Raven Ambition's Aspergers BLOG

11/9/2018

Trying to Deal

I have a whole lot of brain clutter today.

I was watching people in Thousand Oaks on the news; caught in the snare of that tragedy and again I’m shattered: heartbroken. People I know and care for call that place home. Anywhere at all that this happens; is too close to home.

As I write this, Benatar’s lyrics “Love is a battlefield” suddenly sang through my brain like an ear worm but the word “love” was replaced with “life.”

I have a view of a quite yellow tree out the window from where I sit, and I’m reminded of last Saturday. Keri Bower was in Manhattan and met me at a park where, after a beautiful Autumn day spent in the museum/mansion, some brunch, and touring a small farm, she filmed some B-roll of me for her film Desire.

It’s always disappointing how fleeting Autumn seems to be. Both Spring and Autumn, the transition seasons, seem to be catalysts for the longer-seeming seasons of Summer and Winter, which do feel longer somehow as if the extreme heat or extreme cold will never end! But that is New England.

This is my favorite picture of the day from last Saturday. I didn’t see the heart in the sky when I snapped the picture but Keri did.

She’s wearing her painted piggy shoes that she wore when she was in the audience of Let’s Make a Deal. She wasn’t chosen but got a lot of screen time.

We are walking along here discussing art and nature. I’ve been doing some art per usual. Just passing time. I don’t have shows lined up right now although I have some pieces at AANE, Lesley College, and KindTree and prints are always available through direct contact. Or originals for that matter.

This is “Summer” and “Winter,” part of my “Cows Doing Yoga in The Four Seasons” series. Collage.

Done on wooden plaques.

These whimsies are a fine distraction.

So Saturday I will see an old friend. I think about her cat a lot and look forward to seeing him again. This friend’s property sustained damage from our May tornadoes and the loss of her sister trees will be a sight- as the stump isn’t taken away as yet. At least this massive tree fell away from her beautiful house.

The holiday “season” surrounds, and is so stressful, in myriad ways but it shouldn’t be. A person has to remind themselves of this.

While I’m incredibly relieved that my state elected a blue ticket, I struggle to remain hopeful that a President who speaks without tact will be impeached as if his role all along were to allow strong voices to rise and effect needed change.

I remind myself to have hope for the environment (x-ing out the Paris agreement is senseless and horrifying).

There’s so much more to being a mindful leader than financial aspects, restoring economy etc.

My artwork, which is usually an homage to trees, is a result of my working through this delicate balance between shock/despair/horror at what people are willing to accept, and my hope for peace/environmental protection, and expecting a whole lot more from a person in power who plants seeds of division.

I know children in elementary school who are more cognizant of the way in which they speak than many leaders. It is through such children that know #wordsMatter, that feed me some degree of hope. There is this:

I have neglected to post blogs as often as I used to, because with the U.S. so screwed up, it weighs heavily on me and sure enough I’ve spoken politics here and I hadn’t intended to.

…..I’ve just read an autobiography of Harvey Milk among other books (so often people who are change agents for good, have their lives end so tragically.)

And I’m reading Stephen King’s latest “The Outsider,” and find myself so pleased he’s incorporating heroine Holly (who is Aspergers) into this book.

I look up at my yellow tree in the backyard and I am reminded that in a few weeks it’ll be laid bare, and I’ll be appreciating it’s underlying structure, my favorite state of trees to represent in art- the framework, that solid part, like faith, that holds up the rest of it.

Autumn is beauty. A last hurrah before bitter cold sets in. This seems contrary – this shedding of leaves. I understand why; sap flow and all that. Still.

Trees undress before the coldest season; so unlike people, as if the trees are communicating this: only “by baring ourselves will we bear what’s to come and we are ready for it.”

Spring is new growth, the promise of what’s to come. The only thing that never changes is that everything is always changing and the seasons surely represent that. Nature has the answer to everything really.

After horrendous fires, entire forests somehow sprout and reestablish themselves. I have to hold on to that and believe in the face of chaos there’s a flip side.