like that. i am treating it like kara-te and david as Miagi. last night i grasped the concept of moving my energy forward at all times and meeting the ball before it meets me. then we all came back in the house and played scrabble. which is hard for me on a variety of levels but i was around people i like so that was what mattered...
long story short last night was a fun night for sure. a success. missy and cj brought us brownies, which i am eating one currently with my tea...mmmmmm. afternoon tea at fox hollow.
so the rest of the day? well it is a cold/wet one, think i will meditate after this, do some mild yoga, then maybe come back into the house and draw by the fire.
tonight i have to go in to town for my friend jan's bday party.

also i finally took pictures of the paintings i finished this weekend
this one is titled science

this one is titled my sister


and ps it is really coming down in snow buckets now, there is a little bird sitting on the deck outside getting hit by the big flakes and it is probably thinking "jesus, i just flew back up here, now i gotta go south again"...poor guy.

easter sunday

i slept in til 11 am this morning.
amazing. i didn't realize i was such a sleeper but i really am these days.
it is encouraging to find out new things about oneself like that.
guess i stayed up late though, til past two.
watched "southland tales" with david then i read a bit more about the irish saving civilization.
southland tales is a f-ed up movie; it was all over the place.
yesterday i drew and drank tea out on the deck in the sun, which was nice.
i also finished two paintings. i will put photos of them up in the next entry.
then the usuals; eating. meditating and reading.
i ate 2 and 3/4 quesadillas yesterday. mmmmmmmmmm.
happy easter bunnies.

snow on the first day of spring

i feel like so much has happened since my last post.
how could that be it has just been a few days and you are out in the woods?
to that i say, the world is a complex and wonderful place and i did say it was only a feeling.

let's see the night before last i spent the night alone, first dancing in the studio as if i was perfoming on stage, then by the fire with some tequila, lime, paper and pencil.
i drew a drawing of each of my family members, meditated on them, wrote down some of their qualities, who they are to me and a prayer from me for them
and then i threw each one in the fire.
one by one. a symbol. a ritual.
letting go of old structures to make way for the new.
maybe it is weird. the idea arrived spotaneously while i was making my dinner, mac and cheese...then i ended up trying out the idea with one of them and it seemed to be the right move or anyway productive.
oh and earlier that day i created my own religion, in augustine's example based on the biases and let downs brought on me by my formative years of life. it was funny at first then i thought this could be a pretty successful template for many people to structure their life on...man turns out to be the troubled one instead of woman this time, the unstable aggresor when given too much power but the sacred intelligent supporter when kept in his place, the right place. ha. you could imagine, i wrote a page or two of doctrine. the female, so strong and steadfast, only in her can the power of god justly and temperately be used...only in her giving love and care and life can the true magic of god be seen on the wordly plane...so at the end of my burning ritual,a few tequilas into it, it was only logical to announce my religion to the empty house surrounding me...it was met with crickets... afterwhich, while i duely noted the inherent potential for great success and strength of my doctrines. and while it would be selfless and strong of me to bring these self generated truths to the masses i instead threw them in the fire...because augustine, the bullshit will stop with me, i will not pass it on to those that follow me.

so then fire.
fire!!!! guess i discovered a new use for it. put things in it and watch them burn and see what it stirs in you.
felt liberated and oddly relaxed after.
but alas too good to be true (or not)...had a horrific dream later that night. strong, clear, lasting. message was; things are serious colleen, do not take them lightly...you are strong but even someone strong can get cocky and off their guard. it is not so easy as to just balk at the means that those have set before you...burn years and years of tradition without resistence? did you think it would be that easy and you so capable?
so now i am working it out.
david gave me a tarot card reading yesterday afternoon which indicated not only that i am on the right track but that i will get what i am aiming for. love, love not cynicism.

when i have tea in the morning, i position myself so i can see the pond david made to collect all the rain/run off. i like watching the raindrops land on the surface of the water, also i like to imagine what is underneath the dirty shaking surface. my visions of what goes on down there change radically with my mood and the time of day (pure personal entertainment) but yesterday, i had to do none of the work for my pond adventure, instead a mom and baby deer showed up and drank from the pond. it was a great spectacle for me and i deemed it the best thing of the day, which it was. but then last night david and i went to town to go to get a drink and dinner and when we came back it had snowed again and the snow had stuck.
so the snow spectacle tied with the pond/deer thing.
the full moon was out and the snow made the whole place glow, it was magical.

not sure what today will be about.
going in to town tonight to play poker, dance dance revolution and guitar hero 3 with some of my eugene women's ultimate friends.
excited about that...i think i could use some light fun social time...
'til then think i will meditate after some mild yoga then maybe paint in the workshop or draw in the kitchen. david left for portland this morning to visit some friends for the night...

