Tidying Up

Sunday morning, 6:30 a.m. I've been getting up early with the time change--because I've been falling asleep so early, since it's dark before 5 p.m.--by 8 p.m. I feel like it's midnight!

 I've set a pot of black beans to boil on the stove, to make some sort of chili. 
I've barely been to the grocery store in weeks. I'll go to the nearby Mexican grocery and get some veg. They sell wrapped bundles of chopped stew vegetables for $8---usually squash, carrots, zucchini, cabbage, corn on the cob, potato, jalapeño, a spray of cilantro, etc. I'll add a can of stewed tomatoes, a can of hominy (softened dried corn), and spices, which I have.

Nothing grand, obviously, but the first cooking I've done in almost a month. I got so TIRED of making food and have been living on cheese sandwiches and so forth--like, oatmeal, boiled eggs, sliced apples with peanut butter. 

The co-op has a machine that grinds plain peanuts (no salt or anything else)---it's so good fresh! It's on sale this month for $3.99/pound, which is decent, you don't eat that much. 

I don't mind eating like that, but my body has not seen a veg in a while...I 've been eating out a lot too, which costs too much--even the cheapest places cost near $10 for a little something.

And now that people's federal food benefits are being cut, I won't go to the food shelf for my coworkers' lunch, because children will be needing the food...
We adults can scavenge and scrounge up something, usually.

Why are we having to think in these terms––will children get enough to eat?––while we spend billions on AI and missiles???
Yes, I know why.
It's insane.

Ah, I just checked: happy to ssee that Minnesota has secured SNAP benefits after our AG Keith Ellison sues the Trump administration... [news article here]. 
(I didn't used to like Ellison, but he's been great since DT took office.) 
But still, I don't need it, and I am tired of making lunch for coworkers for now anyway.

Sometimes the daily tasks of taking care of myself feels like such a burden. I've been letting it slide, but yesterday I caught up on laundry and tidying--there were sticks and yarn on every surface, and dolls too--they are gathered up into small study groups now.

What are they studying? I don't know, but that's what they said, "study groups". 
I think this group, below, is planning a marching band parade for the holidays--can you see their little metal instruments up front? I brought those from the store last week.

Yesterday I also opened, de-stuffed, and washed two damaged stuffed bears--one that I've had for months to repair for an acquaintance. Her dog had chewed her childhood bear's eyes and nose off, leaving big holes, so I will repair its face, as well as clean and restuff it. 

And I got two grocery bags of stuff together to go back to the thrift store, and I put a grocery bag of books I've read (mostly from the store) into nearby Little Free Libraries. 

Having performed this life maintenance, I'm mostly restored to rights.

I have been neglecting my apartment mostly because I've been out socializing more than usual. A good trade off, but I'm tired of people-ing, and I am not going to a new church today, as I had planned.

I'm going out for coffee with bink instead, which we often do on a Sunday. (this doesn't count as 'people-ing' because bink is no work.)
She's been laid up the past three weeks though, healing from foot surgery to plane-off bone spurs. 
It's like carpentry work!

It's exciting that she'll be able to walk without pain again, but it's a long recuperation--a couple months--since of course they have to open your foot to get to the bone, and now it has to darn itself together again.
But it will, and then we can go on walks together again--me with my much improved knee ligament...

How is your space suit holding up?
A 73-y.o. friend calls these old-age discussions of health Organ Recitals. A good exchange of information, often. 

Life is grim. Make Art!

Another reason I am not going to the Congregational church I was going to check out today is because . . . every time I go to a Protestant church [or Anglican and its offshoots churches], I re-discover how Catholic I am (even if I can't stand to go to Mass). 

(Some of this has to do with social factors more than theological--the Anglican {i.e., Episcopalian} church near me is the Pearls & Martinis crowd.)

The pastor at the church I visited saying he wanted to get rid of the Cross was a perfect example of Tidying Up instead of Diving Into the full mess of being human.
I want to tidy my house but prefer to dive into the weirdness in the House of Gods. 

I just watched a 6-episode BBC show, Broken (2017), about a troubled priest in a troubled parish in Liverpool--played by the excellent Sean Bean (Boromir in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings and Ned Stark in Game of Thrones).

I liked it a lot because it's grim and bitter, 
and so am I (sometimes). 
(I don't think it shows in my own art, does it? with the girlettes, for instance, though I suppose they are weird in their own sweet way.)

Review of Broken in the Guardian. I wouldn't have thought of It's a Wonderful Life, but that was the director's inspiration--and now I see it. 
It's really grim--I skipped an episode where a character kills herself (I read the synopsis, wanting to know)--but it ends in hope and love.

________________________ 

"Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions."

--Sol Lewitt

NOTE: 
Kinda gruesome image coming up of St. Bartholomew, flayed. 
(I say "kinda" cause there are worse!)

What I love most about the Catholicism is that,far from shying away from discomfort and mystery, it embraces it, the weird, is itself weird ---as weird as life is, can be.

Etymology of weird:

Old English wyrd ‘destiny’, of Germanic origin. The adjective (late Middle English) originally meant ‘having the power to control destiny’, and was used especially in the Weird Sisters, originally referring to the Fates, later the witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth ; the latter use gave rise to the sense ‘unearthly’ (early 19th century).

Big Problem: I hate the Catholic hierarchy, having seen it up close and personal.
But so much in the faith fits me well--including that the Mass centers around a ritual (the Eucharist, or communion) not one person's sermon.
It's impersonal in the best way. 

Catholic priests are, at root, mere functionaries. They are there to say the magic words that mysteriously transform the mundane into the divine.
 (Their personalities show through, of course, sometimes horribly, but they are not the point.)

The Church is full of stuff that makes the best weird art--as Greedy Peasant revels in--here (below, right) with his Halloween costume: 
The martyred St Bartholomew (one of the twelve apostles) carrying his own flayed skin. instagram.com/p/DPv6VnFgMGw

He modeled it on, among other depictions, Matteo di Giovanni's painting “Saint Bartholomew Flayed”, (1480, Italy, tempera and gold on wood), below left. 

More on the symbolism, etc., at the painting's home, the Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest.

And more depictions--including one by Michelangelo, a detail in the Sistine Chapel––"the artist portrays St. Bartholomew holding his own skin, like a rumpled dress"––here.

"...Like a rumpled dress." This is the religion/art for me.

"You just flayed the bears!" say the toys here. 
Well, no... it didn't hurt them.

And that reminds me, I'm eager to see the new Frankenstein by Guillermo del Toro, a very Catholic filmmaker. 
Lapsed Catholic, like some of the best, retaining the morbid monsters and the hope for redemption... 

Here is GDT with a many-eyed monster. He has lost 80 kg/176 lbs. --saying "You have to cut back on the tacos".

(Del Toro didn't say how he lost weight. Doesn't matter--I'm glad to see it, because I'd bet it was endangering his life, and I want him to live to make many more movies.)

On with the day... 
Have a rich one, everyone!