Go on sic the new year on me

So it is that I went from perfect health in 9 degree New England weather to the tropics and came back nursing a chest infection. Although in all honesty it was probably just an upper respiratory infection before I pulled three consecutive nights of crap sleep to go to New York for Sunny's dumpling party. I'm saying yes to things this year. I couldn't have stayed home for my birthday. This year is about doing, going, becoming. Barring stuff that'll get me pneumonia, fired or killed (and even then...) it seems like the thing to do.

I've been overly conservative in my energy expenditure and need a change in management.

the 26th

The 26th itself bordered on the surreal as is the case whenever I don't get enough sleep. Stayed up late prepping the donut flour mix and ended up getting only about five hours' sleep.

People at work were sweet. Everyone complemented me on how cute a baby Thomás is, and how much Max and I look alike. It was a homecoming of sorts, in a cheery mundane way that was all the more moving. Ab Initio is the first place where I've felt a part of a larger community where people aren't exactly friends but still have an interest in my life. Maybe it's the first time that I've shared any part of my life with people around me, I don't know. Would it be robotic to say it feels... human? These passively attained landmarks in my social development can still be so surprising. I guess it's all a testament to how far I've come since being so apoplectic with shyness in college that I couldn't bear to look my classmates in the eye.

The drive to NYC went quickly once I'd had a power nap at one of the early service stations en route. I needed it very badly. Thank god Sunny decided not to go to Andy's drinks thing. I was cold, hungry and beyond wiped out by the time I reached Brooklyn, even if it was only 10pm. As birthdays go I was going to have to pace myself.

Day Zero

Despite its impromptu nature the trip to Brazil was actually pretty dense, emotionally speaking. In addition to the arrival of my first nephew, Thomás, it was a statement of demarcation between the way I regarded the house in which I grew up and my parents' new high rise condo. This place never has been nor will ever be my home with its bizarre segregation of "company" space and living space; with the dog held prisoner in the dark, thick carpeted corridor and family spaces full of ad hoc chinese moldings, pulled out wall sockets and hodgepodge crappy furniture; and the cat exiled to the bright but utterly still company room where all of the nice furniture and rugs congregate in a poorly curated exhibit about my family's domestic life. No, this place might contain the artifacts of my childhood but it serves none of the same functions as the old place.

Then as the week wore on, and particularly after I agreed to make a painting for my mom and started using one of the side rooms as a studio, I came to really like it there. In particular the studio with its bare hardwood flooring (unlike the main receiving room, crammed full of persian rugs), I found reminiscent of the old house while at the same time free from all its baggage.

There was nowhere in the old house where I could have had the space, mental or physical, let alone the light and ventilation to make a painting. In fact, there had never been any space in the old house within which to create much of any sort, and this awareness made me both pained at all the years of repression and relieved at their end. The few sad paintings I did make in all the years I had lived and visited there had been such clandestine projects, undertaken in the ill-lit, poorly-ventillated cramped quarters of my bedroom, or angled precariously between the wall panels to opportunistically capture a slice of natural light during peak daylight hours, all the while offending the stern modern lines of the house. They too were all gone now, the tawdry things.

This clear and blank space was undoubtedly a factor in my being able to finish a painting in three days, lightning fast even for me. It was a liberating experience which helped unlock the other liberating dimensions of the trip. It was so liberating that I didn't even take offense when my mom asked me "how many more coats" it would take before I was done. Since I don't live there and she doesn't define my life, I can laugh at the English slippage like any stranger would have.

Here's what a 10-hour painting looks like:

Before the beginning

Let's set parameters, if only for this preliminary step before things become involved and run away from the original intent.

This is going to be a repository for events and a forum for issues that I deal with this coming year, between my thirty-fifth and thirty-sixth birthdays. There's so much changing, gelling and revealing itself right now that for the first time in years I feel that keeping a record of the process is in order. I am single again for the first time since late 2002. That's over six years. In a way it's back to square one romantically, but it's also (hopefully) the end of the dry runs. This is where I need to start to really focus on what I'm going to do next, not just romantically, but in terms of career, location, financial situation, everything. So I'm keeping the selection of topics an open one in the expectation that I will be dealing with it all, to some degree or another this year.

Finally, because it has been so long since I've written anything more than emails, this will be a year-long exercise in finding my voice again. I'm quite curious to find out how it has changed since I was 20.