Sisyphus Revisited Again and Again

So the last fall ended with a sixty foot wall along the bluff and a sloping incline of stone running up the bluff surrounding an oak tree and stair-stepping its way up.

 The winter locked up the shoreline with ice-dunes and the destructive winter storms were checked by the dunes. In all of the years I have lived here I have never seen the dunes this high. Easily 20 feet mounds. This photograph was taken from the top of one of the dunes.

During the Spring I spent most of my energy just working upward. This photo was taken in April as I was making some serious progress upward . I kept going pretty steadily all summer. Significantly higher than this photo records.

 Fall 2019 storms began to wreak havoc on a regular basis. The sixty foot wall disappeared in sections and was regularly replaced only to be washed away again and again. I was just desperately trying to keep the oak.

 Finally, in an act of liquid malice the lake just absolutely pounded the shit out of the bluff and took that oak and about a half dozen larger trees along the shore and swept them away like so much chaff and left only the structure that stepped up the bluff.

 In one final act of destruction another storm sucked out a huge chunk of the bluff and everything came down. It is hard to imagine the force of these storms and what they are doing to the shoreline here.

 And then Sisyphus started again...I have yet to go down to see if the first storms of 2020 have swept this new start away, but what are new years for?

La Vie

The new year has started and I have survived another year of Trump. It is hard to lay low under all of that stupidity, malice and indecency. The passing of the solstice always gives me hope though. The days get longer, there is more light and I like to believe that metaphorically is going to be true of the future. 

I had surgery on my right hand in November and I have been rehabbing it aggressively since then. Dupuytren's Contracture, a genetic condition which in my case affected the tendon of my little finger. My first surgery, my first stitches, my first time under anesthesia...in general it was a pretty interesting experience. One of the surgeons took a photo of the hand while it was opened up, which I had him send to me. So here is my most recent self-portrait. My hands are the middle pair. Two students modeled for the top and mother's hands are on the bottom. She also has Dupuytren's, but never had the surgery. This was my last painting of 2019.