This is the most recent painting. It's my 13th. It looks a bit better from a distance. I am slowly improving. Wrote two drafts of poems yesterday as well. Trying to type up manuscript #4, but procrastination has come. Will type two poems this week. That's my goal. I have a title for the fourth collection. Scared mostly about finding a publisher for #3 and #4, but pleased that I have written so much in the last year.

Thinking a lot about compassion for myself. And others. Thinking about the poems of Alfred Corn (Contradictions) and Robert Creeley (Earth). All alone in cyberspace. Thinking about anonymity as a poet, but more so how I am learning some things about letting go of ego. Just beginning, but starting where I am. It is difficult to let go of ego, to move on towards joy. But that's where I want to go.

I think this is my 12th painting.  I was going to take a class in painting with acrylics, or 6 classes at the Active Adult Center in Wheat Ridge, but it will have to wait until later.

Here are my sunflowers. They need more work than I thought. I think this is the 9th or 10th painting and people say I am too hard on myself-- in general of course. So I wish I'd added more petals, but it's okay. Will try to add more detail to purple flowers which are supposed to be morning glory.

Here are two more paintings I did at the Living Arts Co-op

http://www.livingartsco-op.com/

I'm still enjoying painting. I'm a beginner, and I'm too hard on myself!!!

A color mess! Ugh. Well I need to buy more paint and use the color wheel thing. This was an atrocious day of painting. LOL!

At least I did something creative. I think this may be a sign from the universe that it's time to go back to writing.

Here's the most recent painting I've done. Still needs a lot of work. A friend said not to re-do parts, but I want to do so. It's my 8th painting. The seventh one was so bad I plan on painting over it.

Talked to a friend tonight who used to belong to a radical Chicano group called The Crusade. Very interesting stuff. Often with radicals comes hypocrisy.Not that everyone in that group today is a radical, but wanting to help an abstract conglomeration rather than real people is lame. Wanting to help only a certain type of person is also lame, especially when this regards gender or socio-economic standards (ie: only helping or interacting with people who went to Harvard or some other top notch school or are well situated geographically.) Lots of support for Latino men, little support for Latinas. It's often unconscious too. I'd like to continue interviewing Latinas because we should be in the forefront, not the background. I am interviewing some women now, but want to do one more round after that and have kindly been offered a venue which could help give Latinas some more visibility.