Birthday Puzzle

We got in these really fun puzzle cards at work. My stepdad's birthday is Wednesday. I broke out my Stampscapes and made him a puzzle birthday card.

I made sure to scramble the pieces up when I was finished and added an insult to the front of the envelope. It says "Have fun, Old Man!"

Then to add injury to insult, I put a little taunt on the inside of the envelope.

To soften the blow of having to put together his own birthday card, I threw in a batch of the homemade licorice candy that he we nuts over at Christmas time. Yum!

St. Paddy's Day

Happy St. Paddy's Day!!

Decked head to toe in green and shamrocks, I was amazed at how many people asked me if today was St. Patrick's Day. Yes, all you people, yes.

A Weekend Trip

So, I traversed the lanes of I75 this weekend in my brief return to Chattanooga for Lea’s birthday. I was finally able to gift her with the painting that I had been working on for over a year. Heartfelt and bittersweet, the painting of her and her dad at her wedding is something that I have wanted to paint since his death, and have worked on in stints.

But, alas, it now hangs on the wall of her and her husband’s apartment, and I can finally move on to the other paintings that my fingers have been wanting to create, but my heart would not allow me to move on to for fear of never finishing this painting. But I can now, and intend to start immediately on this one for the cover.
Anyway, there is nothing quite so grand as just getting away for the weekend to a place that you love. There is something magical about the art district of Chattanooga, and at breakfast this morning part of it revealed itself. Sitting on the patio at Rembrandt’s, over this grand concoction of French toast out of French loaf, Mascarpone cheese, and fruit compote and kiwi pear tea, I came to a conclusion. That little corner of the world must be very similar to what it once was before the assault of 20th century technologies. Plus, their rum balls provide a magic all their own.
Then, on the drive home I was enveloped in a rather thick fog through most of Knoxville and all of Sevierville. Fog is quite magical when the lighting is right, and it was till the miles of construction on 66 with its glaring orange and white barrels came into view. Up until that point I had envisioned myself being swept through dimensions and entering a world where magic governs the land and mermaids lounge on the moonlit stream bank. But it was all shattered with that first construction barrel. Ugh. Sevierville.
So, from the odd dog pack on the side of the highway (rather Oliver and Company) to the two for one margaritas and the delight of Rembrandt’s with a splash of Charming Charlie’s, McKay’s, and the crazy, fun company, the weekend was a fantastic success. But, sadly, I now sit once again in the dulls of Sevierville and long for the day when everyday life is not centered in a tourist trap. Even if it is just another weekend trip to visit friends and wake up in the middle of the night to find that your leg has fallen asleep because of the dog using it as a bed.

Opportunity

I have recently been asked to do the cover art for a former professor's book. This is a fantastic opportunity as in it could lead to a contract. His idea is very specific and will be difficult, but utterly thrilling to accomplish. If five years ago someone had told me a would be a painter, I would have laughed at them. Yet, from that fateful moment I swirled that Titanium White with that Alizarin Crimson and paint thinner permeated my hair, something clicked.

A White Christmas

I remember a time like this, years ago, sitting on the back porch watching the snow fall in silence. A time before the hustle of adulthood set in, before the years of college, the bills, the jobs, the general demands of civilized society. Back in a time when the greatest expectation was a finished chore and the sharing of a toy. There’s something magic in the falling of snow. Something that allows deep breaths of renewal and general cleansing of the spirit. There are few things as powerful, majestic, and God given as the mighty roar of the ocean, but the silence of the falling snow, the world covered in white and purity, is a close competitor.

24

I recently turned 24. It shocks me to think in less than a year I will be a quarter of a century. And in all this birthday confusion, ponderings have bubbled to the surface. What am I doing? Why am I here? Why am I so damn scared to leave yet petrified to stay? Ya know, all those quarter-life crisis questions that haunt you in the middle of the night and force your exhausted self to count jumping mermaids which slowly start to lose solid form like "The Persistence of Memory" as sleep covers you causing bizarre and startling dreams.

I worry and wait and sit, confounded by what I think I want to do and what I am actually doing.

I long for something I'm not quite sure of yet.

I want to break away from society.

I want to run.

I want to see mermaids playing on the shore and follow their laughter into the future.

Sevierville

Already I feel as if my soul is being sucked out. This place does that to a person. I feel as if I’ve been placed in purgatory with every piece of my car I unload and job application I fill out. It is so much more than hate I have for this place—it’s fear. As I listen to a neighbor’s morning alarm go off (at 10AM, I may add), I realize that I’ve been up for a few hours and done nothing. That’s what my life will be like if I stay in this place. I keep telling myself that this is just another summer break, that I’m biding my time till August, but the truth is that it’s not. College is done. I won’t return to Lee in the fall. While I plan to move to Atlanta and live with Dana, I’m afraid of what this place does to a person. I saw my brother yesterday, and it appears as if he’s given up. He told me that he’s realized that it doesn’t matter where you are because it’s all the same. I don’t want that to happen to me. He used to want to get out of here. I don’t want that to happen to me. I can’t let that happen to me. If it does, my art is lost—the loss of that would be too much. All these telephone wires and cars and apartments—they offend my sense of purpose. Such destruction and death we have wrought for the sake of money. Such an evil thing. A piece of paper or cloth and people murder for it. It is ridiculous the emphasis put on possessions. Watching a mother finch teach her baby finches to hunt for food, I realize how much of joke humans are. So much potential destroyed by greed. Tis disheartening.