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Friends with Art: Good Medicine

I consider myself something of the unofficial photographer for UmberDove's art shows. "Good Medicine" opened on Thursday night at The Ghost Gallery here in the Capitol Hill district of Seattle, and runs all month if you are in the neighborhood.  Afterward, we do what we always do: drink.








I've been thinking a bit about personal deadlines and when to allow yourself rest and when to allow yourself work and when to allow the work to be enough and when to allow it to be deficient.  It's an inspiring life being surrounded by others who think on the same things.  Kelly works hard, terribly hard. There is no wishy-washy "Maybe I'll try my hand at art for a while to see if maybe I'm good enough."  She is head's down, buried in foliage and silver and paint most days.  I must say, I got to see her more when she wasn't so successful, so it doesn't really benefit my social life - but it is certainly motivating for me in my own craft.

Which brings me to my good medicine.  Today I began a writer's workshop with the subject of writing on Inner Change/Personal Transformation.  I sit around the table with eight other (rather magnificent!) ladies who are grappling with being a writer and being a human, and it has put a serious bee in my bonnet.  

So let it begin, I say...the flurry of an writing so much that I feel beautiful exhausted from the work of my soul. Just like she does.



she swoops to save her friend, thereby saving herself

Every so often, we all need a little saving.  Sometimes we can save ourselves, but I've found a remarkable beauty in the self-saving that is inevitably and surreptitiously hidden in the caring for those we love.   Mrs. Clark came with her superman tight-suit tucked under layers of color and patterns, and saved me from a weekend of ominous introspection and way too much trash television.  In a way, I suppose she came to care for me, but thereby cared for herself.  She remembered she is irreplaceable, connected, and sophisticated.    She remembered she is wise, open, healthy, and always at the ready with leg-wear. She made me hummus, made me laugh, made me sit still with magazines; then she made me go to a drag show.

We are both in gestation...on the brink of new women, and we needed to speak to friends connected to all versions of ourselves (past and future included) in order to incorporate them soulfully.  It's hard, confusing, subjective work.  She is strong for the job. So am I, but in part because I have her shoulders to rely on.  And yours.

I have loved solitude.  I will always love solitude.  But you know, it's just another thing that's changing about me.  Hell, I might even start reading Harry Potter and thinking Gaga can write music. My craving for company and the realization of the unmistakable goodness of those enfolding me and in my fold is humbling my independent nature something fierce.  In fact, the only ONLY way I found a road back to peace last week was through other humans.   I was saved by the solidarity and assurance of your human existences, different in circumstance, same in process.

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Kelly with her friend, "Mama Tits"


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Thanks for the visit, Dove.
Sometimes we just need a bitch to say, "Hooker, please! I've been there.  Get dressed, rat that do, buckle your Louboutins, and start strutting, cuz DAMN. You are fiiiiieeeerrrce."

Or something like that.