On 1 and 2 Apr I was still making abstract paintings (see below) the watercolour drying while I read a book or watched TV I realised on 3 Apr that all this working was leading to a new kind of anxiety related to the sense of loss I felt at all the abandoned years, I was neglecting myself not brushing my teeth not showering every night the sense of shame due to the loss – was it my fault was I too weak not to stand up to my father, what a petal and yes snowflake – making me punish myself as a proxy for punishing him, he was dead these ten years oh God I exploited this sense of abandonment (even when he was alive he was never patient with me) in my artmaking, looking for ways to create drama, something we all need we manufacture it when it’s absent it makes us feel wanted needed real.
I skip a couple of weeks, during one of which I was completing 2022 series of paintings and looking after Ming as Omer had Covid. Then I got Covid, though not very badly at first. I took the RAT on 17 Apr in the evening, having made it successfully down the road to the pharmacy. Overnight it was difficult as I had an elevated heart rate for extended periods of time. Probably got to sleep at 10pm and got up at 4am and made pu-erh tea which is mild. I didn’t want to have too much caffeine in such an isolated situation tho I thought about making coffee for an instant, abandoning the idea in favour of what I thought was a less vigorous morning drink.
Being upright and plugged into the internet helped keep my heart calm, and the palpitations that had been bothering me were gone by 4.20am by which time I was set up in front of the computer. Lying in bed I had thought about calling an ambulance but it’s such a rigmarole and in any case I knew what had to be done, promising myself to go back to the pharmacy when it opened to get medication to offset the virus.
While I was sleeping my daughter sent me a message of encouragement, but what I mostly took comfort from is that Ming’s pregnancy hadn’t failed due to her infection. As I was going to sleep I thought about this aspect of my life, and it gave me a core to pin my hopes on, a fulcrum upon which my dizzy world might sensibly turn. Adelaide’s news – that the child she was carrying would be a boy – also provided structure for part of my difficulties tho regarding the gender of the child either way I didn’t have a preference. I spoke with Basia about these things when I got up we talked for about an hour until 6am covering a range of topics from ‘The Bold and the Beautiful’ to her former mother-in-law.
I coped with the intricacies of the discussion without losing track of threads of conversation so evidently brain fog wasn’t a problem. The next night was better and I slept for abt 12 hours with a break for food at 2am. The following night I went to bed at about 7pm and slept right through to 5am. On one of these days I spoke with my psychiatrist about the tea and he advised me to cut down so I found a packet of caffein-free chai a houseguest had left and had some of that on 19 Apr. Then at the pharmacy when picking up my antivirals I bought more similar blends so I’d have in stock something that I could add milk to.
Yukiko got the security camera installed on 20 Apr (see pics below) and said she now feels safe also with the dog Epo who barks whenever someone comes to the front door.
The feed goes online then to Yukiko’s phone so she can see remotely if someone comes up to the house from the street. There had been a spate of attacks on women in Tokyo which had prompted her to ask for help, and I paid for this security upgrade.
I sent Yukiko some items I’d had framed locally at a different framer from normal. I sometimes use a local framer if there’s an urgent job that needs doing, in this case I didn’t want to have these delicate paper artworks sitting around the house and potentially getting damaged.
This artwork has a bull theme and it’s dated 2009. It’s by Rozee Cutrone who swapped some things for some of mine earlier in the year. I packed it up using an old box I got from one of the March garden pots picked up on the northern beaches in Ensign. I also packed up some paintings of mine that’d been framed at the same time (see below).
I’m not sure who will get these, if my daughter will want them (she’s really into zodiac) but they’re on the way now. Packaging for the pictures came also from the storage room downstairs, I have some old cardboard that is just sitting there and cut some of that up.
It’s good to recycle.
I got the message on 27 Apr that the packages had arrived in Yokohama and that the paintings look different in real life than they do online. By this time I’d spoken with the framer about her schedule and she promised to come out with more things the next week. Simon had also settled the booking for the Art Centre of Sydney for a group show including me so I sent out messages to all my friends hoping they’d attend the opening.
Ming’s situation hadn’t changed so I was immensely happy – it settled in my bones – that her pregnancy was going ok. I dropped off some things at her place on the 27th including food and some of Omer’s documents that had been stored in my front room. Omer met me downstairs on the street when I arrived in Ensign and I handed over the bags then drove home.
For the art show I paid the gallery’s fee in advance planning to get the other participants – Simon Kahn, Billy Lake and Bruno Valente – to pay me back their share, it was easier to do it this way so that the gallerist didn’t have to wait for all of us to get money organised separately.
Simon said he’d come over on Saturday to discuss the show as we still had to agree on a theme and after a short discussion we came up with ‘Colour as a Plot Device’. Over the next couple of days I didn’t do any painting and instead focused on choosing what works to include in the show.
I tested negative on 30 Apr, it had been 14 days since testing positive the first time and I was relieved to finally get a better result. In fact I’d gone out in the morning to do shopping and bought RATs at Chemist Warehouse on Botany Road because I didn’t have any unopened kits when I woke up. I’d sort of planned to go to a show opening on Sunday afternoon but in the end I stayed home sorting through paintings which I laid out on the dining table in order to see them better.
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