Feline Assistance?

Only if you use the term loosely.  I only have two cats now, down from four.  Mollie and Merlin love textiles, and 'help' whenever they can.  The level of assistance varies .

Mollie is a quilt girl.  Here she is, trying out 'Borderlines' for size.

Oh, I like this one, Mum...

Mmm...comfy...   She later dozed off on it entirely.  Not quite what you expect for an art quilt, but...

Merlin, on the other hand, is more cosmopolitan in his tastes.  Here he is sitting on a lot of different things, simultaneously; my sofa does get a bit busy, as I spend a lot of time sitting on it.  I think he called it purrrrformance art; I called it all sorts of things, none of which were polite. 

My lino cutting stuff, is on that board, Merlin... be careful... and don't knock that box of notepaper over, or the pen... really, though, what he wanted to lie on was the small book I'd cut from hand made paper, again from Heather's parcel.  It had been folded for some time, so rather than try to iron out the creases, I used them to create another accordion book.  Which He's sitting on.  And here's the result.

That was flat, before he sat on it.  It now has a perfect impression of his bum.  Pass the iron, somebody... 

More about the work in progress tomorrow.  

Pride Cometh...

...before a fall, I know.  Amongst the goodies in Heather's bag were three long strips, two of fabric, one of paper.  Wrapping, I thought.  Definitely.  So I folded a book using Lutradur XL.  First mistake.  Yes, it folds.  No, it doesn't hold well, so it doesn't like standing up, and it's not easy to handle.  It really needs to be pressed into shape for a while before you use it, for a book anyway.  Won't be doing that again in a hurry.  And then I wrapped it.  Looks okay, I thought. 

Reasonable balance, lots of space within the structures, not sure about that first page, but otherwise...
And then I turned it over.

And discovered that the fabric was not lying flat...looked awful.  Puckered, too.  In the end, I realised that the problem was tension (in art as in life, sigh).  The strips were too long for me to keep a consistent tension on them, so what I thought was a good thing, actually wasn't.  So I had to dismantle it, leaving the blue paper strip untouched (it would have torn if I had tried to remove it, and I like it where it is, fortunately.  This is version two, where I've wrapped and cut. 

Am I happy?  Not with that bit on the left hand page, where two pieces of fabric converge, just doesn't work, need to do something about that.  I think that's always going to be a risk with wrapping, need to be careful with how I deal with the ends.  And whilst it doesn't seem to matter how long the paper strips are, fabric strips are problematic if I make them too long.  Otherwise, though, it's better.  I like this simple, graphic approach, but in this case, I think it might be too simple... watch this space...

Challenging Assumptions.

With ME, there's an overriding assumption that, whatever it is, you're not going to have the energy to do it.  That's not always true, though, in fairness, a goodly percentage of the time, it is.  I've talked about how my practice revolves around the expressive and the experimental....but it also embraces adaptation, these days, from bitter necessity.  I've been hankering for wet felting recently, and I just know, without trying, that fifteen minutes of that would be the only thing I got done that day, a very high price to pay for admittedly a very expressive form of textile art.  And then I found this.

It was an ACEO (does anybody make those any more?), though I did think about making it into a brooch (does anybody wear those any more, other than me?).  Though I suspect that the base felt might have been wet felted, the top layer was definitely added using an embellisher, and finished off with hand stitch.  And that made me think.

I recently bought a metre of prefelt, something I haven't used before (a blog post about prefelt here, if you haven't come across it before).  I do have a fair amount of wool tops...who can resist those fabulous colours. especially when they're dyed in multiple colours... and had almost got to the point of giving them all away.  But I do have an embellisher, and I can work with it.  In many ways, it would be better than using a sewing machine, because piecing usually requires getting up and down to press the work, or cut more pieces, or whatever... and that's very tiring.  Yes, I could set the work up in such a way as to be able to swivel to use the ironing board...but it would block both the doors if I did.   Now, all I have to do is change the needles in the embellisher, and Get Started.

Sounds like a decent compromise to me.  Might even get some book pages out of it...

Sorting

Sorting is a wonderful word.  It can mean either fixing something, or bringing order to something.  I did a bit of both, yesterday.  First, the back of 'Purple Rain', which now has text: definitely fixed that; it feels like a definite improvement.

,

A visit from the postman brought a large padded envelope from my friend Heather in Norfolk.  She sent me this little lot, which I was more than happy to sort through....

