Invention is the Mother of Necessity

Australian Idyll #3:  Mark, Moi and Pacific Black Ducks (not dogs, ducks)

I am supposed to be packing up my house for a move to the hills in a couple of days.  There is so much to do, however, that adding to the blogosphere seems like a far more interesting idea - though it will doubtless find me throwing books into boxes at 2 a.m. 

It's almost a month since the last page, when my Ruby died, so maybe there's an unconscious timing to this.

My MOS (much older sister) was here for a visit a short while ago. 
She summed up my existence as follows: "You have outstanding social capital."  Which I took as a rather withering way of saying I have many good friends. It is true, though: I do have many good friends, several from more than 40 years ago.
How lucky, how blessed and how surprising ...
Note to self: Ask oldest friends why they're still around.

Also while the MOS was here I was bombarded with enough family values that I fell into the trap of defending life and lifestyle ... not a good look for an adult.  During the aunschlag I commented that, in my life, "Invention is the mother of necessity".

The MOS, like the queen, was not amused, nevertheless I think it's true,

Here's an example from age eight. The little metal stand from a Barbie doll box can be bent to make a tiny trivet.  A stump of candle on the ground beneath. Mix some egg, flour, baking powder and sugar in a tin dariole mold and sit that on the trivet. Light the candle. The bubbling, the smell of burning sugar, the carboniferous blackening of the little mold - voila, the CAKE.

For the same reason, I do not want to be "taught to paint".  I want to paint until I know how to do it to my satisfaction, asking people for help and advice as problems arise.

For the same reason, when people ask me what one of my paintings is "about", my answer is, "You tell me".  I just know I need to paint them and the content follows on the desire. And I am satisfied that this is the case for many, many inventive people.

So I believe the Grandma Moses-Emily Kngwarreye-Georgia O'Keefe years are not ahead of me - I am already in them ...

Emily Kngwarreye (click here for more Emilys)

Emily Kngwarreye (pronounced 'Kingawurry') was an Aboriginal Australian who began painting when she was 81. She died in 1990. 

When there's an exhibition of her work people usually say, "Have you seen The Emilys yet?".

Georgia O'Keefe continued to paint till she was 98. ...click for more 

For women who were young in my generation ('70s/'80s) she was erotic and free, her lifestyle bold and expressive. She was married to the photographer George Steiglitz for many years, but not finally.
She was childless and lived the last decades of her life famously in a house of Quakerish austerity overlooking the Mexican desert.

Grandma Moses...click for more
Began painting in her '70s and went on till she was over 100.

Moses fascinates me the most as a painter. 


Tune in next time for the shortfalls of an autodidactic nature and the narrow shoulders of giants ...

Ruby Tuesday

"Can I come too, Mommy?"  Ruby Radunski, 1998 - 2010

So really work should have begun hours ago but I am considering something else. Death.

Is there a more uncomfortable contemplation for an ordinary person than the end of the miracle of being alive?

This is not just a morbid moment in the 3 a.m. void. I am attending the final illness of my favourite dog, Ruby.

She's lying in the bedroom, dozing on her blue blanket, from time to time sipping her water, greeting me with a wag of her stumpy tail, gazing at me with glazed but still enquiring eyes.

I've made sure she's not in pain. I've made sure she doesn't panic about shortness of breath. I've made sure that rampant infection cannot invade her.

But she certainly can't do the things that are her pleasures, so how can I say she has 'quality of life'?

So this phase of her dying is about weaning myself of her beloved presence.

That's all.

Get thee to a nunnery

St Theresa of Avila b.1515

Said of God: "If this is the way you treat your friends, it's no wonder you have so few!”  

St Theresa of Avila, b. 1515

Although work should have started over an hour ago, I'm not suffering guilt over lost time.

A woman has to rest, otherwise your skin goes to hell even faster: Rest, breath, drink decent coffee and expensive gin, eat breakfast whenever you feel like it ... and see how your skin improves.

The driver for this blog journey is camaraderie.

I have reached, and am living, the belief that single women of a certain age now have more potential, more freedom and more energy to individuate than most people of any age or gender at any other time in history.

Article: Women of a certain age, New York Times

This is an inversion of a very serious and almost universal social theme: That a woman who has no husband or children is, 'quite naturally', the least valuable member of a society.

Spitting in the face of the old hat
While history throws up a substantial cadre of women who spat in the face of those values, they have usually been carefully cagetorised as whores, witches, spinsters, childless crones or ... saints.
And I admit right now that some of these women are my heroes and I will come to them in greater length in the course of this blog, for their stories are remarkable and fascinating.

Oh, the shocked suprise of those who just discovered the sainted Emily Dickinson was in a torrid affair with her married publisher - who knew?

Or the insight that Elizabeth Ist stayed single so England's wealth could be "kept in the family". Had she followed through on any of her strategic engagements, some European cousin, probably still a Catholic, would end up ruling the roost that Henry had so carefully feathered. And of course a virgin she weren't.

Back in Cronesville

I won't bore you with facts or stats about how infrequently contemporary divorced women recover financial security. Or how many Indian women suicide on their husband's funeral pyre rather than become outcast, a servant in their in-laws' home, or be sent to a brothel. Or how in European history women who had no dowry finished up in nunneries, servants to the priests or the church.

The fact is some very interesting ideas have emerged from women in nunneries; St Theresa of Avila had some pretty astute things to say from her cloister.  And the history of women who have asserted their dignity, self-possession, values, ideas and deeds is deep and fascinating.

Thus and so, this blog wants to engage with people of all genders and persuasions who enjoy life as an individual who "picks and chooses the nature of their belonging". 

Women (and men) of A Certain Age have come of Age and the opportunity to live a self-actualised life has never been greater .

That said, I had better get some of the day's work done ...