Sorrow

Rufus, pen and ink

“I’ve had the privilege to be owned by some truly wonderful animals.  I had the two best dogs that ever lived, a border collie and her favorite puppy, and now I have the two best cats.  Not sure where I go from here if my cats don’t live as long as I do.  Right now we’re the exact same age if every human year is equal to 5 cat years.  I cherish the grumpy old man qualities of Pete, the alpha kitten of the litter who once tried to catch every leaf that fell and every bird that flew.  I commiserate with the aches and pains of the runt of the litter, Wendy, still tiny and delicate as a kitten, now growing old and even more fragile, but always beautiful.”

I wrote that a month ago and never got around to finishing what was to be a blog about my various cats and dogs.  A couple weeks later on the second night of my trip back East, in a motel in western NY, my sweet 13 year old cat, Wendy, had a heart attack.  I got her to a vet hospital, but she went into a seizure just as the vet began examining her.  She died a little later.  The miracle is that I found a vet hospital, in a place I'd never been before, with a veterinarian, two vet assistants and desk staff there in the middle of the night.  Another miracle is that with my terrible sense of direction, terrible night vision and complete inability to follow directions, I got her there within 90 minutes, in the dark, sobbing, in the rain.  It helps me to know that I did what I could. 

Peter, Wendy's littermate and brother, is confused.  He must have walked ten miles when we got home to Massachusetts, looking for Wendy.  He also doesn't know how to eat by himself because he's never done it before.  He always waited until Wendy started eating before he ate.  Now he just looks at the plate and looks at me.  He'll eat if I talk to him and pet him, but not much.  I think he'll be OK, though, because he's trying to catch the woodchuck in the back yard.  

This makes me think of my 4 year old grand daughter, Rose, warrior princess extraordinaire.  Her highly emotional older sister, Elison, had just heard the news that one of the chickens had died overnight and Elison, sobbing, said among many other things, “my heart is breaking.”   Rose, listened to it all silently, and when there was a lull in the drama, said firmly, “My heart will never break.”  Ah, Rose.

”There are no terms to be made with sorrow.  It can be cured by death and it can be blunted or anaesthetized by various things.  Time is supposed to cure it, too.  But if it is cured by anything less than death, the chances are that it was not true sorrow.”

Ernest Hemingway

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My Greek Island Residency

Archaic Goddess

Plowing through the monthly listings of artist's calls for entry, grants, etc., I came across one for an artist residency on Skopelos, an island off the coast of Greece.  It calls to me.  I keep thinking about it even though I added up all the costs and it would be about $3,000, which is more expensive than any vacation I've ever taken.   In spite of that, I'm obsessed with  thinking up reasons why I should do a residency in Skopelos, Greece.  I actually have a solid project in mind that would be perfect for the place and the culture and everything.  But I just don't think I can afford it.

I'm thinking of brilliant sun, water and rocks.  Mornings in the studio making sculpture, afternoons baking on the beach, evenings full of music and laugher.  What I can do is have my own private Greek island residency in Wisconsin in April next year.  My studio there is unheated and uninsulated, so there's always a lull before I can start back to work full-time with clay in the studio.  I could work on my Greek project in the house for the 3 or 4 weeks until it's warm enough to work in the studio.  In the mornings, I can work in clay; in the afternoon, I can do Mediterranean stuff:  buy a bottle of ouzo, eat a lot of Greek salads and listen to CD's of Greek folk music.  And go to the beach; even though it will be only about 50 degrees, I can always work on my tan.  And then I will have a whole new body of work for my next solo show.

Uh, oh!  I just found out about a residency in Nepal.  Going to be hard to do an imaginary Nepalese residency in WI.  No yaks.  Maybe I need to actually go there and make some bronzes in Patan.  And, of course there's the one in Chapala, Mexico that I can't do this year because of my solo show, but maybe next year.  I  need to think of something small and ceramic to do in Mexico...

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