I oohed and aahed as I did so; there's quite a variety of things in there.  I have to say that I got sidetracked very quickly.  I was intrigued by some organza with shreds of newspaper stuck to it (got to do some of that with organza, and some in light weight lutradur; it would be interesting to burn it off in places...).  I found several small pieces that seemed to want to go together.  Sometimes, all you can do is respond to what you find; here's my response to three different elements  They are pretty much in the condition they were when Helen sent them, with the exception of the organza, which was attached to a larger piece, so I cut them apart.

The circles are light card, and I suspect they're die cut.  The vertical strips were combined as one strip on a larger piece, but as they were attached with sellotape, I was able to remove them (I have plans for the larger piece, but that's another story for another day).  Running along the bottom is a strip of that organza I mentioned earlier.

For reasons best known to my unconscious mind, this makes me think of Scandinavian forests in summer.  No, I've never been to Scandinavia...but hey... the position of the circle suggests the sun, travelling through the sky.  Unfortunately, there were three circles, but four pages.  Five pages would have given a better visual balance,  but I think what I've got works well.

The book is made from Lutradur XL.  So far, I've only got one this one side completed, and, whilst I had contemplated making something similar on the reverse with my own fabrics, I think it might be better to paint and print on the reverse.  No stitch.  This is a crisp image; stitch would clutter it up.   I have no idea what else I'll do with the treasure trove Heather sent me...but I dare say, over time, I'll think of something...

And Then I Thought...

...now what?  I'd made the pieces that needed to be made, that suggested themselves, and I really didn't know what to do next.  Yes, I'll be making more work about ME: in fact, I know what's next, and I'll work on that when I have a bit more energy.  In any case, it'll be done in stages, and won't be a book, or at least, it isn't a book in my head right now.  Though I will admit, it could be done in book form...would be quite effective... would be better... okay, that's that sorted.  Not an accordion book, though, a pamphlet.  But I digress.  As usual.  For now, for the accordion books, ME wasn't a theme I was ready to address.  I'm a great believer of building time into process; Borderlines is still waiting for stitch, but as I don't yet know what to do, I'm giving my unconscious more time to work it out.  Better that than doing something half hearted, and then hating the piece for not being quite what I wanted.

Anyway... I had another khadi natural dyed accordion.  The first page is very speckled with purplish dots, and there are a few scattered through the rest of the book.  That in itself is a lesson; there's something about working with the dyestuff in such a way as to ensure that the whole book is dyed in a similar fashion, rather than having one striking page and the rest, not so much.  I'm going to let myself off a scolding, though, given this was the first time I'd ever done natural dyeing.  You don't know what you don't know, in that situation.

Struck me that the palette for this book needed to complement that purple, so I got a piece of my own hand dyed silk organza in blue, the colour of sky when it's beginning to think about rain, but hasn't quite gone grey, yet, a greenish blue reminiscent of the ocean.  Wrapping was in my mind, too, because that had been an interesting experiment, and I wanted to try more of it.  What pulled it all together, though, was reading on FB that yesterday was Prince's 60th birthday (doesn't time fly when you're having fun).  Might not have been yesterday, of course, given how long it can take some posts to appear... but whatever.  Purple Rain, I thought   Book, I thought.  Wrapping, I thought.  And here it is.

There's no stitch in this piece at all; it would have been intrusive.  Everything is glued (Prym textile glue, for those of you who like to have the technical details).  I'm trying not to use bondaweb; it involves standing, and that gets very tiring, very quickly.  In any case, bondaweb doesn't seem to do very well with sheers, surprisingly, the glue is less intrusive, you can't see it unless you're looking for it, up close and personal with the piece.

The piece is wrapped using thread, this time, hand dyed cotton perle. a blue/purple melange.  I had fun varying the amount of thread I used, suggesting lighter and heavier showers (I hope). 

I changed the orientation of the silk, partly to add visual interest, partly because I wanted to suggest both sea and sky.  I'll leave it to you to decide which is which.  Nothing to do with the song; I don't know any of the lyrics, other than the chorus! 

And here's the back.

