Post Christmas

  Life is taking on a singularly warm glow that I have not felt since childhood.  Perhaps it is having my mother around at Christmas-something that hasn’t happened since I was an adolescent. Or perhaps it’s my meds leveling me out a bit. Something, though, is apparently keeping me in a buoyant state of mind at the moment., and I’m not [...]

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A Wonderful Christmas Day

I had a lovely Christmas day with my mother and her partner and my daughter. When it came time to visit my son and step children at my former home to open packages, I was made to feel very much at home. I even had the good fortune to get an invitation (which I regretfully declined) [...]

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Doctor Zhivago & Me

I made this oil sketch of a lonely but colorful little tree I saw in the middle of a dark area yesterday- a metaphor for the season for some of us; lux in tenebris – light in the heart of darkness. I am often left in wonder of the human animal and their singular attachments of meaning [...]

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Children’s Choir

I made this little oil sketch (posterior view)of the children’s choir my five-year old son sings in during the Christmas holiday. (That’s him-extreme right)   Seeing them sing this week apparently stirred something in me. Sentimentality- a word I hate and something I condemn roundly, thoroughly and often, has somehow found it’s way into some of my [...]

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Christmas Cards

 
I’ve finally gotten together a Christmas card design (yes-at this late date) and am busy printing out cards on watercolor paper today. This is the design- New York Snow; snowy, urban and somehow classic-something of the 1950’s “ashcan” school of urban painting is in it. I painted it in a good frame of mind today. Intellectual clarity [...]

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Unblue Christmas

 
This is truly the season that taxes the souls of the bipolar and the mood disordered. Even “normal” people find this time of year to be a psychic burden needing if not Herculean strength to get through it all- then at least a steady supply of prescription drugs (alcohol will do for most) to [...]

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Always Trust Charlie Brown

Reflective week thus far. Lots and lots of darker things just below the mania I’m feeling just now. Pessimism, I suppose, that comes with the compulsory expectations of the season. I get Christmas cards, but at my old address, addressed to both me and my soon to be ex, so it’s like they never actually [...]

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The Holidays- If You Insist

 Going into the holidays is a touchy business estranged from most everyone excepting my aunt, mother and a smattering of friends who all have their children and their own lives, I can’t quite find a place for myself this year. On top of it all, I’m slightly hypomanic just now, but it feels good! (Geodon [...]

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