the end of a season

by Rain Trueax
 

Equinoxes and Solstices aren't the only way the year can be divided. Most people are familiar with religious holidays but maybe less so of those from our more agrarian past when humans lived closer to the seasonal changes.

Joy and Sorrow of Being a Prolific Painter in a Small Space

Interestingly my studio has all paintings that satisfy me and the rest of the house has more unfinished work that I  like seeing from many different angles and lighting before making changes.
I feel satisfaction and contentment and joy when I surround myself with work that satisfies me as comfortably completed. It need not be perfect. I like looking at work that over a long period time never says to me every time I walk by, "Psst, as soon as you have a moment, I need to be  touched up with a face lift. 

Being as prolific as I am, I  could quickly fill our home with art giving me the feeling that I am caught in an uncomfortable web. I  learned to withstand the sadness of destroying some of my work. 

Happy am I since I almost always keep space open.

To make space for both my husband and I to live comfortably, and welcome visitors, downsizing my collection of my own art is necessary even if it is like pulling teeth.  I go through my archives over and over again.

We need to keep space open for both of us to work and play. Conscious effort is made to display my art work,  improve storage. We keep only the stuff of everyday living that we need in addition to retiring some of my older work.  So various methods are helpful in reducing both excessive duplication in everything that surrounds us. Over the years I am always bagging stuff to donate. Many trips to the grocery store include dropping off a bag of donations. Last year I was lax and now I am back on track on donating.
Just working at  tackling  a little at a time giving me a feeling of accomplishment with each little step.  Happy am I that I have a few paintings that from the start all the variables fall in place.

Even if others do not like some of my alla prima paintings, they are among the ones that worked for me and I am fondest of them because I remember every time I look at them the experience of painting them.

Painted on a pea green background every color I put on was working with the whole right from the first stroke.  I kept the added patches of color open with the green threading through the entire painting.  Then just a few lines drawn  more from a muscle memory of a dance than thought out beforehand.  With the lines I decided the abstract was pulled together.

Hart Lake Creek  on a 1971 pack trip on our way to Lake Chelan, a sentimental painting! I treasure remembering our trips every time I look at these paintings. I do not care that some art critics would say this painting is two paintings, one being the tree trunks and the other being the creek.

 

I am a sentimentalist so my permanent collection is a diary of my life memories.

Crossroads

by Rain Trueax

When you reach a crossroads in your life, how do you decide which road to take? 

As children, choices are made for us most of the time. When we reach young adulthood, that changes. We have to decide whether to go to college, then which college, or is military a better fit, how about traveling for a few years and putting it all off? For most of our adult lives, we will be looking at choices, some of which are minor like what to eat, whether to exercise, who to spend time with, but then come big ones-- with whom to build a family. That one can only be topped by deciding to break up a family. 

Today, my husband and I are looking at a crossroads which involves where would it be best to spend the next say 10 years. At 75, we can expect to live independently at least that much longer, but where to do that. Some move into retirement communities, where services will be provided as needed. Others get an RV and begin to travel figuring they won't get another chance. 

As we age, our choices can be impacted by-- do we need to be closer to doctors, stores, services, or would being reclusive out in the mountains be a better choice? What can we afford factors into where we might end up.  What worked for us in our 60s may not in our 80s. It's a constant flow of choices. Many of them we don't even think of as choices that will lead to something else.

Some of the choices others make have little appeal for me and never did. There are choices I've made that never again required rethinking-- like having children. A lot of life though is cyclical-- and one choice comes around again as circumstances change.

The immediate issue I am wrestling with is we have two homes-- one for nearly 40 years and the other for almost 20. It seems unrealistic in our senior years to keep them both as they are 1200 miles apart. They offer very different advantages and complications. I've considered dumping them both and moving somewhere else-- but where would that be? I am a huge lover of the American West. I could imagine living many places from the ocean to the Rockies. Would a new place be a better fit than one where we have long lived? Adventure or security?

I've recently spent a lot of time wrestling with this question of change as I enter into genuine old age. I don't have an answer. Do you have a way you work through such times?

 Photos altered by Dreamscope. It's a way of illustrating how we can see the same thing but angle changes everything-- a bit like life.

