Behold, a post that I started in early October:
I like making things.
I follow little Procreate tutorials on YouTube to make art that looks largely as it's supposed to.
This is no surprise when you are only meant to follow along with every step.
And then I ask AI to make art. It stamps out any aspirations I have of someday transferring my experiences into skills, but I love the results anyway.
I made a video six weeks ago when my dad died. Even though the restraints of the funeral home's editing interface gave me some grief (sorry about the font, Dad), I was pleased to get his songs and a small glimpse of the man out into the world.
But then his obituary, where I've no fetters on my words, has three different versions circulating about, and if I ever read it again, there will be a fourth, and so on. Deadlines and other shackles can be useful things.
I'm crocheting a blanket to use up my leftover "good" yarn.
Soon I will need to start a new project with my nicer yarn so that I will have some leftover for the blanket.
I spent part of last term break and most of this one and many days in between writing up a rationale for six people with the surname of Perry who were born in North Carolina in the early 1800s with no known connections to each other being siblings and/or close cousins based on DNA results.
This meant taking an axe to some people's assumptions and unexamined links. When growing a family tree, one must not forget one's pruning saw, I suppose.
I used to like baking. I wish I would like it again. I bought a book of recipes for yummies from the Low Countries. Sometimes I like making purchases more than I like making cakes. This whittles at my sense of Who I Should Be, even Who One Should Be. What kind of person lives on Uber Eats? Sometimes, the kind of person who lets the milk go bad every two weeks from lack of use... but still the kind of person who keeps buying milk.
I have not bought milk for six weeks. I set my usual aspirations aside. I did not drink any tea during this break. Heating the water would be... too much. Too non-essential. And there was no milk anyway.
The last time I took photos whilst out and about was at Costco - a selfie and a panorama. We do not go "out and about" much since the pandemic trained us out of it. There is nothing we want to buy offline. There is nothing we want to see nearby. We go to the Big Smoke to see an exhibit on Egypt and mummies, and it is so crowded that every glass case has a queue. What was barely tolerable three years ago is absolutely intolerable now. There is no restaurant worth the din and press.
But a trip to Costco an hour-plus north of home was something, and on a whim I asked Mike to lean his head in for a selfie in the parking lot, us seated in car, ready to get out and hunt for pink lemonade. Something to show Dad, I decided, who used to check my Flickr every day but had grown disappointed by the slow parade of knotted yarn and lounging rabbits. I spoke to him on the drive home. It was scratchy and we lost connection once. It took forever to reconnect. It was okay. We'd shared our feelings in detail a few days before.
"Do we need to pull over?" Mike asked as his eyes kept swinging between the road and me. Whatever he heard in my tone as I talked to Dad, it was more than I heard as I fixated on Skype and internet loss and reassuring Dad that I would find the two new songs he wanted for his ever-evolving funeral playlist while trying to crack the joke that his funeral would involve "the best of 1990s rap music". I had already forgotten, or misplaced, or deliberately laid aside and erased all traces of, Dad's opening comment that he was calling, the emphasis a reminder of a conversation weeks before when we discussed whether he'd let me know when the suffering got to be too much. And if he hadn't told me, I should've known by his girlfriend messaging me to call him. But then I got caught up in his announcement that home hospice care was going to start and the details of that and the songs, so much about the songs, and
I was dumb. And when I said I'd call back in a couple of hours once we were home, there was a big pause before the excited "Yeah!" It might be a year, he said. It was about being comfortable.
"Okay, I'll talk to you soon. I love you."
"I love you."
---
I wrote that ten weeks ago. Since then Dad's birthday has come and gone. Thanksgiving has come and gone. Soon Christmas will come and go. And me, I just keep coming and going, creating and destroying.
Creating a new ugly Christmas throw thanks to my crochet advent calendar. Destroying the cooties of a school year that ended yesterday. Creating new plans for the one that starts in six weeks. Destroying those plans because sometimes six weeks is all of the time in the world.
I think I will dig out the Christmas lights and string them along the rosemary as the gum tree out front is now too tall. I think I will take the hedge clippers out there with me and lop off the browned lavender and the crowded rose branches.
The sky is blue. The bunnies are content. Mike is napping. I am drowning in advent calendar jam. Spiced plum is my favourite so far.
I destroy another tear with the back of my hand.
I create the next minute. It is all the time in the world.
