31: The Last August Yesterday

... (fell out of bed): shaved: ate coffee: read emails.

Hustled any business.

Hustled off to the studio and harried a piccy or such.

Hurried to the pub for a beer -

Home: ate: DVD or not.

Went to bed ....

AGAIN

Again BUT not merely another yesterday.

The End of Summer Public Holiday with a gust of winter amongst the sheltering smokers huddled in holiday scanties, freezing our glowing tips off.

A Monday off is Monday delayed, a disruption cramping the week; an extra Sunday in for domesticity, out on the razz or for extra-special shopping. Service and show-biz are in full swing and so too are artists fitting in a quiet day's work. I fretted quietly on what to do next, not working.

Of a Monday, a Monday of all days to wrap this sequence up with ...

August Yesterday no: 29 or 30

Mooched around trying not to think about this blog and resigned yesterday to doing just that.

Sad, or so I felt it to be.

Tomorrow's will be the last - I am certainly not going to be thinking of an August yesterday on the First of September - Do I try to go out with a yesterBANG?

And that para above is exactly what I didn't want to be writing (even though I asked the questions yesterday)  The Academic talked 'diaries' at me and we maundered over loving lawyers, The Tempest and 'reading blocked'.  Is writing or drawing the MAGIC of clarification?  He speculated that I was doing these posts to cure a 'writing block'.

These posts were not the sort of daily where expressions of hope for the future had a part.  I am, after all, writing in and of the very future of yesterday.  I wanted to avoid the ' I ran out of yoghurt - bought food ' sort of thing as well, but tripped straight into the trap.

Of Yesterday: to avoid the rage or triumphs of the present, or, to put those rages and triumph into recent context.  I find that Time is not so kind as to allow this caprice.  Rage endures even while triumph fades.

I might have been brave enough to attempt my first idea - to write a daily piece about 'the day before yesterday'.

Yesterday Dissipated

MY desktop cleared of one set of bossy .pdfs and there are new ones poking between the regular files, applications and folders.

I skirt them warily yesterday - and there are new meaningful pages bookmarked on my browser to be considered.

I'm running out of puff, painted-out for now and have lost the counting of the number of yesterdays - according to my reckoning yesterday's yesterday post should have been no.26, but blogspot numbered it as 27-

Puzzled to have missed something somewhere. I'd lost a day-behind.

( Today's yesterday is number ...

Oh, never mind. )

The last Saturday of the month and I felt demob happy, the end is nigh, nearing - I'll soon be August blog-free, off the net, done and FREE.

Sad in a way that it's coming to an end. The routine has become, like all my daily routines, necessarily routine. What will I do without thinking about yesterday every day?

'This is all about Yesterday' (approx 120 w) div style="text-align: center;" span style=" font-weight: bold;"titledivTRY THIS FOR THE MONTH OF AUGUST 1.2.3.4.5.6.7.8.9.10.11:

12.13.14.15.16.17.18.19. 20. 21.22.

23.24.25.26.

'Two Pins' for Yesterday

Blokery cont. - drinks with once-but-no-longer GrimT; spotted sat alone queening it on G&Ts at the biggest table in the The Queens Head, Inn or Tavern. I'm surrounded by Queens pubs, one called just 'Queens'.

From his recent-poverty, rich GrimT turns now to mockery of mine and my efforts.

The great ale in that pub soured, and it is a very strange pub - not straight, not gay, not family not even faye; it's style is weekend casual, scruff professional - all week - which is weird and why I meet GrimT there.

I'd draw a line under the guy; I've tried but can't be mean enough.

He's harmless, clever and also beyond-help worldly-stupid and he drives me to derangement. Now his ship's in I wish he'd sail away happy ...

That was about it: not mean to purpose yesterday.

Returned fuming not at mockings but the waste, the earlier satisfaction at grinding out the tasks of artist's statement and jpegs quite dissipated.

