Moody now. Not the moodiness of hormones, but a subtler change. A sudden urge to create with my hands. Drawing, painting, assembling collages of found objects. Listening to ABBA for nostalgia's sake, and wondering how it could possibly be 20 years since I lived in that house on Mary Avenue in north Seattle. I would listen to ABBA while getting ready to go to work at the Bahamas nightclub. I'd serve cocktails while some local band played covers, and meet my friends who played in bands after we all got off work at 2 a.m., and we'd order cokes and fries at some all-night diner, and stay up until just before sunrise, laughing and talking and planning our careers in music.
I've never seen any of those friends or their bands listed in the Seattle music papers after about 1982. I haven't sung professionally since then, myself.
Domestic now. Tending my pots and containers, admiring the soft colors of the antique violets and fairy snapdragons, wondering what I would have been like living in the Victorian age. If my personality ran true, I would have been a suffragette, probably marrying early then divorcing or leaving my husband to pursue women's rights. I would have worn a Liberty dress, and bloomers when riding my bicycle, and raised my children to be polite and subversive.
I have no children. I prefer animals.
The bacopa is now in a cream ceramic pot with bunnies on the raised surface. I saw two bunnies, or jackrabbits maybe, from the train window Thursday night on my way to the city. The old industrial shipping areas are being bulldozed and flattened, the earth carted away by the ton for rehabilitation after cleaning out the dangerous chemicals. Meadowland had grown up during the two decades after the shipyards closed. So of course there were rabbits, but it still surprised me to see them loping along near the tracks. Where will they go now? Back to San Bruno Mountain, I guess, whose flanks are being invaded by condominiums and apartments. Pushing back the wildlife, plowing over natural shaded habitat, leaving only the short grasses of the open hills.
The only charities I contribute to are those who buy up land to protect it from development, and who take an active role in wildlife protection through education, funding anti-poaching measures, and field research.
Writing and photography are my two constant artistic pursuits. I'm not sure I would describe them as passions. I have to write, that's all, as in "I have to breathe." Photography is something I do every week now, using either my digital camera or my Nikon. It occupies a lot of my waking hours as I look around mentally taking pictures and assessing the shots in terms of composition, light and shade, color blocks. I'm not a geek, so I don't get immensely involved in the mechanics of photography. I doubt I'll ever want my own darkroom, and I don't know much about cameras and lenses, only how to use what I have. Still, I've improved. I only photograph animals and landscapes for art. I take photos of friends for keepsakes, but I can't take a decent photo of a human.
I love my husband, and my friends. I merely tolerate everyone else. Humanity's blind self-interest constantly horrifies me. I do not understand the world I live in. Strangely, I am an optimist at heart. But I do not want to photograph people. I want photos of geysirs, and waterbuck, and lotus; the unspeaking things, the silent glory.
I think I will go sit with my cats in the garden, and collect flower petals and leaves for a collage.
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