Buckets and barrels and heaping piles of it.

View from the deck door

Skiing right out the door is lovely, though. This morning I went out for a glide before noticing the temperature, and had to turn back because my fingers were burning from the cold. Time in the woods is so important: gliding under the towering forest restores body and spirit. So easy to spend too many hours in front of the monitor staring at little symbols and dots and images that are entertaining, but limited.

Have been spending late nights with Mountain Nest... The center has me boggled a bit, caught up in the challenge of composition and not sure where to go with it at this point. The struggle is part of the process I know, but it's not my favorite part.

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Last Thursday I drove to Cape Cod to check out the art scene there, without the chaotic throngs of sunscreen slathered tourists and beach people. It is a truly lovely peninsula. Easy to imagine the deep relief and joy of the pilgrims when they hove to around that spit of pine scrub dunes into the safe harbor of the bay.  This image is  from http://en.wikipedia.o rg/wiki/Cape_Cod. The embracing, muscular arm of the Cape stretches out into the ocean.
Very lovely, albeit somewhat alien when viewed from space.

James G. was supposed to

Cape_cod_bay

Provincetown was windswept and deserted. All those cute little clapboard and shingle houses seem frighteningly insubstantial in the chill. I bought a copy of Thoreau's Cape Cod to re-read. I think I speed read it in 1969 when hitching down the Cape enroute to Martha's Vineyard.

Despite the bleakness of the Cape in winter, a sense of artfulness is present in every grain of sand and scrub pine twig. Austerity and isolation allow art to breath, as in the desert. Gray and seething seas, wind-carved dunes, and the blue green of lichen against dark bark... all so visually intriguing.

So the Cape Cod Art Association deemed me worthy of membership, and I also joined the Provincetown Art Association, which has a very impressive museum quality gallery space. I am eager to get to work on imagery that grew in my head on the long miles home, including a good distance in blizzard like conditions from White River to Vergennes, where the Sleeping Dogs had a gig at a very fun 50th birthday fete. We need a new promo photo since we now have a new Dog. Jim Murphy has joined the group, adding a nice dimension with good rhythm guitar and vocals.

I'm barely learning  how to manage this blog thing. And still uncertain as to whether I'd rather have the journals on the bookshelf or continue to add to the electronic cacophony in cyberspace. Mostly I just need to go paint.
Which I am going to do now while the rest of the nation sinks back onto the couch to watch the Superbowl. I did see the Superbowl once. Does that mean I can keep my US passport?

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