(Giving Yesterday Time)

I wanted a fight ... agitated, couldn't settle to anything and least, the dark art of furling umbrellas.
Honed artist's statement for hours circling around something half-decent. From too short to too long, and cutting back to length left me with tatters and shreds.
Too edgy to cook, too edgy to eat, too rattled to read; fiddled in Photoshop but all thumbs and took off to the framer. The frames are perfect but need small, tight, fiddly finishing. I'd have bollocked that up.
It has been a very blokey week and I wanted to smash something, this computer for starters ... I want a fight.

yesterday done with

The month is coming together

Sourced good frames and pleased by that, relieved I don't have to make them.  Met C. on his huge bike as I crossed the wet road through jammed traffic.  Stood in the rain brolly and helmet domed swopping summer's news and phone numbers.
The Living on this Isle paintings are there.  They looked 'happy' on the studio wall and I can see nothing more to do to them.
My black eye has gone and quicker gone than I'd have thought.  The black line drawings, still holding me safely still in crosshatching complexities, crawl on in spare contemplative hours, and an end is in sight to the tyrannies of this August yesterday blog series.
D. wondered at the 'discipline' of a daily post and by that he thinks the effort mad.
A few forms filled; eyed up jpegs to format and fees to pay, and the month is run.
Drafted a blah-blah artist's statement which will have to be good.  So-so so far.

Given time Yesterday

Drunk many-many with BR. and ML. and for the first few drunk, we talked as normality prescribes.  Beyond that, the real drunk tuned in.
What were we like as adolescents; and yesterday, why we are there drinking then, the consequence of the common hell of our being pubescents together in an alien world of adulltry. (deliberately no 'e' even although adding an 'e' would make no odds)
All men become old men in pubs and we are and we could see it in our faces, watched it happening drinking around us and about to, given time.

'What a pretty women', I thought 100 times on the way home; the young oriental lady with the silver buckled shoes, of the blonde wearing specs in white pants.  Folk were aware that I look and write as they are wary, preen-hostile, when they see a draftsperson drawing or camera pointing.  Look.  A looking weirdo!
‘Freak’ some eyes dart alarm, 'don't portray me as a weirdo’.

floods and frames

THE yard up to the porch door was flooded by overnight rain.  I never heard it.  Never do hear crying or crises in the night or so I'm told crossly in mornings.

Swept at water and wrung and hung the mats, then fled.  The place could wash away for all I care.

I wanted to see if the studio had leaked; the roof is a sieve.  I've lost weeks of work, pounds and poundsworth to the elements.

All well.  The rain had lashed at the sound side, the gunnels had held.  Top floor studio, good height, great light, perishing in the winter, broiling in the sun, long-term secure but leaky - great space.  Cheap though, but considering - it would have to be.

Relaxed.

Varnished Living on this Isle pair; set up photo gear and snapped them.  Hunted hopefully through the old frames for three suitables for the Discerning Eye competition entries and failed to find any.  I'll have to make or buy.

I hate frames and not just 'hated frames yesterday'.  Hating frames is not a hobby.  I really hate those square-cornered, up-tight-fitting dust-free delicates.

This is all about Yesterday: No. 22

I WAS blissfully idle, idea free, event light, and non-momentous in any manner.
I knew and suspected that a day like yesterday would happen sooner or later.

I could have gone to church. I didn't. I could have bought something or painted something but didn't either. Or lay waste to the shrubbery - no.

I was bone idle, thoughtless, did little, and completely unmoved to inspiration in any direction. Bliss.

When I embarked on this 22 days ago I feared there would be blank yesterdays in the month, and I’d been warned:
If you are to do a daily, weekly or regular cartoon or address or post, it is vital to have a few pieces in hand to cover events; gaps in event, inspiration or concentration; and the pressures of time.
So I did. In eager, early keen moments of enthusiasm, I mapped out imaginary amalgam Yesterdays just in case the real one turned out to be too too dull.

