10 Minutes Down and 10 Minutes Up.....for Loren......

I set the Timer for 10 minutes.
With diligence I grab the Red Folder marked Hanukah 2014 as well as the tiles made So Long Ago  Without knowing it I leave behind the flat butterfly Hanukiah I made this year....I guess I was distracted...by the mess in the basement...
But I did find some candles...and I used this Hanukiah with its shallow places for the candles..and it did its subtle work of holding candles of light up until the last night..when they cast realms of light into the darkness and beyond..
I also take the kippah with wax inside from the candles and I head downstairs. I quickly empty the two Hanukah boxes and put everything into a third. Well, not everything. Papers and misc. crunched up stuff goes into the wastebasket.
Oh and Yes, everything Does Have a Story.
Stories, Musings emerge from the simplest things down there in the wasteland of the basement.
I reflect briefly on the Hebrew Letter for Story which begins with a Samech.

So here is the brief back story on the Waste Basket that I fill again and again. Black plastic bags get filled a lot in the basement.
 The wastebasket comes from the classroom of  my favorite and everyone's favorite Humanities at West High School. Miss Westby. She was a small woman with reddish hair. Her demands on us were phenomenal. If we had texted back then, it would have been OMG or WOW.
I can still see her standing there with fierce determination as we made our way through Machiavelli and Plato. She pulled some fine writing out of me, particularly my poem about Machiavelli when I alluded to the bad politics. of the time....the travail of Viet Nam...and I recall how we all marched..
and how change came slowly..and I remember Miss Westby dearly. She was beloved for all that she did for us...and my brother retrieved this waste basket from her room just before the school was pulled down and demolished...
that was a long time ago
and here I am now.
Hanukah box is now one box with a newish lid that almost fits....and marked on the outside so I know where it is...One of my favorite parts of the Hanukah story is the part about cleaning the temple..hmm didn't see anything about cleaning a basement...but hey!! same difference!!
hahaha

I move onto a shoe box and nearby miscellaneous art.
Here are the pieces I find:
2 Drawings from the 2010 conference I went to on Society for the Arts and Health that was held here in 2010.
a Drawing a local writer I know
2 Drawings from a May Day meeting.
A series of funny cartoons
One of a teacher at the end of the school year, trying to get her nerve ends to meet.
Another of a teacher relaxing by the beach of summer.
And yet one more cartoon of The Queen of Doing Things at The Last Minute.
....speaking of the beach I found a quick watercolor done at the beach called
"25 minutes in the Heat at the Beach."
Dated 2012, it was the summer my Father died...so I must have had a few moments to run to the beach and then back to Caregiving...and watching over him.
I recall another painting done of me in the water for my first swim and him reading on the shore...
(NOTE: I will add in the actual images soon)

In the shoebox I find an old photo of May Day...yep was quite a while ago judging by the format of the photo and the trees which tell the age of the place. The Sun Canoes are just coming close to shore and I am sure Loren Kellen is on one of them, leading the way.
He's been gone 6 years now and  he is dearly missed....He was a collector of things and stuff...and my oh the wake we had for him in the kitchen for days and it raining outside without stop....tears falling from the sky..a big passing...and oh the stuff he had  my oh my people had quite a time going through his house of stuff..  In the course of time...I received an owl of his....a metal owl..that blinks at me from the top of the stairs..near my island stuff..calling out Who?? What?? When??
and as I sort through the stuff I come across my brother's drawing of an owl.
Perhaps this is wisdom to deal with my Incorrigible Mounds of stuff now and not leave it to other people when I am gone...What a motivator.....

and so I look upon my Stuff with a different perspective as I think of Loren...

What if I am gone...suddenly perhaps...????Will there just be a dumpster outside? and all this Precious stuff thrown out willy nilly.????
what remains????.
I look upon this Stuff with precious eyes. Retrieving the HOBT magnet,.... the artwork of plants done out in wisconsin, a lovely landscape of trees in autumn and more
so much more.

I am here, in this moment, retrieving and sorting and remembering..

the timer goes off.
Done for now.

Mystery and Mess

Getting down to the basement is about 90% procrastination and about 10% actual work.

Even a brief descent though yields a treasure.

