braids

Thinking, while I was putting together that last post, how many things it combined. How many strands of my life it braided together. And then, about the one before that, and the one before that. Right back to 10 weeks ago when I just jumped in and started without a clue as to what it was, what it was for, or what I might do with it. This thing, which has come to be known as The Baby Blog. . . .

Then, thinking further back to high school, junior high school, even elementary school. I'd won my first prizes for art work (of a sort: $5 for a crayon drawing of a W as a walrus, accompanied by my first television appearance) and for a poem (a pair of simulated pearl and diamond earrings, without a TV appearance). I was equally tugged by both. And theatre. And, from my home environment (and some natural leanings that direction) to caregiving: both psychological and physical (not for nothing does the eldest daughter in a family of 9 children become the "little mother").

My life, as lived, has been a careening between and among all those drives/talents. For two years in college I was a theatre major. I studied art in my twenties, with a private teacher, painting while a rocked babies. Won a best in show at a small, local show. Went back to college, majored in English, finishing with an MA, and a novel as my thesis. I earned a living as a writer for Amtrak's Customer Service Department, and if you don't think that's pure social work, lol, think again. I taught English to teachers at China's "Yale," came home to edit for accountants (again, social work), and finally quit that to start my own OOAK (one of a kind) doll bidness.

When my second marriage broke up, I was a vagabond for a year or so, ending finally here, in WBGSWYSIV, as a nurse's aide and then a home/hospice care-giver. Since college I've written two more novels, had parts of them both published, have a fourth in draft, and maybe I'll get back to it before I die, and notes for a fifth "The Winter Garden," which pokes its nose up every now and again. But really the "best" I ever did with the fiction was to have Harper and Rowe hold the MS for a year before sending a three page letter telling me that after all they couldn't publish it. In fact, I was honored: an over the transom to a major publisher. . . . Poetry has, more and less, been written, and some published, sometimes when I could make my self interested in publishing. And I still have all the "stuff" one needs to sculpt "dolls" (friends who have actually seen them have said: That isn't what I thought you did, you should name it something else. Three dimensional figural collages? That would help?)

Now I'm retired, and don't have to do anything much really. And was given an old, really bad computer. And discovered Howard Dean (which brought the really active politicking back into the weave) And blogs. And.

Here I am. When I was painting in my twenties, the first time my teacher and I nearly parted ways was when she insisted the next class would be a collage. I said, nope, I wasn't interested. Since she was actually giving private lessons (as she pointed out, she'd never intended to do that, but when the rest of the class was finished with the first series, she didn't offer a second, except for me. So I did the collage, won the best of show, and it's really been my platform since. Even with the "dolls" ~~)

So you see what I mean about the baby blog, don't you. . .

(And oh, yes, that theatre thingy. Well, it really has helped, a lot, in understanding the life of an actor: both the joys and the pains and the schedules. . . . So it was certainly time more than well spent. . . .)(And someday, perhaps, will explore more of the connection between computers, Howard Dean, poetry and the theatre. . . .)

:)