I like the way the thread slants, like rain in the wind.  I also like that the thread is pulled tight in places, giving shadows; you can see it in the page on the far left.  It wasn't deliberate, but it's an interesting effect, and I'll be storing it in the memory banks for further use.  I feel this is a bit sparse, to tell you the truth, even for my taste.  I'm contemplating adding the words 'purple rain' randomly on each page, which might help.  I first have to find my pens, though, and there's three different places they might be, and no guarantee I still have the kind I want to use.  I'm infinitely tidier than I used to be...but not that tidy... wish me luck!

I do love it when a plan comes together...especially when it's spontaneous.  To me, that's the best kind of art; it comes from the soul.

It's A Wrap.

Not all of the work is dark and meaningful, though it does feel that way sometimes; some of it is purely experimental, the response to 'what if...' questions.  I was thinking about what I've learned so far about making textile books, and the fact that books don't have a right side and a wrong side; they are genuinely double sided, unlike quilts and embroidery, where there is a definite Right Side and a Wrong Side.  How, I thought, could  you work on both sides at once, meaningfully?  And answer there came... wrap it.  Reader, I did.

Another khadi paper accordion, dyed with the usual suspects from the natural world.  This time, I've taken thin strips of rust dyed silk; some of it was waste from a project, some cut from whole cloth.  The exception is the page in the middle, which is two strips of lutradur, stitched together with variegated hand dyed thread, some of which has been left to dangle down the page.  And then I strayed a little from the original concept, and stitched the silk to attach it to the paper (admittedly for a good reason; see below).  They are very small stitches, and I suppose I could have made them in a colour that blended with the paper, but given that I've got that central piece, with dangling thread, I wanted the rest of the pages to refer to that, somehow.  Here are the pages:

I rather like this.  It's sparse, but interesting.  It lets you contemplate the relationships between the strips, and between the strips and the paper.  I may add a word or two, but the jury's still out on that. 

Wrapping isn't a technique I'd normally associate with a book.  It's not until I stopped thinking about that piece of paper as 'a book', that I realised that wrapping would be an interesting way of approaching it. I think there might be more of these coming my way .  And finally, the back...

I particularly like that central page, the lutradur with the stitch.  It's quirky, and I do like a bit of quirky.  I wanted a bit of stitch in this, but none of this is decorative per se; it's purely functional.  In the lutradur, it's holding two strips together, so that the colour density was increased.  Elsewhere, it's holding the silk to the paper...and nothing else.  Sometimes less really is more.

Book The Third.

I said in my last post, that I'd discovered, rather belatedly, that the second book, Fragments, was 'about' ME,  about the way that it has stripped me of my ability to engage in the activities I used to, leaving me with fragments of my life.  The third book, however, was always about ME. 

I bought the silk loose weave cloth it is made from, many years ago.  I don't know why I bought it, to be truthful, I just liked the colour and the texture, so it was probably an impulse buy.  It survived the cull, which is remarkable, given how much fabric I got rid of.  It has turned out to be perfect for this particular book. 

The paper is once more dyed using onion skins, herbal teas and tannin; in fact, there are small pieces of onion skin embedded in the paper (I have no idea how that happened, but I'm grateful).  Each page represents a stage of ME.  It starts with remission, which is not quite well, but able to do most things, as long as you're careful (I was in remission for just over a year, I thought I was well, but looking back, I was doing comparatively little, and giving myself hell for being lazy.  As if.).  On each page, the cloth gets smaller, and has less substance to it, until the last page, where there is very little cloth or substance and structure remaining. 

In some ways, this is a misleading way to depict ME.  There can be a gradual decline, as the book suggests, but mostly it's unpredictable.  One day you can feel fairly energetic (by ME standards, which aren't very high), the next, you can feel dreadful, and for no apparent reason.  It makes visual sense, though, to have structured the book that way.  Who was it who said you shouldn't let reality get in the way of a good story?...or was it the truth?...but I digress.

The reverse of the book is blank, to reflect the impact I feel I have on day to day life around me.  It's true that I talk to people on Facebook, but by and large, I have very little interaction with the place I live, or the people who live there.  I'm not asking for sympathy: it's a fact.  The book simply reflects reality.

As I said elsewhere, it's inevitable that I would explore ME and ME themes in my work; it's what I've always done.  ME is seriously misunderstood; I hope that making work like this will help people to understand what it's really like.  And if someone with ME ever tells you they're 'fine', you might remember that their fine is probably one of those pages... distorted, full of holes, getting smaller all the time.  And above all, fragile.

Book The Second...

is right here...