I thought of using one.

so i write it down, stare at the words for hours, sharpen pencils, pet her spit clean cat, consider myself a moment, move on to other things, pace the floor, drink beer, tear butts off cigarettes, then watch matter and energy smolder a few inches from my face, yet not be destroyed; atomically sealed tight. you dig?

extract from Impervious by Botched Resignation

City-pastoral Yesterday

Saturday stubbly, breaking through the spider webs to sit outdoor, I notice that the grass has started to grow again.  I will need to plan for clearing my area of the summer growth.
Virginia Creeper, vines and ivy grasping and twining, are rioting towards the house.  The drought is over, and the seasons spiders are on the prowl indoor, and meshing up every flight path from wall to frond out.
MadMog passing through, battered one spider to death in a cat kerfuffle and was most proud of herself.   Not so well bred but she's too well fed to eat it.

Swung past the studio late afternoon and there, things were drying nicely so I didn't stay to watch.

Baled out half-way through a mawkish play about fighter pilots.  It was the dialogue breaking into verse that did for me.

Post Hoc yesterday - after this, therefore because of this?

nervy yesterday

- nervous before setting off for the studio - I don't know whether I'll like what I find there and I'm eager to be rid of the 'Living on this Isle' pair.  Of a sudden, their 'mood' has passed and I've had enough of them persistently not being finished and hanging around my neck.  I want them done and gone, for good or bad.

In the painting of a painting this is a good sign.  Maybe I've got it - quite probably not but in so far as it goes, this is as far as I'm going to get starting from here with what I've got, and so-be-it.

I don't know if they are finished or abandoned?

I don't know, I'll never know.  I'm the sob painting the wretched thing, not the anonymous plural 'one', who gets to look at it.

In the event I was more relieved by the fresh sight of them than I'd expected.  It seemed so obvious - either, a bit here-bit there, bit o'cleaning, wax / varnish - sign and photo; or, chuck 'em away and start again and I wasn't going to do that.

I did a bit here and a tight little blob there, and thought the next one (bigger than, better than) and had a Guinness-ey thirst brought on by S.'s new FB profile pic.  It was Friday and I hadn't had a drink for, well, some hours.  I'd had enough of painting and being parental, I wanted to watch women drinking in N1 or EC1, or N16 or anywhere over the rim of a glass.

Reminded to do Yesterday

M. woke me calling from his porch in NZ, on the other side of the clock 12 hour different, and quashed my hangover resolve to give up blog-a-yesterday for the day.

I was going to have a day off, but fibres stiffened by M.'s mockery and contempt for my feebleness in the shade of alcohol, laboured slowly into the morning remember-blogging the day before.

A good day not to do any damage in my studio and I realised the danger that this blog series would become a blog about blogging; along the lines of - what happened yesterday, mmm ... 'I wrote a blog about the day before.'

The mountaineer slept on and we breakfasted at noon.

He re-packed his fuming mound of ropes, wedges, harness, carabiners, nuts and screws and quickdraws and boots and shoes and chalk and bivi bag and guide books and camera and phone and wearing the cooler looking kit, shouldered it all, stuck helmet in a polybag and we headed out for his bus.

I pondered on which painting to donate to a charity auction in aid of the Pakistan flood victims. R. came through with the idea of giving one from our back catalogue as well.

J. the author HM, told me stories of spiritualists, then about the play she is co-authoring and of a loved old friend slipping into dementia.

18

I struggled at the studio nearly finishing two nearly finished paintings. Later after much circling, buzzed up ticked off and blinded, I left them as nearly finished with no damage done, which was a bonus.

Nothing so useless, nothing so aggravating, so compelling, niggling and plain-bloody-annoying as an unfinished painting getting in the way and demanding attention; it may as well not be there; half done is not done is nothing done and narking.

Yesterday: I decided today that I won't paint tomorrow.

Or, at least that's what I think we decided upon in a fuddle of tenses.

A second late night talking family-us, all that good gab and more.

no solution

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solution

Do you know? ... I'm going to take a day off.

I wasn't expecting visitations this August.

I wasn't going away, and whilst abandoned by the holidaying everybody-else, I'd dedicated the month to stuff ... a print project, this blog series and painting 'Living on this Isle'.

That should have been enough.

Domesticity has gone by the board.

My kitchen is calm - one filthy plate, one dirty spoon, one crusted pan - you get the idea; the rest, clean and cupboard stowed.

