Separations

 

 I started last week in a deep funk. As always, I'm going to leave the source material for the aforementioned funk under the umbrella of "politics and current events".  I spend a good four hours or more every day combing the internet. It's not all heavy stuff, but it's hard to take even an overview of the headlines, and stories of interest without coming away from it all with a free floating sense of dismay. But I'm not going to focus on the negative stuff. Life has been pretty good these last days, despite the ongoing shit show of the news. 

Saturday was our monthly bike club ride. As always I left the house early, and got down to the meet up spot with a couple of hours to kill. I brought hot coffee with me, and had a cup and a wake n' bake sitting on the rocks by the Santa Ana river. The morning was cold, and the early day as clear and fine as it gets. 

December ride. Four years ago I was just a couple weeks away from retiring from the school custodian job. Mary came out to ride that day, and when we stopped for coffee on the way down to the beach, I dropped a quarter tab of some LSD. It wasn't a heavy dose, but it was the first trip I'd taken in forty some years. Dang, it was fun. I wrote about it here.

But I wasn't going to be tripping this day. Too risky with all the bad mental health floating around. The last psychedelic excursion I took was about a year and a half ago. I took a mushroom adventure up in the hills, a post script to finishing the Lost Canyon Project. I had high hopes for the trip, but the hills on that fine spring morning were crawling with Chinese hikers, all masked up like plague zombies, all of them with their diapered faces shoved into their goddamn cell phones. When they saw me un-masked in the hills they would run to the far side of the trail, and clutch their children to them like I was a threat. (I'm not exaggeratin' here either.)

This is not the kind of thing you want to put up with when you're trippin' balls. Trust me here.

But I digress. 

This Saturday was a sweet a day as ever we've had. Just the club, and a few guests. Warm, despite winter. Ice cream at the Fun Zone. There is much to be grateful for.

Here's where I move from stoning out to working the stone. Cold mornings make for a late start, and the short days of December make for an early end to the sessions. Even so, I'm making progress on the rock. I spent less time on line this week. The funk lifted as I got my perspective lightened up. The weather was beautiful, clear and warm. 

 

We're working on separations.  The inner shape folds over at the top. This is where a hole becomes a slot, becomes a line, becomes an opening, becomes one figure cradled in another. The stone will have the illusion of being in two pieces. The hollows will fill it full of light. 

 

We're getting the house ready for Christmas, putting up decorations, and making plans for our party on Saturday. Rain on the way as well, so there probably won't be a lot gets done this week. That's OK, too.