My Current Workplace …

…though I don’t spend as much time in my department as I’d like to/should.

Linoleum prints (5” X 7” text)

The Museum of Solitude 

Dept. of Do Your Damn Work

My new utube, “Out of Shape”

I was truly horrified, as I blogged  about, to experience my body as so leaden, sodden, heavy as it was last week when I tried to run a few yards up a trail at a state park. It was not horror arising from vanity but from fear of my future. I always said I want to die with my toes on! I’d never felt gravity so forcefully before, and it was clearly a matter of my age + mass + inactivity. 

Plus, a couple people have told me that they or their partner “became old” at sixty-four, almost suddenly—and at sixty-three, that now makes sense to me. (It had seemed ridiculously early to me before.)

I’m glad I hadn’t deleted the YouTube channel about aging that I’d started a few weeks ago but hadn’t maintained. It gives me a way, a place, to talk to myself. And while it doesn’t (and may never) get many views, I want to put it out there, to represent my people—fellow (or potential?) aging puddings. 😆❤️ In an honest, unadorned, uncool way—no “chic ‘n’ silver”vibes!

So I stopped on my walk today and recorded “Out of Shape at 63…Taking a walk”. Link here: 

youtu.be/rHfjRV2naXM?si=pqK_9tj54tJgdxq_

Screenshot:

Three Docs, in Oct.

Hello to you, darlings, here in October.
I'm drinking my half–pumpkin spice coffee at the kitchen table this Sunday morning. It's still pitch black out at 6:30, but I can see trees blowing in the light of the streetlamps.
Let's see... The sun will rise in an hour, at 7:26; sunset is 6:30 p.m.

People in the northern hemisphere sleep more in October than any other month (per). I feel that. Not that it's the darkest and coldest month, but it's the change-over month.

I haven't been sleeping more (I sleep a lot anyway), but I've been watching lots more movies. (DVDs from the library.I don't have streaming because without internet, my computer connection (phone hot spot) is too slow.)
Mostly documentaries, or that sort of thing.

I. The Lost King (2022, dir. Stephen Frears, UK), which I watched last night looked promising, based on the true story of amateur historian,  Philippa Langley (Sally Hawkins, below), searching for  the long-lost remains of King Richard III--and finding them under a parking lot.
But the story is poorly served.
Was slandered Richard really a mopey, dopey-eyed love puppy, as the Hawkins character envisions him? (Just because someone is poorly done by history (or society or family) doesn't mean they are a sweet innocent.)

Feels untrustworthy--which would be okay, but it's also kind of boring. I wouldn't recommend this.

II. Much better---All the Beauty and the Bloodshed (2022, Laura Poitras, USA), a documentary about photographer Nan Goldin taking on the Sackler family and their philanthropy paid for with billion-dollar profits from OxyContin.
Released on Criterion.

What struck me:
the power of age and of drawing on your own history.
In taking on the Sadler family, Nan Goldin (b. 1953, only 8 years before me), drew on her activist experiences during the 1980s-90s HIV/AIDS epidemic––the political theater/direct action of ACT UP's die-ins, etc.––and also on her understanding of her teenage sister Barbara's suicide when Nan was eleven.

III. Best thing I've watched so far:
Desperate Souls, Dark City and the Legend of Midnight Cowboy (2023, dir. Nancy Buirski, USA)--a doc about Midnight Cowboy--not just about the movie, but the bigger picture of American culture at the moment--drawing parallels with Vietnam War reporting-- and the place, New York City.

As Bob Balaban says in the doc, it was "a picture of New York that really looked like New York, not like Easter Parade with Judy Garland going to come down singing".

Balaban played the young man who picks up Joe Buck (Jon Voight) outside a movie theater. It was Balaban's first movie.

(Reminds me, have you seen the 10-second video of a little kid saying, "I'm just a baby!"?)

Director Nancy Buirski interviewed online at Westdoc.

IV. Funny to realize just now, Balaban also features in Eva Hesse (2016, dir. Marcie Begleiter), another doc about an artist. He reads the letters of Hesse's father.
Eva Hesse was "one of the few women to make work taken seriously" in the largely male downtown New York City art scene.

Main message: DO YOUR WORK. This is the message I take from every creator's life: CREATE YOURSELF.

Below, Hesse who died at thirty-four, creating her first breakthrough unsettling organic sculptures. --Via "Portrait of the artist as a young woman: inside the mind of Eva Hesse"

Perambulating in the Park

Heaven help me, it is the truth, it is no lie that I have become positively LUMBROUS in my decrepitude.

I attempted to run up a slight––slight!–– incline to catch up with Marz gamboling ahead at Gooseberry Falls State Park, and I felt like a suet pudding. (We don't have those here, but they sound like how I felt.)

Now I'm back home, I am committed--committed!--to standing up every day, stepping outside, and locomoting myself from there.
I have no excuse not to. I'm just genuinely physically lazy. (I say this with affection. It's the plain truth.)
I have time: I'm unemployed!
All my body parts function, if reluctantly.

I live a pleasant walk from a lake with a walking path.
Today I walked those 5 miles (8 km) to the lake, around, and back.
It rained the tiniest bit, which intensified the colors and thinned the crowds. (Weekends, the paths can be mobbed. Luckily there's a separate path for people on wheels.)

The lake commissary closes tomorrow for winter, and I got my last grilled cheese of the season, with the extra treat of a local beer--a "dry-hopped and citrus-forward IPA with a smooth, malty finish".

This may seem counterproductive, but believe me, I'd eat this sort of thing whether I'd taken a walk or not.
It made for a perfect Saturday in the park.

Duluth Diptychs: Circles

Circles in Duluth, Minnesota

1. Clock at North Shore Bank (1960s?)
2-3. Architectural decorations on Carnegie Library (1902)
4. Electricity pole innards
5. Skylight at Karpeles Manuscript Museum, former First Church of Christ, Scientist, 1912
6. Graffiti in alley
7. Vault of North Shore Bank
8. Non-slip sidewalk plate

Penny Cooper at Speedway

I was horrified to be halfway up the Chester Creek path with Marz this morning and to realize that  Penny Cooper was no longer in the side pocket of my bag!

I retraced my steps – – 2 miles back – – and found her on the stoplight across from Speedway gas station and convenience store – – purveyors of the Big Gulp I’ve been writing about and of fried chicken, a half-eaten piece of which was next to Penny. 

Though Penny appears a very proper eight-and-a-half year old, she is a doll, and doll ways are not our ways. I suspect that she had jumped out of my bag to get Speedway goodies.

Look how pleased she looks with herself, the darling! It also looks like she may have had run in with a vehicle. 

THANK YOU, kind stranger!!!

Duluth Signs

 In Duluth for a couple days—New Bear (mohair, glass eyes) came to meet Marz.

 Some signs I have enjoyed here…

Detour, every which way:

Below: Near Marz’s place. I get the chicken sandwich.

Bent.

Below: What they got against the SAX?

Security camera… tiny pots:

If I were an oil painter, I would love to paint the beautiful patina of urban decay