{ ... flawed ... }

I had a box of paintings returned to me last week. It had been almost a year since I'd seen them ... long enough to become artifacts of consciousness, like bookmarks for ideas ... these thoughts and emotions marked into them, in colour and in line ... successful or not, they still held the memory of my ambitions for them, my hopes. In a way it's like coming across an old box of your favourite toys, and remembering all the stories you made up for them.

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More memory layering: the front of my studio door. I am a compulsive collector of imagery and scribbler of ideas, all these notions and picture-flashes assembling like clusters of pins in my thinking ... now if I could only line them up in some semblance of order, make them march and sing along to the sustained thought of a novel ... but I'll be a short-story writer to the bitter end.

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Meanwhile, my blue kangaroo has gone to live in Ottawa. Happy birthday, Catherine!