Acrylic paint

For my birthday, my former student and little sister Zia gave me art materials: tubes of acrylic paint, a canvas, a sketchbook, and even a wooden palette. She knew I liked to make things. Last Saturday, I finally unwrapped her presents and spent the afternoon painting. It was wonderful to be able to use acrylic again. I have been using watercolor for a couple of years now because I adored how easy watercolor paintings are to make and how fast they dry. For a couple of years, almost every week, I sat down with my watercolor pad and my tubes of paint and brushes and pot of water and, for about an hour and never more, I painted away. After about an hour and never more, I was done with my picture and it felt wonderful, my prolificacy. Last Saturday, when I used acrylic paint again and, when I was finally done, found that four long hours have passed, I realized how I missed acrylic paint and its tedium and unhurriedness. Sometimes, it is good to wait.

At my new place

Scenes from a birthday

These among many, many other loving things :)

At my new place

This morning I woke up and found myself in a bright and sunny room, just like I had always wanted, but not quite. The walls were lined with my pretty books, and movie posters and teacups and other things, but they did not mask the emptiness and only made it more ostensible. They did not feel like they were mine, too, and instead felt like they belonged to another person from another time. That person I felt I have now forever lost, along with people and things she has now forever lost, and all these made the brightness of the room glaring and violent and utterly sad.

[There's a certain slant of light] by Emily Dickinson


There's a certain slant of light,
On winter afternoons,
That oppresses, like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.

Heavenly hurt it gives us;
We can find no scar,
But internal difference
Where the meanings are.

None may teach it anything,
'Tis the seal, despair,-
An imperial affliction
Sent us of the air.

When it comes, the landscape listens,
Shadows hold their breath;
When it goes, 't is like the distance
On the look of death.

For this journal's sake

I wonder when I will get to take happy pictures again.