weathering the weather whatever the weather

i am developing an irrational superstition that the continued sunshine depends on my exercise routine. i skipped my run today for the first time pretty much since i started running (about a week into my stay) and by the afternoon the clouds had rolled in, after nearly two straight weeks of sunshine. i will have to test the theory by going for an extra long run tomorrow and see if there is a corresponding drop in the barometric pressure and local cloud cover. not sure what i will do if my theory holds true - i don't know whether i am ready for that kind of responsibility. if anyone finds out that i can control the weather by running (or not) i might become victim to all sorts of special interest groups. the tourist board (sunshine). farmers (rain). yacht-owners (wind). snow-plough syndicates (snow). the franco-inuit association for one-storey half-dome sustainable housing (blocks of ice). i can't keep all those people happy! wow, it's like spiderman says, with great power comes great responsibility.

i was thinking today that i should have one of those super-literate politically informed blogs where i comment in a witty and erudite way on the breaking news of the day, but then i realized that my only sources of news (literally) since i have been here have been:
a) emails from various people with third-hand comments about pigs in lipstick, hockey mums, and photoshopped pics of sarah palin in stars'n'stripes bikini with a rifle;
b) the sign outside the local Presse Forum newsagents, which mainly keeps me up to date on the prince of Monaco's honeymoon in China but does occasionally report more serious news (a fire in the nearby village of Bressuire last week, in which a family of five had to be evacuated from their home for several hours); and
c) head honcho occasionally wandering into class saying, well, bank of america/merrill lynch/washington mutual is going bankrupt, accompanied usually the same evening by an email from my pension plan manager/credit union, saying 'don't panic!! really!! everything's just fine!! leave your money right where it is!! sinking ship?? what sinking ship?!

the network plus etchasketch combination is too slow to go to any website that contains photos, which rules out most news sites, my french isn't good enough to manage an actual newspaper, and i don't have a radio, so for all i know the entire continent of north america is flattened in a nuclear winter and my nearest and dearest (hello nearest and dearest!) are emailing me from the comfort of the bomb cellar in the basement, subsisting on tinned baked beans and making up details about their daily lives so as not to worry me. hm. perhaps i should find a newspaper. hopefully a new yorker will arrive soon, although we have discovered a gap in the space-time-post-office continuum. parcels apparently _routinely_ take 9 weeks to get from AC to the west coast of the US, while postcards (multiple sources have confirmed) take three days. three days! it took _me_ about three days to get from California to AC, and it cost a whole lot more than an 85 cent stamp, that's for sure. there is an economist out there somewhere could explain this phenomenon, i am sure. we don't know yet how long it takes mail to get from the US to here - five minutes? three years? although the same gap in the space-time-post-office continuum resulted in a case of very nice wine being delivered to the studio today - with no name of either intended recipient or sender, apart from the winery. a mystery.

anyway. today in art news (see, i am thinking globally, acting locally)... i finished my drawing today, which means i have two days of the same pose left to do another drawing in something other than pencil (sanguine? charcoal? conte crayon? so many ways to make a smudgy mess on a piece of paper, so little time). it's ok. not great. the face looks like her, but somehow the head is not sitting quite right on the body, or is the wrong size relative to the body or something. i asked Head Honcho what i needed to do to fix it, and he went off for half an hour talking about planes and lines and tangents of light, made a few invisible marks on the drawing, and then said, 'right, well, i think you know where to take it from here' and then it was time for coffee break. in the afternoon, i was FOILED!! in my attempts at subterfuge and Real Painting- the teacher decided she was going to do a demo of Real Painting as several of us were wanting to jump in rather than wade through 3-4 days of preparatory studies. it is magic watching her paint, it really is, she starts mixing blobs of purple and orange and green and splodging them on the canvas, and you sit there for the first half hour thinking, nuh-uh, there's no way she can turn that into something, and then all of a sudden bing! it's krystle, on the page, right in front of you, not a hair out of place, sort of a lovely goldeny brown colour, not a splodge of orange or purple to be seen anywhere. it's also, i have to admit, slightly hypnotic in the literal sense - she's got this very gentle mellow voice, and there's this whole cycle of mix colour -> dip brush in oil -> dip brush in paint -> put one tiny blob of paint on canvas -> clean brush in solvent-> mix next colour (etc) that had me swaying on my stool and my eyelids drooping. perhaps hypnosis is all part of the program to make us paint better. when i count backwards from ten, you will awake and find yourself able to paint a masterpiece...

this evening was portrait night, and it was my turn to play model. at the risk of sounding self-centered, i really do enjoy sitting for drawing - it's the same feeling as when i was little having someone play with your hair, being paid attention to, but in a very non-demanding way; nothing is actually required of you other than sitting still and zoning out (yes! i can do both those things!) but you still get to feel the warmth of having people concentrating on you. and although i don't think i could sit still with my own thoughts for that long if i were on my own (well, maybe i could), it is really quite restful to literally not move for two hours, sort of meditative.

The teacher babysat M's two little girls so M could come to portrait night, and came up at the break to show us a drawing that the little one had done (miniM had been leafing through her little notepad, saying very seriously (in french) the teacher, now, what _did_ i do with that drawing for you? i can't seem to find it anywhere. again, she is three, and officially the cutest child in the universe.) anyway, since M started bringing home all these drawings and paintings of naked krystle, miniM's drawings have developed from the standard 3-year-old stick figure drawing (round head, triangle body, stick arms and legs) to the same figure - with breasts (!) because she wants to draw like maman. very cute.

sleep tight tout le monde, no bed bugs or four-inch spiders, etc., and write me emails! i love emails.