I know where I'm going and I go nowhere else. I can see my trails through the dust.

My dairy has emptied and I can wing it - in whenever, out for as long as - food on the hoof.

I've no-one here to talk AT me so I can talk to anyone.

Or so was the plan ... but the dust is raised, September is early and I ran from pillar to post painting as an after-thought.

Yesterday's Ruminations

The summer has been fine - y'know - occasionally mounting various women, but the end of August means September and all the shit starting again. The Academic.

It was fine, once I'd levered the charred remains of the handle from the bottom of the pan with an ice-axe. The Mountaineer.

Art - an unopened parachute that you didn't pack yourself.

The painting part of the day went well - hours of solid progress.

I liked that.

jim the collector?

deadlining

16 YESTERDAYS down with 15 more to do, I'm half-way through a blog-post-a-day for August. The project has made it a l-o-n-g fortnight and it is making for a longer month. Phew, and time was passing so quickly before and still the hours fly. Time slows as I write until so much is happening that I can't write fast enough.
Details I'd have forgotten or accepted in passing, impress themselves just in case I need them tomorrow when I write of today as yesterday.

Yesterday, neighbour's Mum and eldest Son argued long into the evening. He left the house in a slamming rush and she hurried after him. She must have got him for their raised voices came again, indistinct of word but the very music of rages and frustration.

Eschewing shades I brazened my black-eye, forging through the tourists at the Sunday market on the way to a short painting session. Sunday is a busy day at the studio.
Different folk paint at different times and I hear comings and goings, activities and unknown voices from studio doors set ajar I know only as locked fast in the week.

Neighbour MadMog slinked in for a bit of peace, to purr at me all the pussy-cat news. On R&R from the war next door.

Saturdays aren't yesterdays

or properly a day at all.

Dreary computing shopping cleaning accounting, calendar and rain.  J. to arrive here on Monday from mountaineering trashed and heavy with gear, and another J, HM the author was to come over later that evening for a 9 p.m. intimate, bottle, seminar, gossip and cackle.
I don't know how to square that ... can't cancel one and don't want to postpone t'other.  I have to plan a jaunt with god-daughter E. (11), and the old-lags from the alma mater are circling for a beer or several while it's summer quiet.  Huh, don't they know that while it's 'quiet', I'm busy doing a year's work in the studio - the only uninterrupted non-drinking time I get to have is Ramadan and when the trade is on holiday and the two coincide this year.  Family and Friends - who needs them!
'misery curmudgeon, you can't put that last in'
'sure I can, it's online only'

13th yesterday (Friday)

WHILST 'sharing' tea and a snack with Living on this Isle painting; thought that 'facts are fine, but interpretations are the problem.'

Don't shoot the messenger is fair enough, but it is the messenger who fails and not the medium.

Ruminating on that, mixed a complicated eau de nil then garnished with alizarin.

Black eye develops nicely under brow in spreading gorgeous bruise shades - prussian plus a touch of black, transparent base, carmine - edged out with white, dab of carmine again and chrome yellow. I would wear sunglasses to obscure my awful visage, but summer's yesterday here is dreary and dull and I'd bump into the architecture and suffer more damage.

Decide that my black eye is your problem not mine.

Google-translated texts for hours and set to reading The Tempest. Pondered on Caliban / Taliban post-imperialist guilt analogy and puneries.

R. goes to Morocco today (today) and we could have drunk to her departure but each too cross to. The Academic wonders if she thumped my eye - then wondered quietly aloud, some friend, that she didn't thump both of them.

Blame Game to Black Eye

COLLECTED funny looks and startled glances, and checking in a fisheye comfort mirror covering an underground corner, see convexly that I sport a very large nose, domed forehead, tiny receding ears and in the bendy perspectives, a blinking black eye and I've no idea how I got it.

I'd had no collisions and I can't remember jamming shades, finger or paintbrush into my face. Not thumped yesterday. Could it be abuse or self-abuse whilst sleeping? No. No sleeping since shaving and no black eye then.

Tough, gym-toned, fit looking dudes look edgy, check around the talent for harder and looked away.

