To Go Back and Fix Things

We had a very late Spring snowstorm. All the Spring trees, heavy with new leaves, bent their tops to the ground; the new radiant daffodils, the about to open tulips, and the brilliant forsythia—all were buried beneath 12 inches of pure white frozen H2O. Of course, we lost power for the last two nights. All this rather gets in the way of painting at night.

I had felt that the painting was just about done. But after a two night sitting, the paint dried down to a point where I could not work back into the color. I had to, in essence, reapply color to get back to where I was before. I finally worked out the color and composition in the upper left quadrant. The egg, wing, and branches are good but the nest seems too deep to be real.

I am not happy with where it is tonight but I am too tired to work further tonight.

"She said: What is His-tory?

And he said: His-tory is an angel

Being blown backwards into the future

He said: History is a pile of debris

And the angel wants to go back and fix things

To repair the things that have been broken

But there is a storm blowing from paradise.

And the storm keeps blowing the angel

Backwards into the future.

And this storm, this storm

is called

Progress."

—Laurie Andersen, end of The Dream Before

This morning I called my parents to see how everyone is at home and to tell them that unexpectedly, in two weeks, I will be traveling to Milan for work. There has been a lot going on with my family right now and I often wish I was living closer to them. Mom was concerned about Dad. Dad waved it all off. So tonight we called him to cheer him up. However Dad was not there. He was admitted into the hospital this afternoon.