Painted my first self portrait yesterday and I look like a cartoon in it.
Will be working to correct that in subsequent paintings for the rest of the semester.....

Soured feelings.

My attitude is not very good today.

I think if I were to ever get a tattoo, I should have the words of Christ on my hand,

"It is finished."

Maybe both hands.

It would call out my crippling perfectionism, rebuke my stress, and slap my lack of trust in the sovereignty of God across the face.

(Suzanne Valadon,)

A book of her work is open on my desk - I haven't had time to read anything about her but I look at what she paints, and so I hear some of what she says already.

Although, aha, I should point out that this painting is not actually Valadon's. This is Maurice Utrillo, and I connected the two only because I found his piece when searching for hers....

...not very clearly laid out, there.

Today is a day of non-sequiturs, even though this does actually follow logically. I do know that Utrillo was the son of Suzanne Valadon, illegitimate and disposed to alcoholism before the age of thirteen by way of his mother's choices and his grandmothers attempts sweeping up after her. She loved him and encouraged artistry however, and even though I've read that he developed his own style, I am fascinated by the relationship to his mother's. Unique, I think, to come across mother and son painters...

Count the joys in your pocket.

Hannah asked me for a happy list; and that itself must go on it!
I am rarely happier than when collecting together the daily moments of goodness, extraordinary and not.
..and rarely more so without the presence of a kindly and honest simple-heart. She is one!

(It might look like a strange happy list, but it's what has made me feel full lately. It comes straight from my journal - in the future I will stick to legitimate lists I promise.)

A new book!
An hour in between homework and class to lie on my bed,
Reading a Psalm and wanting to reread it many times
Falling asleep with the open pages of a Sword tucked against my breast
A roomate sleeping next to me,
(our beds pushed together like little girls do)
Sunshine outside, cold with an invisible quality of Autumn,
It’s the reminder of death I think – so insistently emblazoned
but in celebratory richness.
Watching people be people,
Reminded of their fallibility but happy to see it –
because there is room and reason for You to be present, working there
even in people with higher built knowledge, more focused understanding
…or at least what seems like it.
Conversation and dinner with Mandie last night,
ouch, something kind of hurts and I know its because I am selfish.
Flipping a page of the art book on my desk,
a floral still life with fruit that is very beautiful (I usually don’t like them.)

Learning – maybe relearning –
Disheartened by my backsliding, I feel more pathetic than before
So I’ve got fistfuls of blonde
[and I wish I was brave enough to tear, to mourn and really sorrow about it.]
But then encouragement whispers through my hair:
sanctification.
This is good.

Confession with a circle of young women,
(let me be specific and honest!)
Justice and its difference from charity, Thomas Aquinas.
Why we must pray and ask for God’s eyes,
seeing where my heart for people is:
A steady smoldering of joyous heartbreak excites me –
I am studying for them,
getting up early to read for them,
struggling to be better and compassionate for them
and so that I can make Him happy.

Painting burgundy Giraffe spots,
studying a magnolia and myself;
Hearing the two women behind the library circulation desk,
one talks excitedly about how Christ is outside of time and controls it for us,
Later remembering how wonderful children are
And listening to a story written respectfully and lovingly for them.

Yesterday, we took a walk in the rain. Yesterday there were leaves being carried down the street in a stream alongside the curb, and there was beach sand there under the water. There was a big white dog with kind, regal eyes who ambled alongside us obediently even though his fur was collecting the drops and making him unhappy. There were stones and pebbles to crunch with each step, the smell of rain on the asphalt and the fallen leaves beginning their death into the sweet earth. There was an ocean, majestic in its cold, crashing life that calms you through its wisdom and fills you with dread at its ancient, wild, depth. Like palest jade and icy milk the waves would rush toward us over the rain-dimpled sand, pooling into a small lake upon the beach and then retreating hastily to fold into itself once more with an insistent attitude and kind of need. But it isn’t ignoring you; the white will foam and rush and move in a desperate communication of something, something. It wants you to understand and is frustrated that you don’t.
I tried to listen and I heard myself, my memories, my comfortable house of heart that is there in the sea. I think I heard that Someone had been there with the waters, far ago when the spirit of God was hovering over them and before they were enlivened to breathing, skipping, oratory waves by the creation of a moon. But the sea is so alive on its own now, just like bodies with the breath of life in them. What was it like before? The sand was cold and sloped in sensuous lines all down the beach, interrupted by one dark black arch of driftwood, granite rocks, a hillside of brittling trees with leaves slippery in the rain. I splashed through the water but was careful with my footsteps; I didn’t want to ruin the stoic dignity of the sand and shore.