Body Life + Linoprinting, & "curiosity and spring and childhood"

I haven't looked closely at my Camino sketchbooks in years, until now that I am loosely following Marz as she walks.
So I'd forgotten the Day of Injury I'd recorded---when, among other things, I'd tripped over a log at night on the way to the toilet... I had to laugh.

 

vs.

 
A huge lesson I learned on Camino was:

YOU ARE A BODY.

I knew that?
Sort of . . . but in the way a member of an industrialized, computerized society would know it.
You go camping... you go for a hike, and then you get in a motorized metal box that weighs 3,000 lbs. and moves you 25 x faster than your feet.

Camino was 6 weeks of Medieval Speed, never getting in anything with wheels, not even horse-drawn, and walking with dozens (even hundreds) of people traveling at the same speed.
After coming home, I thought, Is it any wonder we're anxious? 
Our modern minds may overlook them, but our animals bodies register the speed demons...

II. Car Shopping Day!

Cars are so great though:
bink took me in her wife's car yesterday to do Big Errands in Big Boxes, all in one nearby suburb.
I LOVED IT!

Wanna hear my List of Stuff? For anthropologists of the future...

First. I've been happy with how I was eating in the cold weather, but now it's too hot to cook (I don't have a microwave and I hate to turn on the stove for long and make the little window a/c chug so hard)...
So I've been having days where I live on ice cream and Bloody Marys...
OMG no.
So, I bought a microwave at Target. I didn't want to buy a used one we get donated to the store--used radioactive machines scare me--and it's crazy how cheap some new stuff is. I got the littlest one, and it was on sale for $60.

Then we had  lunch at Q-Cumbers. You know this chain? It's a giant salad bar, with everything from spinach to Jell-O, with a hot-food bar too. A wee little bit disturbing... it's basically a trough, but I loved the ice cream bar!!! They have fresh bananas, and I made a banana split.

Next, Trader Joe's for microwavable! groceries--I actually asked a stranger who was buying lots of frozen foods what she recommended, and now I have [... I blush] ...frozen cooked brown rice.
It's organic! [eye roll]
Also, sandwich makings.
I'd given up eating flour this past winter (in an effort to reduce carbs and avoid diabetes), but now in the hot weather, sandwiches are a Food Group. I got Ezekiel bread made with sprouted grains...
So I hope I will eat something besides sugar and vodka now.

III. "Never Cut Toward Your Other Hand" (lino-cutting advice from GZ)

And... the MOST BEST THING:
I got a Speedball lino printing kit at Dick Blick! I get overwhelmed with all the choices available, and this is a basic way to start.
STARTING is the magic.

Flicka Stripe and I unboxed the linocut kit this morning. The girlettes say they'll help: "No art about us, without us."
NOT that they are political about it, not at all--they are just eager bunny cupcakes!

I watched a utube about lino carving/printing---as I remembered, it isn't too, too difficult... if you take care... (Not my strong suit.)
The main thing though is the design/drawing you start with, so I'll work on that first.

I was thinking of making girlette calendars for 2024, but twelve good prints may be over ambitious. I'm cutting back my expectations, to start anyway, to creating a Christmas card...

IV. When Mary Became a Parade Balloon

Also, there is another parade to prepare for--but luckily not for a month. They want to do the Assumption, August 15:
"When Mary became a parade balloon", they say.

Reading blogs, especially reading the comments, I've really registered how much many people hate (dislike/ disdain) religion.
And who can blame them?

I was just talking to a friend, and Handmaid's Tale came up, and Christofascim. It's an evil truth that religion provides fuel for that side of humans--making it seem like our short-sighted drive for power, etc. is divinely approved.

(This article addresses the "naïve... but widespread" Western belief that Buddhism is exempt:
nytimes.com/2018/03/05/opinion/buddhists-violence-tolerance.html)

It's ironic, of course, because religions of all stripes teach against those ... um, what modern brain science would call Cognitive Biases--the ways in which we fool ourselves and trip ourselves up.
"I can eat this banana split/drive this car with no consequences."
Yeah.
No.

We just will cut toward our other hand. Religion or no. Belief is not the same as behavior.

I'm sad that when religion gets used for evil, we lose many delightful insightful fairy tales––e.e. cummings "curiosity and spring and childhood" -–such as Mary (Jesus' mom) rising to Heaven like a hot air balloon.
It's like our dreams of flying.
How fun is that?

Well, no fun at all if it's forced on us accompanied by shame and fear.
BUT the girlettes don't feel any of that, they see through it all like it's nothing, which to them it is.

Some people, religious and otherwise, know---Damn everything but the circus!
BELOW: "u u are a tiger" Sister Corita Kent's 1968 serigraph ("a fancy term for silkscreen print") of e. e. cummings's quote:

"At the very thought of 'circus', a swarm of long-imprisoned desires breaks jail. Armed with beauty and demanding justice and every where threatening us with curiosity and spring and childhood, this mob of forgotten wishes begins to storm the supposedly impregnable fortifications of our present
e.e.c."

See her whole Circus alphabet print set here: peculiarmanicule.com/damn-everything-but-the-circus... a slipcased edition of Damn Everything But The Circus, by Sister Corita Kent, 1970.