If you remember, what I'd learned from the first one, is that scale is everything; this has been scaled down significantly.  Five simple pieces of cloth.  Two of them, at either end, are rust dyed silk.  The central piece is a scrap of transfer dyed lutradur lace.  The second piece is a very loosely woven silk cloth, not unlike scrim.  The last is a piece of natural dyed habotai silk.  The paper itself was dyed with tannin, birch bark and onion skins, which gives the lovely mottled effect, just right for this project. The book is called 'Fragments', and that is exactly what these are, oddments left over from other projects, other things.  The book gives us the opportunity to look at their beauty, individually and collectively, and restores to them a dignity that might otherwise have been lost.

Let's look at them in detail.

You might be wondering about the stitch.  It's still referring back to the Borderlines piece, certainly, but it comes originally from working with adults with learning difficulties, some years ago now, and from one girl in particular, who took to sewing like a duck to water, and pretty much refused to do anything else.  What I learned from her, was that stitch doesn't have to be regular.  It doesn't even particularly have to be functional, even when you thought that was what you were doing.  It's important in its own right.  When I got ill, she gifted me some of her work, one of the kindest gestures anyone has ever made to me, and it remains one of my most prized possessions.

And here's the reverse.

I think this piece is about memory.  The other side holds fragments of cloth, which remember being part of a larger whole.  This side invites us to contemplate the absence of cloth, to remember what that cloth was like, its colour, its texture.  I find it interesting....I hope you do, too.

Book the third, tomorrow.

PS.  I was standing in the kitchen, after posting this, and realised that this is as much about ME as it is about memory.  The fabric side is a reflection of what I have left; a life of fragments of activity, cut from the whole cloth that was my life, pre ME.  The other side is what it will be like if the condition worsens.  No activity, just the marks of where activity used to be.  Let's hope it doesn't get that bad.

Changing Direction?

So... ever since I wrote this post, I've had making books in the back of my mind.  Just as I said I would in the post, I had folded up some Lutradur XL and popped it underneath some of my boxes to crease properly.  I checked them a few days ago, and they need to stay there a bittie longer, so I thought that was that.  Until I emptied the four boxes that came in from the garage...remember them?  In one of them was four accordion books, made from Khadi paper, which I had dyed using tannin, herbal teas, onion skins and birch bark, to varying effect.  I thought, I can play with these...but it has become much more than that.

I've made three books in two days.  That's almost unheard of in my current state....but the scale they are, made that possible (hurrah)... I have  a real sense of achievement, as it usually takes a long time to finish something, given the rate at which I work now.  And that has made me think... maybe this is the way I need to work now.  I've been thinking about it for months, if not years, but have avoided it.  Not sure why.  A lack of focus, perhaps.  Fear of doing something new (even although it's not new, really, I've been making artists books for years).  Not wanting to admit defeat (albeit in a very positive way).  Turns out, what I needed was to Just Do It.  Duh.  I knew that, right?

So...here's the first one.  It's linked to the Borderlines piece, and refers in places to the structural elements of that piece.  It uses a restricted palette, and a limited number of fabrics, only four, with only three being used on each page.  I've worked in a similar way to that before, in the 'Meditation In Purple And Gold' series that you can find on the blog if you search.  Here's what it looks like...

I wanted to refer to landscape in this, just as Borderlines does.  The first and last pages are direct references to Borderlines; the rest are developed from thoughts of landscape. 

These three pages all use the same fabrics, a paper that had been hand dyed and crushed up repeatedly, a piece of lutradur and a scrap of silk voile.  The first two are the direct references to Borderlines, though the stitch in all of the pieces directly refers back to that, too.

The remaining pages use the same lutradur and paper, plus a piece of transfer dyed Evolon.

I had to fight myself, somewhat.  Textile people always think in terms of 'fronts' and 'backs', and stitchers are taught to try to make the back look like the front.  I had to remind myself that books don't have 'fronts' and 'backs'; they have pages.  When I tried to do a double back stitch, I poked a hole in the paper (don't ask).  So...reader, I Used Knots.  It felt really quite rebellious.  And there are a few knots in the front, too, just to be consistent.  So... here's the back...I mean...the other pages...

There's more diversity here; it still refers to nature, though most of the pieces on this side refer to stones, rather than the overall landscape, with the exception of the central piece, which harks back to landscape again.  I wanted to use fragments of fabric with meaning, but that would complement the stitch, which, of course, had come through from (cough) the other side.  In some ways, I'm happier with this side, than I am with the other, though to me, the other side is the main carrier of meaning. 

