The household god

Here is the guy I made to protect our new home-is it Lares
(the Roman/Latin name for the god of the household)?

Packing Packing Packing

Still packing, believe it or not-the studio has been one big nightmare to box-I find it hard to fathom that I've been packing and throwing things away now for almost two years: first, my parents' place and now my studio. A large portion of the work here I have only myself to blame for-I've been accumulating stuff since I've had the place. Wow, wouldn't it be great to make it disappear-my fantasy would be to arrive in NM with two suitcases. But, I am my Father's child and this will never be.
As I've already promised myself, I'll be shuffling off even more stuff after we get to the SouthWest. I simply don't have the strength to let it go presently...knowing this is frustrating in a purely practical sense-but somehow, it just can't be helped.
There is a cut-off date at this point: we have hired a mover (although we can cancel and modify this date) to come for the stuff on September 10-11...
Below are shots of the second floor and the first-there is still a lot of stuff to pack, but I can definitely see my progress-what's that line? After this, I'll never move again!
BTW, this move breaks with the long-standing Skrips tradition of never budging/never moving once a place is found...

Dear Diary,

Sure has been a while since I wrote to you. 

Life as I know it has changed a bit. Presently, I'm packing up both studio and home and moving to the southwest-to an area a bit south of Santa Fe, where the tarantulas roam.

New Mexico will be my new home-or hacienda, as it were. 

I won't try and fill you in on the whys of this move-let's call it a conscious effort to stop the growth of roots under me here in NJ. Almost a lifetime spent here is plenty- I'm ready to go. I can hear my parents rolling around down there, asking me why the hell I want to go and do this….

The shedding of excess goods (and, trust me, there is plenty of excess), shifting of daily-used objects and tools, and all the subsequent packing following has left my life upside down. Going to a part time job has been my one source of real order in the topsy-turvy mayhem I've created.

What is starting to really tell on me, what has started to really grind is not doing any artwork for over a month now. I knew that I'd miss it and couldn't imagine how I'd get through this time. Unfortunately, there is more of the same in store: the earliest I figure to be able to do any work is mid-September-and that's if everything goes smoothly, without any hitches. 

There has been a feeling of loss of identity. This, coupled with all the sentimental items I've had to sift through (I have mounds of stuff from recently emptying my parents' house, never mind all the things I've saved and stored because it never seemed right to discard them), has been wearing on me rather visibly the past few days. I can't pull off any marathon days-my emotional state simply will not allow it. Besides, the heat of the season and the range of the nature of the job (between jaggedly emotional and so boring you feel as if your brain were being sucked out) also create some serious barriers to working very long hours.

In theory, I thought that I'd seek some sort of fulfillment by doing small paper paintings at home. But the reality has been that I'm way too tired to function even on a simple level, never mind at a creative one.

The dog has kept me going-he disappears at the right times, but also lets me know when we've been too long at a certain task. Yesterday, I packed seven boxes, ripped up more high school drawings, chucked out more superfluous family photos, disassembled a motor-driven machine in order to pack it and made a trip to the dumpster, "losing" six bags of garbage and discards. The work goes on, even though it's tough to see any real progress as my pace is so slow.

Milestones

On Sunday, it will be a year since my Mother passed away. It is also a sad day for the people of Japan-a day of remembrance for all the dead who lost their lives during the horrific earthquake.
I visited my Mom in the hospice that day-she slept during the whole visit. I brought a crossword or two for us to do together which was wanted just the day before, when she was bright and almost cheery. She died later that night, Cara (my ex-wife) by her side. When Cara called to give me the news, she was a bit taken aback that I would not come to be by my Mother's side. I didn't have the strength. I guess you can figure why I've never visited their grave.
My Dad passed a little less than three weeks before-I was there when he died. I don;t know if he knew it, but others have assured me that he did. I have mildly cursed him through this year as I've been getting rid of his vast stockpile of stuff. It has taken me that long.
Tomorrow, I put their house up for sale, the house they lived in most of their adult lives. The plaque my Dad made reads "July 31, 1948". The house holds their story, but not mine. I dunno why I've never felt tied to the house-maybe that will all change now as I go through the motions of turning it over to strangers. Much like a near-death episode, will all that I've experienced there now flood back over me in final remembrance?
Although I suppose they lived long, healthy lives, those lives still feel like they were far too short. The lesson here is to live the days like they were your last-right now I hear Joplin belting out "git it while you can...".

Do you want to reset your password?