Welcoming a new year

by Rain Trueax

This is the week where I take some time (usually) to consider my life in the previous year. This naturally reflects some on what I will want in the year to come, despite the fact that I am not one for advance planning-- one of my personality quirks. It complicates vacations in places like Yellowstone, where if you don't plan in advance, you don't go-- so sometimes I must plan ahead, like it or not.

There have been years where I took the time between Christmas and New Years to write goals for the coming year. Those got increasingly complex, divided into categories like spiritual, emotional, and physical. I rarely looked at them as the year would go on. Mostly, I'd look at them when I got to this week where I could see if writing them down had changed anything.

During my fifties, with my kids raised and new possibilities out there, I created soul collages aimed at visualizing what elements I would want in my life. In my sixties, I did less considering what I wanted. Maybe I was doing what I'd wanted or simply recognizing some of those things were never happening. Until my seventies, even subliminal goals didn't relate to aging. The truth is as you go through middle age, things don't change a lot. Once you get into old age, there are more differences that realistically must be taken into account in lifestyle choices.

Seeking the Lost Art of Growing Old with Intention

I think there is some virtue in living each day with intention, but too often I don't. I just live them and don't think much about it beyond what I want for that hour or maybe what to eat or watch or read. 

In my fifties, when I made vision collages (3 of them), I didn't realize I was creating collages about my books, not my life as such. I kept thinking they weren't doing anything until I saw they had-- just not as I'd expected. That's kind of familiar in terms of how my life works out. What I think is for one reason often turns out to be not so much.

When I look at 2017, it was a tough year for so many people. Some of that was those on the left who were disappointed in the country and that the goals they had believed more shared had not been by those on the right. With many of us living in bubbles, it's easy to think that's how the nation is. The truth is we are very divided for what we believe is good. Many Americans felt we were going the wrong way for 8 years and 2017 was a needed correction. Many found that horrifying and it has led to a lot of name-calling with a chasm that can divide a family and end longtime friendships. 

Exactly how 2018 will shake out is uncertain. I wasn't as upset about the political changes as some, mostly because as someone in the middle politically, nobody does all I want; so I'm always wishing it was different. For a moderate, we often wish for a 'none of the above' option, which we don't get.

In 2017, on a personal level, things went in ways that don't make me very happy but that I can't impact or even see what is right-- so I won't be discussing any of that. I'll stick to discussing my work-- writing. It was not a productive year, with only one new book. If had been writing novellas, with my word count of 140,000, I'd have had three or four books, but mine are longer. I've been writing on the fourth in the Hemstreet Witches series since September and only hope to get the rough draft done by the end of the year-- with editing to come. 

In 2016, there had been five-- the year before that even more. I can't explain the reason for the drop in production-- and writing does involve production. I read what other authors produced and felt like-- seriously, what went wrong with me in '17? There are a lot of possibilities. Maybe it was just one of those things-- not my year for creating new books. 

I am hoping 2018 will be a stronger year for work. I hope it'll be kinder to people where life has dealt some heavy blows in '17. I hope that the world will look for solutions to problems that help and don't hurt. I have a lot of hopes. I always do at this time of the year.

When I made the decision to add Diane to this blog as a co-author, I didn't realize it would be for me as much as for the readers here. I like the contrast in thinking-- how she writes what I would never think about. I hope blog readers also like it. There have been some big ups and downs in readership numbers, but if you do something because it feels right, it has to be for how it impacts you, as we can't guarantee anyone else will feel the same-- with books, paintings, poetry, photography or any other creative endeavor. It's about feeding the inner vision, and we do that by doing that.

This is the first painting we ever bought from Diane. She gave us a very affordable price since we were still in graduate school. She had painted it from a 1966 trip the four of us had taken to the Mogollon Rim in Arizona for an Easter break. Good memories from that trip where we rented a log home, which we shared (along with our black cat of the time, Sheba)-- one of many such trips through the years (the others minus the cats).

Part II, Diane Widler Wenzel on How I Hang the Pictures I Paint.

I couldn't be happier with last Sunday's  lunch with visiting family to celebrate 120 paintings hung at home and then the public art opening at Albany Public Library's main branch.    A sister-in-law commented,  " I could hang way more paintings than I ever thought I could. "  upon seeing how I hang groupings between large empty spaces.  One of my daughters wanted a grouping of 3 paintings from the corner fireplace installation in the dining area. The home celebration and reception made me feel loved by my supportive family and friends.