will all the male turkeys in the room shake their jelly

this morning it snowed for an hour or so, while i was eating breakfast and drinking tea.
it didn't stick, the ground was too wet hence warm.
it was pretty.
it is so nice and quiet out here.
last night was a good night, meeting jun...my friend's adopted chinese 20 month old.
she is a bundle of giggles and fun.

woke up stressing about the far future. i was painting empty tree branches all over myself and the covers
as i slept...but while some became real substantial branches that helped me sleep in comfort and thrive in my existence, others remained empty eventually becoming brittle and unstable, the more i tossed and turned the more they broke and shattered making my sleeping arragement all the more disjoint, uncomfortable and dangerous.
finally i quit the illusive battle, lit a candle and let Dirk Gently and his adventures distract.
i reprimanded myself in the morning but what can you do really...
it is where i was at last night.
so i needed to be there.

after the snow, i meditated then drove in to town for lunch with some old collegues (physicists) at one of my old lunch spots.
that was nice. overdosed mildly on coffee but no harm done.

tonight david is in town dancing and eating. i will maybe stretch, then dance in the dance studio for a bit, eat then continue my reading on the fall of the roman empire.

currently learning of the father of the catholic church Augustine, the inventor of the whole adam and eve story and the grace of god, the trinity etc...seeing it play out from his personal goals and experiences it seems so transparent, so much less mystical and holy. he was just a person, just a person with a penis, a strong ego and mind and desire for more, fufillment, understanding...damn woman tormenting me when all that matters is the father and the son and the love between the two...but he must have struck a chord for it to have lasted so long, become a part of "the way things happened"...
this guy, Augustine, like 1600 years ago...and there you go. nothing new....you've heard it all before, we've heard it all before...
perhaps you are rolling your eyes or your mind, bravo colleen, big whoop.
people are just people. that is how it goes...but hmmmmmmm... turkeys, turkeys are so much more.
you can just tell by the way they dance.

the irish to the rescue

rastaman vibration kicking in the background.
david is down painting one of the walls in the living room before we head into town for dinner at our friend's house.
we will be riding on japhet's coat-tails tonight and
bring the french onion soup of saturday.

today did some drawing and talking to david of future illustration projects in the morning,
next tea and then personal painting in the workshop.
almost stepped on a large slug on my way back into the house for a pee.
i apologized to the slug.
now gonna take a shower, help with the f.onion soup prep, then off we go to pick up a bottle of wine pre-dinner.

yesterday was a good day. pretty internal.
morning time, david's flame's children were over. we took them on a leprechaun hunt into the trees up by the cabin.
then lit a fire in the cabin's stove and david led a few make-shift irish songs.
being as we found no leprechaun's, they (the kids) happily took that role on and created mischief.
they started their own alternative fire out on the deck out of mostly newspaper, which we apathetically supported until it filled the cabin with smoke and ashes. then we went back down to the house and their mother picked them up.
i meditated most of the afternoon (where is love?), then did yoga.
intermittedly read about the fall of the roman empire in the hopes of learning how the irish saved civilization.
that i enjoyed. the reading. never was huge on history, never understood how anyone could really know any of it...but yesterday, yesterday it did the trick for me. fireside.
david came in and we talked about it. history, people...it.
conversation transitioned nicely into tequila and limes and discussion of our own personal histories.
what does it mean? for us, for you, for me...
take home message; i am me, i am here, i have it pretty sweet. the individual rises.
threw together a late dinner of beets, greens, pasta, tofu.
and that brings us to this morning.
oh and the fact that i can really sleep-in well these days. phenomenal.
no sun to blind me or scream me out of bed...just lulling rain and green trees.
only limitation is that my bladder isn't the size of kentucky.
can't have it all.

mild image update

played ping pong last night in the workshop.
haven't had the opportunity to play that much in life but am looking forward to many more times while i am here.
ping pong rally on!!!
today the sun came out, it was beautiful.
made a good pot of tea in the morning and painted most of the day away in the workshop surrounded by trees and sunlight.