The other day I went down oh so briefly with my brother, I  just moved some of his

paintings around. The one that remained in front of the pile was the one that hung for years in the

back hall at our family home.

It is a wonderful painting he did of a living room of a place he knew well. He used to  care for some

elderly Greek people on the next block. It is a poignant colorful painting of their living room. The

 red carpet, small TV, table, brown upholstered chair show the feeling of the room The walls are

painted light blue.

There is a bookcase in the corner.  One can feel the presence of those who sat in the chair and

walked up the stairs on the left of the painting. It is a beautiful painting. Lonely, poignant and

evocative..and now it is upstairs,out of the basement...Another treasure....revealed and rescued....

Mi Suenos:Pink Bath Soap of forgetfulness

Mi Suenos
The Pink Bath Soap of Forgetfulness....Remembering Mexico

     No graphic images of the basement have been posted. It is too overwhelming, but I should be brave and take a few.

    Focus and Concentration: Organizing my brother's many paintings and drawings down there.

    So, once again I descend. The area that I am focusing on has old checkbooks from my parents   (need to shred) I see their handwriting....increasingly wobbly on the old checks...and the uncertainty that accompainied those last years...I toss the two baskets aside. They wobble like the past wobbles....almost toppling over..  And the old bathroom stuff, a douche bag, various sundries...easy to toss. I am trying so hard to make this area just for my brother, but first there is so much to let go of...The two crummy rugs will be hauled upstairs..one to the Vine Hut to keep out snow.....the other...really to the trash...
   
   All the old useless stuff we accumulate... and there amidst the cracked tubs I find a lovely round bottle of Pink Liquid Bath Soap...still sweet, still usable. I place it on the stairs to take up later.

     and if I am going to line up my brothers paintings on the old wooden stereo...really now..do we need to keep That?? I need to move and let go of the old paintings of mine.
$100 a piece anyone??
Oh the past..and how I did capture the dark mood of leaves in autumn outside my parents dining room window...and that drawing from long ago....and there amidst the memories a painitng done of the Hotel Pombo... a place I stayed in long ago.
I'd forgotten it was down here.
there it is . The sunny roof tops, the red pots full of geraniums the green courtyard at the top. I hardly needed to go down into the streets to paint and sketch and muse...it was all there before me...near the room I stayed in that I filled in up with the scent of white flowers and Oaxacan chocalate.
The journey there sustained me for 14 years. I painted la vendadoras..the proud women vending watermelons, chalmomile and even turkeys on the street. The mysterious overflowing markets of pots and finally the internal introverted courtyards of mystery...all there before me...including the charming woman in red I met on the street on her way to see her son.

all that

mystery and beauty filled me...I sketched and took photos as politely as I could..

and then returned home to Minnesota.

All winter in that small dark aparment I found my focus and painted the mujeres, the markets and the courtyards... and so it went for years..

my sunny intorverted life remembering and remembering 

as my husband read nearby

encouraging me.

Go and paint he said

and I did

leaning over my rough paper and paints far into the night.

the trip should never have happened. 

I had no money.

earlier that year I had been told I was 2 hours short on paper to receive Health Benefits.
I knew that was wrong, but struggled through the year.

and by chance my ticket was picked at a fundraiser at work..

and thus $500 mysterious dollars  for a Travel certificate wafted my way and I went off to Mexico 

for weeks.

the mess in the basement fades.

I fill the bath with the sweet pink soap

and get in.

drifting in my dreams of Mexico

remembering  Mi Suenos.

Second Descent: Persephone's finds another puppet show

A LITTLE SUMMER STORY: puppet show found in basement.

Another puppet show.  IMAGE TO FOLLOW
      Back down to the basement. Moving stuff around. The Task is overwhelming to say the least.
      I find a nice batch of Shtetl puppets on a stick from a class I found a long time ago and tucked into all that is a plastic bag with a former address almost faded out...address from a while ago.....but the themes remain.. that of the seasons.

