- I attempted and failed a realism drawing exercise that became a page of sequential life moment representations
- (see previous)
- book club insights
- It has become a new tradition to visit the local Costco on weekends just to watch people and observe America in amusement, horror, and disillusionment
- the tragic irony of young gulls killing themselves accidentally off of the roof of the Pacific Grove Museum of Natural History where I worked. Just tragic.
- I left my museum job after two years.
- Began working with the college students of the autism spectrum population as an Academic Art Tutor in Monterey. I love this work so much! (August 2016)
- Married the man literally and figuratively of my dreams at Mission San Juan Bautista, a place dear to the history of our hearts. (October 8)
- I cried two times the morning the monster was elected. (November 2016)
- Limited social media intake, saved a bunch of time! Made major daily and yearly art goals and continued portrait painting and daily drawing or painting.
- (missing) obviously I can’t count, I never was into math
- Studying scriptures, reading novels, writing poetry early in the morning
- The Miracle Morning book inspired me to elaborate on my early mornings and the a general need to discipline stress management inspired me to throw some kicks and punches on a regular basis
After days of rain the vultures like to display their wings in the mornings in the trees outside the apartment and I admire their Dracula style. One time I watched one grooming itself and suddenly stun itself as it accidentally pulled out a feather, and watched it twirl slowly to the ground. And then I ran out to grab it for no reason really. Yes I happened to get lucky while taking pictures of them.
Noticing My Hand
–Stacey Gentry – 11/14/16
A woman examines her mind
too close and falls along the seashore rocks. *
She wonders where the gentle swallows will
nest now without their red tile caves,
which for the past few days were pried
by crowbars screeching nails
up
creaking coffin lids
above her ceiling, sounds she could feel in
her cringing teeth while the roofers
went on singing with their own.
She smells fire **
and senses a hand she decided to accept
the assuming way a crows’
humble ration is buried
in weeds by the dull blade of a beak.
We think we use the tools we have been given.
Another woman nearby
her shell is thick, she sits and draws.
She draws a lady on the ground begging
a black bird
for its only treasure.
She is still
while she watches she can feel
her hair grow and, watch
she unravels the corkscrewed self,
Stretches it out with her mind like two hands
bracketing negative film to the light.
She is thinking of a woman who just,
died*** who first descended, into a
mind-less-ness, body-less -ness—-
unfamiliarity
her art could never name
until there was nothing left
but her soul. It seemed cruel
for one’s spirit to be abandoned by
its body and its mind and nothing
but vague clues in her leftover art.
As a woman
and an artist
this one knew the signs along the way
that sometimes get pushed away,
mistaken deception, illusions.
Now, an ultimatum for retrieval—-no,
desperately, creation—-while she still
thought she did not know, but you see
every night she did actually know.
We use the tools we have been given until
we realize, we create our own tools. She knew,
subconscious as a feather sprouting in a wing
so she drew, drew it out of her
until her shell would sing.
Ashes** fell on clean laundry back at home
where she dutifully prayed with her lover
No one would ever believe her,
how it coalesced, how she did resurrect her
willpower. Because, two out of three birds die when
they try to fly for the first time.
They must forget to bring their spirits
with them, this, the women, they saw.
Except two stopped at the tools and
one did see the ship she could build,
the ship that in the future would save her.
We use the tools we have been given to create
our own tools, to create something more.
A hand dives into the scenery from the future
like a dove and asks her to trust it, to take it,
this is her own hand.
—
*At Point Lobos a woman fell between the rocks who I helped up, I had been sitting from aways away watching her recognizing the internal contemplation that can be so distracting
** the Soberness Fire
*** Nancy Hauk, watercolorist, Pacific Grove
Stacey Gentry 