So...what did I learn? 
1. Whatever it is you do with stitch on one side, you're going to have to deal with on the other.
2. Scale is even more important here, than it is on a 2D piece of work.  I'm happy with all the pages, but the first five are Too Big.  Each one stands beautifully on its own as a piece of work, but not as a unified whole.  There's not enough space in there to allow you to contemplate each page as an individual entity and also as a unified whole.  If it was a normal bound book, it might not be so important, but an accordion, by its very form, needs to be a unified whole for it to work well as a piece of art.
3. Unless you're prepared to disrupt whatever it is you did on the first side, you're going to have to glue the elements to the second side, or not add anything.  I did contemplate printing on the second side, but decided I didn't want to risk marks coming through to the other side.  I need to experiment with that, to see if it's possible.  I think it probably is, if I use printing inks, but you never know.
4. Stitching on khadi accordion paper is a pain.  It's never sitting quite like you need it to be, and it's thick, and unforgiving.  Mind you, the same will be true of anything I use as a substrate, so I figure I just need to suck it up like a good little princess.

That learning transferred over to the second piece.  More tomorrow.

Doodling.

Ideas come from all sorts of experiences.  I was talking to a landscape architect; we're in dispute with our builder over the garden, it's a long story, won't bore you with it... and he was very helpful, but he did go on a bit...I took some notes on the back of an envelope...and ended up doodling.  As you do...well, as I do, certainly...   Ended up with this

And, as you do, wondered what to do with it.  The star shapes could probably be pieced; the internet is full of videos and blog posts with instructions.  But they would be based on a central square; this is based on a Very Large Circle...make that Oval...  I like the smaller of the two, better, the one where the central oval dominates the uneven star shape.  So... applique.  Evolon, probably.  With yarn couched in an irregular spiral, to give a similar effect to the drawing; an applique'd centre would be too heavy.  A printed centre would be too flat.  This is about movement, more than anything.  Would want to be on a dark, hand dyed fabric (haven't got any).  Stars randomly scattered around the surface (random is more difficult than you would think).  Or suggesting an underlying grid (would take a good deal of measuring and marking, but might be worth it).  Or a large central(ish) star, and lots of smaller ones scattered around. 

In the end, the landscape architect was too busy to help us in a timescale that met our needs, though he did make some useful suggestions.  And I got another idea out of it, and three versions of it, to boot. Will I make this?  Probably not...doesn't fit in any of my themes for work.  Mind you, it would be Fun.  Everybody should have a fun category.  Yeah...fun...what the hell...

Making Substitutions.

So...when I don't feel great, mentally, I tend to do stuff that I don't enjoy, on the principle that a.  things can't get much worse, and b. I'll feel a lot better when I've completed whatever it is.  Of course, completing things takes me a lot longer than it would a healthy person, so the gratification element is usually delayed, but I did get a couple of those boxes unpacked.  And found my millinery stiffener, which is great, and some more softcut, which is not so great, given that I'm finding cutting blocks difficult.

That said, I've been doing a little here, a little there, when I feel energetic enough, and this one is ready for a trial print.

I've been lino printing for a long time, but I still find it difficult to gauge whether I've carved away enough of the surplus 'stuff'' for it not to print when it's inked up.  With softcut in particular, it's really easy to carve right through the block, which, of course, you really don't want to do (it affects the integrity of the block).  Yes, I did it on this one...just a very small cut through to the base, but I'm annoyed with myself all the same.  The only way to tell if you have got rid of enough of the 'stuff', of course, is a test print, because it shows you where the ink is going.  If it hits an area you don't want to print, you need to carve that away.  When I eventually get the other two boxes unpacked, and the studio cleared, I'll get that done.  Though I might wait until the other blocks are cut, first.  Here they are :

As you can see, the one on the left has been started.  It's really fiddly, and I thought, wish I'd made a stencil, instead of a lino block, would have been a damn sight easier to cut, and given pretty much the same effect...  Click.  So, if I do want to make a lino cut in future, perhaps the sensible substitute would be a stencil, either hand printed, or screen printed.  I got rid of the Very Large screens I had, but kept one small one, so that would work. 

