A cramp in my hand after three hours of painting details. Tightness in my forearm.

Old hydrangea blossoms fade to pale grey-green, to jade, with faint golden hairlines at the edges. Others fall off and are replaced by tiny brown seed pods with two horns each.

The head of a reed is held within its stalk. The stalk ends, and feathery seed-bearing strands emerge. Some spill out through a split in the reed: flesh out of constraint. Flesh pouring over tops of stockings, or else a flash of thigh through a walking slit.

Have I been too long alone, that grasses grow sexual?
Don’t kid yourself. Grasses have always been about sex. Or rather, a-sex. Self and self and wings in the air, masturbation with a bestial kink.

I noticed the morning gone all into these paintings of last year’s growth. Not wasted. I pinned them to my wall and reveled in them.

I have noticed that to create can feel godlike:
“There was no thing, and then I took action, and now there is a thing. There was only matter, and now a form. Only idea, and now there is art. All by the work of my hands.”

The pleasure of looking at a painting of grass is mixed with satisfaction, and different from the pleasure of looking at grass. Building my layers of illustration, some need is fulfilled which is more than I knew of when I sat down to draw.

What is this? I don’t want to get too mystical on you, but in creation we transcend our basic matter. We taste a feeling closer to holy. I suspect this is why we have babies.

Or, is it the reverse? Is this strange elation in creation a mirror of procreation, the urge to immortality? Am I afraid to die? Searching for a legacy to survive?