Part II of how I hang paintings continues with examples of how empty spaces around the paintings are important to their effect on us.  Also covered are my experiments in hanging solutions in the dining area and the entry from the kitchen to the laundry room.

Dining with Paintings that Contribute to the Room's Ambiance

Below is Don eating and a panoramic view of the green paintings that he sees from his side of the table. I selected for him green, his favorite color. Green is clean looking and soothing.

Below is Diane and a panorama of what she wants to see - a cozy corner:

Walls of three entries frame paintings.
From the front door the eye is apt to look beyond on into the dining area with busy activity and also paintings.

From the kitchen entry to the dinette the view includes empty wall space.

The  hall from the back of the house. 

The cool colored green paintings and white matt make the warm colored collage dominate the grouping. The collage is suppose to be the first thing seen.  Then looking at the collage the eye is directed leftward by a  shape pointing to the warmer colors in the green paintings, thus the eye moves around this grouping. The green vertical painting with a black matt counterbalances the warm collage. For me this group works. I hope that it works for others. Purhaps the reason Don slows down as he eats is because he has some greens around him.

To frame or not or hang out from a corner?

Two of the paintings and the collage are framed with oak frames made by my fantastic partner, Don. The paintings that are unframed work better in a grouping?  Or do these frames isolate them acting as obstacles preventing the eye from moving from painting to painting?

I feel none of my groupings have to be perfect because my hangings are works in progress. I am learning and do not know all of the answers. I like to ask, "what if," as I decide the next grouping.

 

An innovation for me is to draw attention to corner paintings by hanging them so the sides are on opposite walls. The kiddy corner arrangement makes them more dominant especially when walking down the hall from the back of our house.  From down the hall the left side wall is at too much of an angle to see what is happening in the paintings hung flat to the wall. Corner paintings work less like windows on the wall and more like a three dimentional architectural fixture that I have difficultyillustrating in a two dimentional picture.

For the coldest wintery nights we remove paintings close to the fire box and keep a fire burning.

 Paintings are clutter busting by creating distance in tiny laundry / fly tying / utility room.  

In this cluttered place I see the painting before the clutter. How about you?

After adding a painting with deeper dark green depth to the wall behind the sink,  there is a greater sense of depth. I feel less cramped.

Because of the humidity of the laundry room I do not leave pictures here for long periods especially during the winter. 

Rotating paintings is a favorite way to get inspired for making more paintings. Some of the ones I will be rotating are stored in my studio.   I will show my studio with storage cabinets in the next blog, Part III, How I Hang the Pictures I Paint.

Managing Time

by Rain Trueax

obviously that's not me. It is one of my created images for inspiration on the books, 

such images often provide an idea for a scene. Can't you just see that that young woman, 

at that waterfall as she contemplates what she wants in her life! 
Contemplation is an important part of writing and life at all ages.

Besides writing, editing, and working with images, I have a few other things in my life, although less than I had at one time. When I was at the busiest in raising the kids and being involved in the community out here, I had a philosophy regarding what I would accept in the way of projects.

Enjoy or not enjoy, my firm standard was only two, outside, time consumers, at a time. There are things, you cannot manage in terms of time-- raising kids, with all the variables that go with that, is a big one. Sometimes, at the height of their years of being involved and before they drove, that could mean three trips a day, into where they went to school. At 20 miles each way, that meant I was driving 120 miles some days. Since I have not ever been fond of driving (it is a necessity), that was a lot of hours in the vehicle-- and that didn't count what I might've done for myself in another town. Those were years of not as much money; so it sometimes meant breaking down on the road and having to walk-- before the years of cellphones. Sometimes when I think back on that, like accepting a ride into town with a stranger, I really do see that life as from another lifetime.

patterns

  September 16th, harvest moon from Oregon Coast Range

This month I've had several nights where I woke at 2am and instead of falling back to sleep right away, would lay there thinking. One night it was about patterns and how they impact our lives. When a life pattern is undesirable, we call it a rut. When we like it, it's a routine. Patterns are how we develop skills by repeating what we've learned and adding to it as we grow in abilities. Wanting to break a habit requires breaking a pattern. When it's an addiction, it's tough but only a minor challenge when it's something less-- like say making the bed every day instead of leaving it for the night. 