david got the fire going in the wood burning stove in there so it was pretty deluxe.
ended the painting with a bit of meditation. now planning on taking it easy tonight.
david is down the road tending to his love interest.
warm shower, light reading, then try and reenact the french onion soup from last night, which by the way was
awesome.
oh yeah, cat-wise, there are many of them that come hang out on the property ...one fuzzy white one is living under my cabin. so i am thinking of naming it fluffball

also the best i could do, in terms of documenting the walls in the room i painted; here it is

lazy saturday

so the stomach is all cleared up, i had a beautiful type 4 this morning
(see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bristol_Stool_Scale)
david got back on thursday night which has spiced things up.
i learned a little about the wood selection out in the shed from him. which pieces were hard and/or green thus
perhaps clearing up some of my fire maintinence struggle...that and i was skimping on the amount of wood i had in the stove at a time.
lesson to be learned; know your fuel and don't skimp.
finished painting the bedroom walls (3) black and white yesterday. i would best describe it sort of as a children's room themed job, with the disclaimer that i would never let it be my child's room.
meaning it could be a little dark...but in a lighthearted childlike way, which debatably only a real genuis could capture.
this morning we laughed about putting one of those halloween sounds cds on in there for guests and creating a device which drops fake spiders on them when they sleep.
so, i guess productivity is up out here.
as is tea consumption.
yoga session this morning followed by a sauna, a quesadilla and then a nap in front of the fire.
david's son japhet is out here for the weekend. they are currently playing a father son dueling scrabble game below me while also maintaining the pot of french onion soup which they are making for dinner tonight.
i think i will go put on my painting clothes and go out to the workshop and paint for an hour or so.
some paintings which were mid process from sf.
unfinished business.
think i gotta go drop a type 4 on my way ;)
oh there has yet to be a day with out rain for me at fox hollow which is what i need.

rereads reheats revisits

today i left fox hollow for a bit, which was good.
a chance to put my behind on another toilet...noooo that is gross, but it is true.
went in to eugene to celebrate a friend of 8 years' birthday (what is the correct punctuation on that, "a friend of 8 years' birthday", let's be honest no one probably really knows that)
so we talked/laughed a long time over a meal plus at one of our old haunts.
then just kind of meandered through some errands i had to run.
it was a break from the stomach situation...which is becoming less frequent and today i ate more than i have eaten since sunday. triumph.
then back here;
fire in wood burning stove had gone out since i left in such a rush this morning and didn't properly tend to it...so took me like 20 minutes to restart it and get it back to self-sustaining...which was fun. really. watching it, reorganizing it, blowing on it...soothing experience.
god, think about how much life would suck without fire.
then i watered the plants in the greenhouse which shares half of the cabin with me...brought in some more fire wood, said "hi" to a passing wild turkey, tried to pick the lock of the armoire that david put in the cabin for me with a bobby pin...but to no avail!
gonna research how to pick an old lock tonight and give it another go after finding that out...david comes back tomorrow and i am sure he must have the key anyway. let see finished The Cay last night by the fire...hmmmm took me maybe a day and a half to read that thing. take that middle schoolers!!!!! glad i did the reread but it was not all that i remembered it to be. it was more or less a let down.
but i was in middle school when i made my judgement of the story, so there you go, why wouldn't i be into a book about being stranded alone on a deserted island with a big sweet older black guy who makes it his sole purpose to take care of me and make sure i survived. coconuts, langosta, fresh scallops, chocolate and bisquits.

starting another reread tonight...Douglas Adams, "dirk gently's wholistic detective agency". no surpirse there.
recently reread his "long dark teatime for the soul" and rekindled my burning crush on his writing style/take.
so the sun is going down, just polished off some reheated spagetti... gonna go downstairs, do a brief meditaiton and then work the night away on the wall creation.
sharpees and black paint and me!!!!
that last part was meant to be sung...by you. not me i wrote it.

so i broke loose

left the job.
the job was expendible, it was only so important in that it pushed me the extra inch so that the leap was feasible...feasible? by that perhaps i mean the only posible stable option from the precarious position i had worked my way into.
the precarious position being a box then? who knows, i have neither worked it out, nor is it significantly important anymore.
well, so i left the job, hosted an art coming out party for myself then
left the city, left the state.

drove up the coastline to oregon. stayed the night in klamath at the same hotel my boyfriend craig (now) stayed at when he rode his bike down the coast to sf from oregon (then). ate a gas station dinner after being chased away from a sunset hike by a worn 40 something male.
back to oregon. mildly back in time, where i used to find solice, support, strength, respite.
then the diarhea hit and i have been moaning and complaining ever since.
but alas, there is always ones body and it comes along for most everything. whether you would like to think so or not.
neither here nor there.
but obviously mentionable.

so now it is sort of beginning, how i pitcured it: me untethered doing what i want and seeing where that leads me.
out at david's with the fire, the rain, the tea, the trees.
when i arrived i saw he had painted a wall in the bottom bedroom with random black slashes over white. so after moaning on the couch for all of yesterday and some of today i went in there with a sharpee and some black paint and some brushes and started adding to it. it has become a nice beginning project for me. well suited to my style. impromptu, meandering and building on some preexisting lines and structure. different in that it is only black and white.

so that is basically today.
that, mild yoga, meditation and some pu-erh tea for stomach health