Jeezus-after spending 15 minutes trying to recover my password for this ULTRA HIGH SECURITY blog, I'm all spent-I can't even remember what it was I wanted to write about-I even hesitate to publish this rant, but, what the hell.
Don't y'all feel as if this password thing is almost akin/parallel to the latest trend in ultra-sanitation? We can wash and wash-all it does is make us more susceptible to infection. Seems like the more we block our "virtual" doors, the harder it is to get in-it's almost as if we're leveling the playing field and having as tough a time as the bad guys to access what we (in theory) already own. I'm also finding this true fior banking-why am I being charged to take out my own money? If you want to see how this works, simply make ANY sort of transaction over the new wunderkind, the bank called Paypal. Not only is interest collected on your money, but any movement you cause within your account makes the bank more money.
In the true way of the curmudgeon, I eventually see sites charging fees for changes we make to our passwords. So not only will we invest our precious time with these "essential" and virtual padlocks, we'll soon be paying for what we didn't even want in the first place.
Doesn't sound too preposterous to me, considering how much I've got to pay the bank to hold my money. Stuffing the cash in one's mattress might not be so far-fetched, after all.

Annoying Pets (Pests?)

King Johnny does this funny thing: I'm crouched down, squatting to find something on the ground or using the only clear surface in the shop (yep, the floor), he comes over and forces his head under my arm. He then proceeds, one paw at a time, to stand on my supporting leg-to get as close to me as possible. I've never had such an affectionate dog. Hopefully, he'll never try and bite me as we seem to be head to head a lot.

He is one of the worst distractions in the studio: If I'm doing that artist thing of staring at a piece, he'll be at a right angle to the artwork, staring up at me. Truly disconcerting. I wish I could tell you that I'm able to ignore him-tain't so. He's what I remember some little kid calling his pooch: pesky pal.

Emptying the last of the Verona house at a fever pitch. I've been selling stuff on Ebay and using the towns Bulk Garbage Day to its fullest advantage. The same guys who were taking scrap metal from the basement said that they wanted the furniture and that's a load off my mind-just to drag the stuff out of the house was getting tiresome. There's still a lot of stuff coming out of the basement, but I can now see most of the walls of the house-believe me-that's quite an accomplishment.

Distracted by so many things these days, my sleeping patterns have been messed up and I'm getting a bit more acquainted with Old Man Insomnia. Sucks, but at least I feel as though the causes are transparent-lists of stuff to do and more lists of stuff to do. I'm surprised that I can actually function in the studio, but have to say that much of my time there has been more mechanical than exploratory. That's ok for now-much like the insomnia, I'm treating it as a temporary condition.

Made a lamp for the light show that Chris Giffin and I will curate out at the Zeek gallery, but I'm not 100% happy about the thing. It's one of those pieces that you know you could modify-you know it needs something, but time (and probably my compromised attention span) has not allowed for it.

Cleaning house

As you may or may not know, I lost both of my parents early in 2011. Since that time in March, I've been emptying their house, getting it ready to sell.
Recently, I found a couple guys who offered to buy the “contents” of the house- only what they wanted - as opposed to them cleaning the place whistle-clean. I went ahead and took money from them and told them to have at it. Now I'm left with the remainder, the dregs of what was not wanted and/or could not fit in the trailer. I have mixed feelings about doing this, but one thing is for sure, it was the best compromise between going at it piecemeal by myself and lighting a match to the place. I made this decision to save some of my sanity and a lot of my energy.
Dad was a hoarder, Mom a saver, so they collected excesses of stuff-items that were worth keeping, but not in the ridiculous quantities I found in the house. I'll spare you the details and at the same time assure myself that it could have been much worse. To their credit, they amassed a small fortune in goods and could have withstood many catastrophes, especially ones that deprived the rest of the civilization of New Jersey of canned food, surfoam planers, or fishing reels! I had always excused them in that they were the children of the great depression and this was the reason for their crazy excessive collections. Now, as I have learned from prominent sources, this is only an excuse for hoarders. So my parents were more nut-jobs than worthy savers… it's good to know I come from superior stock.
In going through the house in the past year, I have gotten better, read tougher, in choosing what gets pitched and what remains, either to sell, to donate, to keep or to incorporate into art...At first, my reasoning was that any excess would sell at the flea market. But as I have changed my perspective on this (I no longer enjoy flea markets so much, at least not as a seller) and as the pile of stuff grew bigger and bigger, more stuff has seen the inside of the garbage can.
But I digress. What I meant to talk about was the sadness that surrounded me (which was not really present almost the whole time I was cleaning the house on my own) as the door of the trailer of the "contents buyer" closed. It hit me like the cliche: An overpowering wave of sorrow came up as I was driving back to Blairstown. Uncontrollable tears put me on the side of good old Route 80. I grappled with getting back my control, but I could have idled there for quite a while-those waves kept coming and I feel as if I could have cried out the whole past year, washing my parents into their graves. The dog sat watching me, knowing, as dogs do, that this was a time to simply be there-After a while, coming up and calmly licking my face. Just once.