One way patterns interested me was in books-- as both a reader and an author. When I choose a book to read, buying one by an author I already know is encouraged (or discouraged) when I know the basic patterns I can expect to find in their books. There will be certain elements, types of characters, challenges and action, which I can expect.  Of course, if I've read an author enough times to know their pattern doesn't deviate much, I likely will quit reading them because I know how it's going to go. Only a few authors have I liked so much that I've wanted every book they ever wrote. It's not easy to provide the pattern I'll enjoy while still keeping the book interesting.

September 16, Harvest Moon after clouds passed on by

As a writer, even choosing names for heroes and heroines can end up with them too much like earlier books or even secondary characters. I tend to like certain sounds. The letters that make those sounds tend to appear again and again as names. I have to fight against that as it gets confusing for the reader.

I also like certain types of heroines and heroes for their character traits. That's good in that a reader can know what to expect, as I said above, but bad in that I can feel I am following an old pattern that needs to get rejuvenated. There are authors who have written many more books than me as in hundreds and yet manage to stay fresh. It's got to be a gift as I feel myself having to fight for new ideas after writing only 26. One way to do that is to change genres where new elements come into play as challenges for the characters and the writer ;).

As part of breaking patterns, I've changed the way my blog roll looks. For one thing, I moved it up to the top of the page. For another, I removed the images because so many of the blogs were putting up images that were read as huge. I tried adding the option of snippets instead and found I like it better as a way to see what the bloggers are up to. I also decided to add some new blogs from full-time RVers.

When our kids were small, we had a 15' vacation trailer with no inside bathroom, but we used a porta-potty in what was also a clothes closet. When the kids were small, we had a rope barrier to prevent them from falling out of an upper bunk-- while Ranch Boss had a big knife always ready to cut it if needed to make a fast exit. That trailer took us camping around Oregon as well as Arizona. At that time I read a magazine called Trailer Life which had a section on full-timers, who were mostly older. 

Today we had realized, when we traveled with our travel trailer (which we are thinking of upgrading to a fifth wheel trailer) that there were a fair number of people living relatively full time in RV parks. Young couples, singles, as well as older folk are doing this. The appeal is downsizing as well as the freedom to move around the country. 

So I've added, for now, four blogs by those living in their rigs. I plan to keep the list a little more flexible as I see something new that seems upbeat. I don't read blogs everyday, know a lot don't, but it's nice to have it there.

making choices-- or not

In considering lifestyles, I've been looking at how other people find a lifestyle that works for them. Some are forced into lifestyles they'd never choose.

Homeless on the river

I've thought living on a river would be interesting in that Tom Sawyer sort of way or even more in a sweet looking houseboat like in Sleepless in Seattle. Many people choose to downsize, live with less, have a smaller house, live without all the luxuries they could afford. However, what the article above is about  is making that choice out of need-- of being between a rock and a hard place.  

Payne Hollow by Harlan Hubbard tells a story of a husband and wife who chose to build their home and live on a river and the fringe of society. The book is one of the keepers on my shelf of many many such stories of those who opted to live a 'different' life than most. 

An interesting side note is, while the book was published in 1974, I bought my copy in September 1976 (based on what I wrote inside the cover). This was a time I was looking for life changes and in 1977, we'd get one with buying this farm. It has also led to a simpler lifestyle. Not that living with livestock is easier, it does suck up $$$s and does not pay a minimum wage-- at least not for the rancher who does most of the work.

When simpler lifestyles are chosen, even if they are lives of poverty, it's very different than what we are seeing too often today with one city after another having housing that is so expensive that people with even middle incomes can no longer afford to live where they work-- or even afford a home at all.

Santa Cruz and California homeless.

As a culture, we are in a time of have and have-nots, sometimes clashing; sometimes just trying to avoid each other by either not being seen or having gated communities that supposedly will keep them safe. Rich celebrities come out to talk about this, offer benefits and then go back into their own safe zones flying around on private jets. Emotions dictate so much while action is what is needed-- except what action actually changes things in a positive way?

from 2004

Wow, it's already September. Where did the summer go? Where does life go? It's been busy here with the last hay, selling some of the livestock-- as must happen if the place doesn't want to turn into a desert, grandsons for a few nights, an interesting couple for a lengthy discussion and long lunch, and seeing the end of a vegetable garden, where some didn't get a good start due to cold nights. We may yet have time to harvest as it's hard to say when we'll get the first hard freeze. Fall is definitely in the air in the Oregon Coast Range.

