Collage Paper?

I like engaging in what I think of as the 'exquisite tension' of working a crossword puzzle or writing a haiku, accepting and embracing the limits and working within them assiduously to bring into bloom what the constraints call for—a six-letter word for prehistoric monument, fourth letter m, for example, or using five + seven + five syllables to express a thought or feeling with tight precision.

Here at Lyme Camp:
• limits—plentiful
• assiduous effort—plentiful
• tension—plentiful
• exquisite—less plentiful, since exquisite is in direct one-to-one correspondence with my acceptance (or lack thereof) of limits!

Two days ago, I worked within the begrudgingly-tolerated limits—cursing them more than once—of a few minutes, a few tubes of paint, an old book, and my finger as a paintbrush.

Collage paper?

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Gratitude/simple pleasures:
• shoveling snow—purposeful, productive, practical exercise! fresh air! beauty every which way!;
• two surprise packages for me in the mail; and
• the grace of Meg's and my laughing in surrender last evening at the day's messy mix of foibles and accomplishments and rough edges and tendernesses and wooziness and failed efforts and vats of soup and indecision and tears and hugs.

Inexquisite Tension
playing with acrylic on a book page
abstract
2020