I'm not going to pick a fight with them but they aren't so sure. Women look concerned. Perhaps one of their gender did it and I might turn nasty. Perhaps they want to mother me, perhaps not.

Where do you look when you've got a black eye? How do you look out of one? Brazen is hostile. Humble I don't do. Sorted you aren't. Cool is impossible. Victim? Sporty ... buggerit, chip out the frozen peas - got any concealer?

Yesterday's Game

Mixed it with an International standard Blame Game player on peak form.

A genius in truth.

I feel faultily innocent, and fault depends on who's doing the telling.

girlsonabeach.com

Yesterday Already

Another Yesterday to write about already. Yesterdays happen so darnedly quickly and so often. I was just beginning to relax and get smug about the day, to feel easy with an extra last, last glass when hey-presto, the clock hit all four zeros and today has an unblogged yesterday blog to write.

I'm going to try and do this before going to sleep and get out of here blog post free, blog done in the morning, which, I still think of as Tomorrow (but that above is about today and I keep on forgetting). This is So Self-Indulgent.

Okay, 'Nothing happened Yesterday,' that's it, I'm off to bed ... but no ... self-indulgence has it's responsibilities, it's self-whittled club to tumble on my toes.

HellsBells, what happened Yesterday?

So recently it was I can't have forgotten so soon, where's my list?

List lists tomorrow.

Where's yesterday's list?

Here it is ... and I see I didn't do any of it.

feisty yesterday

I got a handle on the 'Living on this Isle' paintings. After interruptions by black lines, fights, booze, indecision and disappointing printmaking, I saw them, and made the first considered marks - hitherto all random washes, dribbles and splots. I don't do so good with the random 'device'. I don't see random as well as I'd like to, but now I know what I'm doing, I can bloody-well get on and paint it.

I could see what is afoot and walked headstrong along the canal path defying cyclists and must STOP doing that - I will end up in a fight or in the water, or bitten by meandering dog just joining in the fun.

Nearing home as I passed their door, I remember Neighbour S who died. He brought me over a bottle of wine the night I was burgled.

Reaching the middle page, hit half-way in the Sketchbook Project!

http://arthousecoop.com/projects/sketchbookproject

ALL OF TODAY IN YESTERDAY

Today is pressing hard and I wan't to get out there amongst it. I can't think about yesterday this morning.

Might return to this fwd-slash that yesterday later today. (see Note)

I wonder if 'good stuff' isn't worth recording and I take good stuff too much for granted. Probably words for happiness are the hardest to find.

Happy - that will do.

Yesterday was too good to blog about and now Y. is slowing me down so gotta go.

Note: this is a blog series about 'yesterdays'.

A Yesterday Off

I thought I'd take a day off from the increasingly onerous task I've set myself of blogging about yesterday and do something else, like I don't know, like learn 1-10 in Turkish, or in compiling a 'previously on' omnibus edition of yesterdays into a 'This is all about last week' piece, or, have some fun for once.

Writing of Y. means starting each morning looking back. I thought I'd give it up.

Different as days are, they seem to conspire to be like one-another, to pass in a blur, to amount to something only by their accumulation of experience and progress. That dazzling day of transcendent moment makes it's own entrance and didn't show up.

But I needn't have worried.

I can write about sleeping.

Slept late, fell asleep in the tub as I thought about giving up - the yesterday blog not opening a vein, had a doze, listened to music and napped, ate and had a post-prandial snooze, woke myself up snoring as the movie ended and went to bed late, so started sleeping again earlier Today which doesn't count.

moving commas around

What did happen yesterday?

The day kept me amused, kept me busy enough. I was engaged by it. Y. made me mad, made me laugh, fed me and got me from sleeping to sleep okay, but what of it?

A trash bag burst and trailed garbage around. That peeved me ... underfoot, I see we drink that much coffee and eat that many eggs. Set out late and enraged, crossened afresh from writing up the day before that.

I glowered at pretty women passers-by instead of glowing. I am discreet about it. They ignore me either way. My temper improved as the day progressed.