    It's a funny little puppet show that I based on a little brown bag I found with a clear plastic window. Originally I held the bad and stuck the puppet pieces in.
 ......the images....boots....cold...snow..more snow...hats...scarf....more snow...cold....and then sultry summer images of heat...summer..swimming..sweating...svitzing...yiddish word for sweating...( Remember as Leo Rosten said: "Yiddish has more vitamins than other languages!!" One of my dad Jim's favorite quotes...somehow so much of what I am doing in the basement leads back to him..more than to my mother..although she figures into it all as well...
He was a raconteur, a conversationalist, Always the Star of the party as he hit the Anvil of Conversation again and again and made Sparks Fly!!! Always a Texan, always an intellectual, always the son of a poor farmer who got the call to preach, 

   And the name of the puppet show is; A Little Summer Story. I originally told the story from the point of view of Hot Summer...but having found this show which is undated I tell it from the point of view of Winter and then remembering Summer. It is small, it is cute and it is suited for an audience of about 2 or 3 people. I "performed" it this past sunday for an audience of about 3 people. That was just about right.

Persephone's descent into the fog under persistent gray skies.

Up until today when winter suddenly returned...overnight in fact. we awoke to white yards and slush...yes....up until then.....we had been lost in misty fog..

Familiar landmarks became fuzzy and the distance was obscured.

I have not made it down to delve into the basement...perhaps lost in the fog on the 3rd or 4th step down...as grey days press in..remembering a long ago time in England and Ireland... where gray skies are the norm....

My descent into the basement is focused on my brothers art, my fathers books and all the ambivalent acutremain a basement can collect...

If I go up another flight I am back in the world of my Island life...from the years 1975 to 1979.. 

Despite the many gray days I lived through there, the experience comes clearly into view now...some 35 years later...
I recall the old stone cottage I lived in..the stone walls, the silence, the wind, the wizened islanders who knew so much about the wind and the sea...and I recall the pressing in of the gossip....wisdom and wind, sea tides and seaweed...a dog I once had...cats I fed...uncertainties I felt..belts I wove..friends I made and all it surrounded by solitude and gray skies...yes with these persistent gray skies I remember it all..

so there are pulls in two directions...upwards to recall my island life and down once again..down into the underworld of my basement that begs to be sorted out by spring..

Sunshine is promised for tomorrow. 

8th musing Persephone clears a space in the underworld

8th musing....Persephone clears a space in the underworld.

Down in the underworld of my basement I always start by feeling overwhelmed. It is such a mess..and the air is stale...we had a lot of water down there last summer..but now it is dry..and stale....
I look around. Parts of the past are piled topsy turvy...and then I start moving things..sometimes just piling in other parts of the basement..but slowly as pieces are moved..
a space clears.d

I stacked my brothers paintings in a row.
I placed his drawings in a special box.

I threw out old stuff from the bathroom from my parents house.

I kept sorting and then....finding that  there are always treasures.....

if only to find the drawing of my parents with their old friend.

if only to find the photograph of my mother looking very young and wistful

if only to find some really usable file folders

if only to find my bearings and keep on working 

and to see very distantly in my minds eye.

an ordered basement.

******
    I take the garbage bags out.
In the silent withdrawn alley light glints off ice.
Frozen plants in the garden are still and ghostly.

High above, the clouds drift, as the moon continues to wane.

Persephone's Inner Vision      Seventh Musing
 December 8, 2014

Messy basements are Easy to Avoid....and alas that is what happened to me. Busy with being in holiday sales, busy with work, busy with going to the Conservatory to paint real vibrant Beauty with a friend. Busy sorting through my Emotional Caregiving Archive on the second floor. Busy Basically Avoiding the Basement. Of course. 
    But I still think about it a lot and how I would Like It To Be. I would hope to match the outer stuff with my inner vision of a perfectly ordered Basement...with Stuff Thrown Out and places and spaces for what I need.
     I have the archive of many of my brothers beautiful paintings down there. I envision with my inner eye....his paintings nicely stacked up and even accessible for someone to brouse through if they went down there. I envision his drawings all nicely organized in brown folders. I envision a lot fewer paintings of his down there all together, because people saw his work, were able to see his work and bought it. 
But it's hard to appreciate art in the midst of chaos.....so the musings continue..the inner visioning remains..and soon I will make my descent again..into the past and into the present demand of dealing with all of it....like a shrewd mermaid perched on a rock with a big feather sticking out of my hat, I look out at the horizon of possibilities and see what it holds.