TMi

The new year is a Water Rabbit.  In an odd way I am kind of creatively charged up these days and looking forward to new things.  I don't know where this positive energy is coming from, but I will take it! I feel more recovered than this time last year. I think I just have a sinus infection this time. Not Covid+. That's a step up.  So, I didn't write about attending the Portrait of a Nation Gala in November 2022.  That was a thing I did amid everything else I have been dealing with and- I've been grappling with how to express myself about that event. The whole thing was unbelievably difficult to get through for me.   People kept using the word surreal. Surreal I have done. Surreal is my bread and butter. This was-  It was a full-on crisis. I could barely regulate my emotions. I felt so much. A lot of it was rage. What place does rage have at a celebration? Where could I safely put that? How I could ignore the feeling that everyone in that room- everyone...

First, the good news: Human and I went to the nation's capital, not to engage with the swaths of costumed merry-making students over-running the streets, but to find out more information about another video portrait. I cannot talk even talk about it yet. Things are super exciting and we haven't even started! We are already coming up with ideas to experiment with as the work gets going.  Being in DC during the fall, I am grateful for hotel rooms that can be heated to 80f  / 26c degrees with hot water that you don't have to wait 20 minutes for. Pseudo-graffiti marks on the wall of my room won't endear a place to my heart as much as a stellar heating/ cooling system. And good wifi. But enough about hotels.  My year long illness gave me no quarter during my trip. With enough coffee and will, I  managed to walk the mall and up down, and around the Lincoln Memorial. The memorial is, oddly enough, fun and romantic, as well as inspiring and, well, heartbreaking too. peo...