Getting Out

Le Grande Odalisque—my biggest non-wall painting at 54"x54"

I really enjoyed the drawing session yesterday. I spent the entire session scribbling/getting back in the groove of drawing from a live model versus photographs. One of the things I realized (again) is that when I work big, big, BIG—in drawing or paint—my creative abilities are dialled up to 11. Though my sketch pad was, about, 18"x24" I was yearning, positively pining, for twice that size.

I do believe I'll bring some huge sheets to work on next week.

Not wholly unexpectedly, I got horrifically lost on my way home. Seems painfully silly since I lived in Cambridge and had studio space in Somerville for years. We’ve been here in Valhalla for 13 years now and, in that time, I’ve lost my Somerville Driving Fu.

Mind you, it doesn’t help that, like Boston, the city’s not laid in any kind of a common sensical grid pattern. OK, Somerville’s marginally better in spots but still, no talent's required to get irrevocably spun off down mysterious paths. Add construction related street closures to this and, frankly, it’s miraculous that I got home at all.

An aside—I’ve just discovered that Boston’s abstract expressionist street layout can’t be blamed on cows!

The cow path fable is one of Boston's biggest and most enduring myths, according to William Fowler, director of the Massachusetts Historical Society, who urged drivers not to blame cows for our dysfunctional roadways.

The birth of Boston's roadways was simply unorganized, he said; people built houses where they pleased, and roads emerged among them without the benefit of urban planners.

This is, of course, obvious to anyone who has driven in Boston. Seeing as not even cows whacked out on LSD could produce such convoluted and illogical paths.

In any case, I ended up way the fuck off course, somewhere up in Arlington and then got jammed up in monster construction traffic in Harvard Square.

Pro-tip: Never, EVER attempt to drive through Harvard Square. Unless of course you're wanting that spike in your blood pressure levels.

There are delivery trucks double parked everywhere, mobs of people darting across the streets all willy nilly and, did I mention? constant construction, narrowing the roads to a single lane.

In any case, a commute that should’ve been 45 minutes long, took two hours.

DOH!

I know, I know, I should get one of those GPS thingies.

An upside to my daffy peregrinations, I passed by the sign for the Harvard Square Holiday Craft Fair. I’d forgotten all about this cool show. I believe I’ll head back up there but ON PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION. Maybe not today either—I think a day of beach walks and painting is in order. Ya know, to lower the old blood pressure and shit.

Not all those who wander are lost.
~J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring

I was def lost.

A good traveler has no fixed plans and is not intent on arriving.
~Lao Tzu

I fully intended to arrive home (and did). Luckily I hadn’t any plans for the rest of the day.

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end.
~Ernest Hemingway