Bread and jam today

What a year. I meant to finish a third children's book about Bijou, the British dog who moved to France. I meant to get the 90% complete book of poetry through the editing process and up for sale. I meant to finish the second Shelf Barker humorous mystery novel and publish it.  I've got two watercolours unfinished on the drafting table where they've been since mid-November, before we went to Ireland the second time. I meant to get rid of the intense sacroiliac pain. (Might be underway at last; fingers crossed.)

 

I cannot tick a box for any of the above except--I hope and pray--the last. 

 

I did go to Ireland twice and meet more than half a dozen of my second cousins for the first time. Went to Leo's Tavern in Donegal for the first time, home of Enya, Clannad and Moya Brennan because Leo is their father. We replaced the ratty carpet in our entry and living room with hardwood. I renewed a connection with a friend. I had a really not very exciting art exhibit. (I will NEVER ever invite people into my studio again; I mean, do actors invite theatregoers to visit them in their dressing rooms? Argh. What was I thinking?)

 

However, I planned to post some words and art from upcoming books/sales as holiday gifts, and so I shall. But they are not new, mainly; they have a bit of age on them. But they come with love...as long as you don't insist on seeing the mess in my studio/office!

 

 

Bread and jam today

by Laura Harrison McBride

Winter is late. Freezing. Cold draughts limbo under the front door,

roll up the stairs and hopscotch around the banisters to

attack me in my studio. No, no

I will not buy fingerless gloves. I will turn 

on a space heater. I will

because I am not Degas, this is not Paris, and

I have a meal ticket. A man who

supports my engaging the arts to do battle with

whatever demons make us--

all of us arty folk--

engage ourselves in repetitive futility.

NYC tenement in earlier times; reminds me of Degas' Paris studio.

The best do not repeat. The wealthy

do. The wealthy artists find

a gimmick, a gimcrack, and crack their

muse on its sharp, metallic edges

all the way to the bank. Schnabel pottery on canvas--

oh dear, and other

New York talentless...well, I had better not go there. But,

No frozen, northern-lighted studio for them; they can afford 

heat. Models.

Holiday trips to exotic lands. I can

turn on the heat, thanks to my meal

ticket (dear man, he's my soul's bread and butter.)

I can labour at one-offs until I tire, and then

go downstairs, toss costly grounds

into the French press, stick a piece

of my favourite once for-rich-folks-only

white bread into the toaster. Slather butter, spread

strawberry Bon Maman to my heart's content.

Brown bread I used to bake, before the meal ticket, and drench

in butter and honey still warm. In the old days, the days when

I couldn't turn up the heat. I had no meal ticket. But I wouldn't...no,

never...I wouldn't use a gimmick to attract buyers. I ate brown bread, honey, not much else. But no gimmicks.

No.

Thank god for my beautiful tall handsome meal ticket; I owe him my art.

Copyright Laura Harrison McBride