So: glowered, passed the time of day and nattered, painted a bit, I wrote but in fact spent more time moving commas around; a bag split open, a light bulb failed and I ate more apples than I've eaten in a month. (2)

Was that it? Yes it is.

Grand Socco

that bloody yesterday

So raging that I could hardly wait for the hour hand to pass midnight to vent spleen on yesterday. R and I took the leap of faith at an ocean of experience and fell right in.

Our project isn't doomed, never say that, never think it, not 'til you really have to and not even then, no, but our project is in shambles and such is the solid, stolid main-course of the working studio week.

What a rigmarole and I blew S's ears flat telling him all about it.

The booze helped him bear it.

His water babe took him bowling, then in true Francis Drake style cast off to engage more brooding matters and left him on the quayside.

He was happy to wave.

about yesterday

A single purposed Wednesday of printmaking that made no prints but produced more printing plates to be printed.

Flapped about with stencils preparing proofing paper with painted background colour and left the lot to dry.

The Sentence of the Day had to incorporate the word 'plethora' and I practised with plethora of no panache before snapping out of it, and looking to the competition gave plethora best. Opened a bottle of wine, entered LA and I for Salon Art Prize online (hello Photoshop my old software mucker, pal, partner in crime, brill fiend friend from hell) and while paying entry fee, marvelled at my finances.

Midweek and not half through the program. There are paintings calling to be moved that linger nagging on hold. Wednesday was the 'why?' day and it felt whyish from start to finish.

palm print proof peeled off press and pinned

All about Tuesday

Cyprus J cut my hair and R didn't notice and if she didn't, was satisfied he'd done a good job. J had been to California for a family wedding and told me of it unstoppably on auto, jet-lag included.

Lots of Yesterday thinking about what happened the day before and getting mangled by time.

When do you write about yesterday?

Tomorrow silly. Or today.

Is note taking allowed?

No idea.

This is maddening, was maddening, is ... oh I give up.

I worried for S the Academic and his water-babe. No news. He's cradled on her swell or drowned for sure.

R studio sparkly cracking Moroccan jokes, and from having no clue what we were about, we now have too many ideas. Reflected late that her no-notice of haircut meant nothing what-so-ever.

This about Monday

Walking to the train I see that C's Kitchen is closing down and collected a momento mug while making farewell. C tried to press her cookbook on me but cookbooks and I never work out. I'm to lose sight of the two women who worked the shop. The striking blonde lost to Thailand's gain and lost too her saucy eyed colleague with the saucier figure who sat outside on breaks smoking into her phone, also blonde who always blanked me and last seen with floury hand marks wiped on her black clad behind, her hands I suppose how I imagine though. No good could come of me dating any cook. There are blondes and blondes after all as Chandler said but a fine source of studio food gone, and there, I set to dribbling colour on a pair themed 'Living on this Isle' and drew more black lines and varnished a printing plate during paint drying and thought phases. My 'scotch' sentence didn't get a mention, so piqued I did a sudoku. LA is back in town. Good.

This is all about Sunday

A loose wheel running amok and a prang in the pit lane enlivened the Grand Prix in Hungary, then FaceBooked and blogged a while. Wrote and entered a sentence containing the word 'scotch' (http://www.facebook.com/inasentence) and wandered out to get wine and see if I could spot S smooching with his water babe up on the hill. C came by later to show me his risque baking designs (but that's a secret) and drink the wine. We watched the brown summer thighs walking past headless and footless which with sky, is the only view my window offers.

This is all about Yesterday

I walked the canal route to the studio. Neighbour S has died suddenly and I thought that I hadn't known him well.

Very hot and close in the space, changed to work pants and bare top and threw carborundum grit at the printing plate R and I are making together. The image is a mess and neither of us know what's going on with it or whether we should be working together again at all. While waiting for the grit to dry fast I continued my drawing, the parallel strokes of black ink creeping slowly down the image. It is one of a pair - ink lines on colour fields. Eyesore and dehydrated. I met P waiting for the bus, he has a work in the Jerwood - third time lucky he said. Shopped in shops for wine and fishcakes then watched Three Kings in bleary fatigue.