7/17

a rogue wave...
not just once,
but twice,
hit me while i was painting...

a rogue wave?
a wave that comes out of nowhere
a wave that does not fit the patterns of the waves
that came before
or
the waves that follow
it's bigger, stronger and more powerful
and it brings with it a huge rush of sand
and when it hits my "studio"
it fills my paints with sand,
it embeds sand in my books & blocks of watercolor paper
it soaks everything
with salt water
and it tries to carry off my brushes
and one of them
deposited this truck
in the middle of everything

clean up is tedious
everything needs to be carried up to the house
a little at a time
you can't pack it all up
it needs to be delicately handled
the sand has to be brushed out of the spines of books
and off the surfaces of pages,
it needs to be cleaned out of the paint
and washed out of the brushes
the paper needs to dry
and be flattened
and anywhere possible
the salt water needs to be neutralized by clean water
and it takes days
and many things get ruined...
but
one carries on