It does beg the question, though, as to why I'm doing this at all.  Lino cuts are made so that you can produce an edition of several prints, rather than a one off print.  Let's face it, with all that work just to carve the block, you really would want more of a return that one piece.  And I don't do editions.  I get bored....and I'm no longer selling work, so what would be the point? 

Well, that train of thought stopped me in my tracks :why am I doing this exactly?  Well...for two reasons, possibly three.  The first is that I like the effect of a lino block; it's different to a hand painted motif, usually more definite.  Secondly, whilst I will only probably print these up *as a block* once, or maybe twice, I think that this shield/spear imagery will feature in more work, so though I may not print the block in its entirety, I will print elements of it.  Thirdly, and most spuriously...I can.  And I've got the stuff.  That isn't a good reason, of course; just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.  Which is why I'll probably sell the rest of my softcut to someone who will use it.  It did strike me that I could use it as the base for mono printing (I'm still refusing to buy a Gelli Plate, don't see the point, strikes me as an expensive fad).  So I may try that; not sure if it'll work or not, but it's worth a try, and I'd rather use what I have than go out and buy More Stuff.

Facing Up To Things.

Today is likely to be a day of bits and bobs.  Not every day can witness significant process in whatever projects you're engaged in, and I suspect the closest I'll get to progress is finishing the binding on the ME quilt, and even that may not happen, given what else is going on.

As you can see, it's nearly done, and would have been finished yesterday had I not run out of steam. I'm pleased with the fabric I chose for the binding (we discussed it elsewhere); it works well.  The main task for today, though, is this.

Yup, more boxes (there's another two in addition to these).  My original intention was to have a summerhouse, rather like I had the Little Green Shed in Norfolk, albeit on a far smaller scale.  That would let me paint without making a mess in the house.  And here's where the facing up to things bit comes in.  You'll know from posts elsewhere that I tend to paint on a large scale.  Standing up.  Occasionally throwing paint.  And that's not going to happen: I don't have the energy for that kind of thing any more.  And that was a difficult thing to admit...yet another activity cut from my repertoire, and there's a very long list of those already.  This one, though, is particularly difficult; it's very close to my heart.  I used to say that I made textiles because I couldn't paint, and art textiles were the closest I could get to it.  And then, twenty years ago, I discovered I could indeed paint, so continued with both activities, in parallel.

The reality of ME, though, is that you can only do so much.  Cutting lino blocks, and having to admit to myself how little I can actually do, forced me to look at painting.  It's physically demanding, much more so than the kind of textile work I do.  I have the nasty feeling that wet felt making will have to go, too, unless I can find a willing slave to do the hard work.  Yes, I can use the embellisher (peeking out from behind those boxes).  I can even do wet felt in the washing machine, I suspect.  But it's not the same, and some half measures just aren't worth doing.  And I do have a good deal of fleece...sigh.

I do have a compromise for painting, though.  I'm going to do more mono printing, that most painterly of printing disciplines. I can do it sitting down, and I'm happy to print on a small scale, where painting on a small scale just doesn't feel doable or right; it doesn't fit the things I want to express.  Of course,  I may try developing the mono printing, and find it doesn't work for me either, in which case, I have a lot of paint to get rid of.

Dyeing, on anything other than a small scale, is also likely to go.  I'm not sure about that one, to be honest.  It makes sense to stop dyeing cloth altogether; just setting up to dye is tiring, much less moving things around.  I could dye thread (yes, I know, I've said I would never dye thread, too fiddly etc...), and that's something I really need to think about.  I seem to spend quite a bit of time searching for thread in particular colours, and not finding it, so it would be a useful thing to do. 

Will anything else have to go?  I'm not sure.  If I can sit to do it, and do it in short bursts, it seems to be okay.  Cutting fabric is difficult, because you really do need to stand to do it (trust me, I've tried).  Hopefully, though,  I'm now at the limit.  And there are quite a few things that I believe I can do, without aggravating the ME too much.  Which is just as well, really; every time I abandon another discipline, it feels like I'm cutting out a piece of myself.  ME might easily be described as death by a thousand cuts... but I'm trying not to come over as feeling sorry for myself.  Okay, maybe just a bit.  I grieve my life, and that's unavoidable, it would seem.  Eventually, there will be art about it; right now, it's too much to think about, too painful, too raw. 

I'm a naturally positive person, but I'm clearly not managing it today.  Normal service will be resumed, etc.