Make art here.

I made this invitation early this morning--it's light at 6:45 now--to invite Emmler Bemmler over to make art at my place. (I'll invite other people too.)
I've only ever gone to Em's place before.

I want to make art here.

 
I. Cleared to Start

I got an official "you are hired" email this week, after I finished all the bureaucratic HR steps--and was cc'd on the email to my new workplace with the subject heading "Cleared to Start".
I love that!

I'm a little angry at myself--again--but in an energizing way-- for having given so much to my workplace. Though mostly that was good, in fact, now I'm over and done there (so done), I'm ready to bring it HOME.

(Of course the girlettes and I created stuff--four years of calendar's worth, and much more. It's not like I gave all my creative juice to the store. But, still...)

I don't know how possible it will be, especially at first because a new job takes a ton of energy, and a job with people will always require a lot of you,
but I want my new job to be a job, not a life-blood art project.

I had brought three poster boards home for Marz--turns out she doesn't need them, so they will be my starting point.
Collage collabs with other people?

I want to draw these flying figures, (below) across one of the poster boards--they are women Sumo wrestlers. (I found them while I was looking for Murderbot images.)
I like images of airbound humans, I guess--I'd used one for the collage collab art with Em (& Ass't Man).
I love their feet!

Penny Cooper suggests they be Parade Balloons, floating above a parade of dolls and bears along the bottom of the poster-board.

II. BOOKS

Remember I was going to write a thank you to the fire chief down the street, whose recent book, Trauma Sponges, is partly about being called too late to the scene of the police murder of George Floyd?

I'd written an actual paper note, mailed it––and got one mailed back! (around Xmas)
"That Vinnyd" he refers to is the thrift store--my former place of employment.

Reading his book meant a lot to me: it was one of the events/actions, like unhooking a hook from a fish's mouth, that made me ready to leave the store. The main coworkers with whom I'd gone through the murdertime had left, and I felt alone.
To have this book saying THIS HAPPENED..., and then the handwritten note, that sealed the deal.

It was one of several things that signaled,
YOU ARE FREE TO GO NOW.
_______________

Yesterday I cleared out a lot of stuff I'd brought home from my former workplace (I like saying that --"former"), including books, sort of as insurance: I'd worries that I would miss all the STUFF I saw every day, but actually, I don't.
I put some books in Little Free Libraries, and I also sold a bike bag to M&G Books (for $27 in credit), where I saw displayed this new novel--A Council of Dolls, by Mona Susan Power.

After my big disappointment with the movie Barbie, which wasn't about dolls (it was all about humans (boo!)), I am wary, but this seems to include dolls of power:

"Council weaves a... portrait of three generations irrevocably altered by the “re-education” of Native American children at U.S. government-run boarding schools — and bound together by the various dolls that bring them comfort and companionship.
...She chose to present this through the lens of dolls, which are a really important part of the culture of Native life,” said the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Louise Erdrich.

. . . The book brings them to life in ways that sometimes spill over into the supernatural...."
--NYT Review

I put it on hold at the library.