Loose Leaf Notes

1. No matter what masquerade costume I put on, there’s always one or two people who don’t bat an eye, walk right up to me and say, “Hi Colleen.”

2. Then – because of the pink wig – there are some I’ve known for years that didn’t even recognize me when I took off my mask. My friend Luke thought I was a stranger hitting on him.

3. As soon as I open my mouth and talk, the get-up gig is up.

4. When the snow that starts falling is the size of cornflakes, I think about all the milk being sold at the grocery store so that the kids who won’t have school tomorrow can eat cereal in the morning.

5. And that’s what you get if you let a poet report the weather.

6. I Just Now Noticed She Had a Snake Around Her Neck!  HERE

7.  A house full of junk and clutter as an art installation?   I’m starting to have some hope that I’ll be let off the hook in the pressure to downsize my clutter in the later stages of life after reading about Louise Bourgeois.  Bourgeois recently died at the age of 98, and her home – which has been described as “bohemian dilapidation” and is just as she left it –is about to be open for public tours.  After her husband died, Bourgeois turned the whole place into a working art studio.  Her assistant has said she “never threw anything out.”   – More HERE

8. Yesterday I read an article titled “Barns are painted red because of the physics of dying stars,” which translated to mean that red paint is cheap because:  “red ochre—Fe2O3—is a simple compound of iron and oxygen that absorbs yellow, green and blue light and appears red. It’s what makes red paint red. It’s really cheap because it’s really plentiful. And it’s really plentiful because of nuclear fusion in dying stars.”

9. I’m putting THIS on my gift wish list.

10. The picture above is of my this year’s favorite Mardi Gras Renoir shot.  Last year’s Out of Focus Hocus Pocus Mardi Gras Brouha is HERE.

11. My friend Elisha – pictured impressionistically below taking a picture of her daughter debuting her punk band performance HERE –  considers dressing for Floyd’s Mardi Gras a yearly art project. 

12. Eating beignets – New Orleans’ take on Native American’s fried dough – is a French Quarter rite of passage.  I wanted to eat a beignet on Tuesday so I could take a picture and caption it: Getting Fat Tuesday, but I didn’t get to try one till Thursday.  – written on April 2015 in New Orleans HERE.

13. “It’s not an image I am seeking. It’s not an idea. It’s an emotion that I want to recreate … My works must have an intrinsic value, or they are not successful … The work is finished when my anxiety has disappeared. That is the proof that it is successful.” – Louise Bourgeois

________Thirteen Thursday