The following is something I harvested when looking through my files trying to find older writings. I lost many when I had a big computer failure. This was the year after I'd written Sky Daughter based in Idaho. I had come along on one of ranch boss' business trips, started this thought, but never wrote more on it.

Monument Valley, fall of 2004. Wonderful time there. We haven't made it back since.

March 2, 2004

Boise, Idaho

To some degree, what I have been considering are the different levels on which we live. The areas we fret over or ignore to our (i.e. my) sometimes loss. Our individual selves can be divided into three dimensions—spirit, emotion and physical. These are what make up what we think of as self. 

Beyond 'self', we also interact with others in the world and beyond. We have three other ways of looking at these realms in which we operate or should be at least aware as they do impact us-- whether we are aware or not. They are where we define ourselves, are defined by others, and find our purpose. I thought about this based on my need to find internal balance as I was constantly looking at one or the other to see how my values decided my stance. These realms are spirit, community, and personhood. 

Spirit is where we find what we believe about a purpose for being here. 

Were we created by a supreme deity or just happened? 

If we are atheists, how will that impact our choices?

If there is a God, what does he expect from me? 

How can I serve her? 

What happens to me when I die? 

The spirit realm is one in which we depend on instincts and others for wisdom as many sacred texts have been put together by those who claim to speak for God. Most of us, at least at one point in our lives, will listen to those other opinions, hear the songs, see the films, and turn inward to figure out what rings true.  

Some ignore thinking about spirit through most of their lives. Others live so much in this realm that they ignore the physical world. Some move between concepts as their lives change. Fear, self righteousness, hate, and force of will can be part of how we see the spirit realm. 

If there are spirits on the other side, they may impact our lives also.  The muse plants ideas. Events are manipulated to help or hinder. Or so some believe...

The community is physical and harder to ignore as it encompasses organizations, politics, neighborhoods, and jobs. Here is where we interact with others, find service, and work out the broader concept of being part of a culture. Family would fit in community and personhood with overlaps. Who we come from can often seem to be who we are-- more so with some than others.

Personhood is the inner work, where on intimate levels we are impacted to be who we are based often on relationships which may be positive or negative. It is where we come to know other inner beings in an intimate sense. Here is where we live with who we truly are, work this out and use it to serve in the other two realms.

What I believe is people can forget one of these levels or maybe for a time have to let one go while they work on being balanced in the others. These are the things I am considering for myself right now-- what is my responsibility to each realm?

The community also extends into the world community for which some don't think they need to bother themselves at all. Who cares what happens thousands of miles away? But if we consider that the whole world is an organism, made up of vibrations, than what happens anywhere impacts us. 

The writer of 7 effective habits said we have to separate out what we can change versus what just is. Our zone of influence is limited. Some have a wide zone of influence and can change things worldwide but for most of us to spend much time considering what we can't change, is self-defeating. It means we are not dealing with what we could be while we are caught up in what is beyond us. There's a bumper sticker that says-- think globally-- act locally.

At any rate, that's my thinking here in Boise, a city I much enjoy spending time as it's not too big or too small and has a very strong creative energy similar to Missoula. I came to some of this because I keep being told things in the paper or TV news that I had to stop and think about-- gay marriage/ Passion of the Christ / primary election debates / Bush's latest speeches/ etc. And some of those things went to where my spiritual connection is to God-- what I believe he/she expects of me here in this life and some went to my community at large and up close. Each choice I make has a draw on my energy.  

What kind of world do I want to live in?

Which of the creative areas can I succeed in if I keep pushing?

If not any, then what do I do to make my contributions meaningful? 

Where should I live? 

What kind of community can I live in where I can serve, have friends, find meaning to my days? 

Am I letting fear stop me from moving ahead as I should? 

Or is fear a good warning right now that I am not ready to move ahead. 

And then the big one-- What the heck am I doing with these precious days which I have been gifted but possibly am not using wisely? Our soul may go on but this woman of flesh and blood gets one shot at living, and she deserves me to make it good for her as best possible for as many days  as I have the control.