I'm not sure what I want to say about April, so I'll just try to quickly recount the things that stood out, good and bad. Overall, it was a beautiful month. I was so excited to go on walks and discover what was freshly greened or bloomed. I've enjoyed waking up to soft rain sounds outside my window, but some afternoons were spent anxiously listening to weather reports and packing a bug-out bag of all of my sketchbooks and a hacked Nintendo DS in case of tornado. I've had extremely satifying outdoor yoga sessions despite being harassed and tickled by carpenter bees and dripping with sweat in the evening sun.
I've been reading books and watching movies with tantalizing horrors, rich colors, and delicious nature imagery. The books I read in April were The Left Hand of Darkness, Between Two Fires, and A Midsummer Night's Dream (all for the first time), and they all left a distinct impression. We went to see Sinners and I loved the setting and the music. The characters were fun to get to know, and the way the blues and folk songs reverberated throughout the theater made it a very engaging experience. Since then, my fascination with folk horror has been reignited. Now I'm reading Harvest Home and we're watching The Wicker Man (one of our favorites) and reveling in the the May Day of it all.
I've also had some nights of overindulgence, drinking heavily and listening to music with Leo until the early morning hours, then regretting my decisions the next morning, despite the fun. We've had some frustrating family events and visits and conversations, but I felt more confident and self-assured than usual in my interactions. They were still awkward visits, but I felt less bothered by that than I used to be.
My stepdad used to make fried dandelions every spring when my brother and I were young, but I made them for myself for the first time this year and I loved the whole process. We planted our vegetable and herb gardens, and I'm really excited to tend them and maybe one day be able to make fresh salsa again! Though haven't had to water since planting a couple weeks ago, since it's been raining almost daily since then.
Early in April, I was working on these small digital 'nostalgia collages' that I was going to compile into a webzine about things that were important to me or a large part of my psyche as a child, and particularly around 1999 (when I was 10 years old). I was sifting through the internet and my old photos and papers uncovering all kinds of scraps of my childhood and dredging up some very old memories. It was super self-indulgent but also really satisfying trying to distill the essence of what I wanted to capture of that time. Anyway, the CPU died on that laptop, and I'm too broke to attempt a fix or to retrieve the files, so for now those collages are lost to time and space. It was really frustrating, but I can't help but think it's kind of poetic to have lost these artifacts of the past I was curating. Maybe it was just about the process, you know?
I still wallowed in some nostalgia to make up for my loss though. I finally figured out how to run old Purple Moon games, which I've been trying to do for years. I only ever played Rockett's New School, but I was obsessed as a child, and always wanted to find more of the games. I lived in the middle of nowhere (still do), and they weren't easy to come by. So now I finally get to play them all at age 35, and of course they're kind of terrible but I still think they're so magical. I love sifting through everyone's lockers and seeing all their little knickknacks and ephemera, hearing what changes for them over the course of the game. And I finally got to go to that halloween party :').
I'm really inspired to make an interactive art project of my own that has some Purple Moon and/or some Sierra Entertainment DNA in it, which I'm currently brainstorming. I was also inspired by playing LOOM for the first time - I fell in love with it immediately. I love finding DOS games that are new to me, and I've since downloaded so many more, but LOOM is so pretty and unique. I listened to the audio drama beforehand, I downloaded the Book of Patterns. I took notes (of notes) and screenshots and told everyone I knew about it. I just think it's really neat - check out my little shrine / collage work-in-progress here if you'd like.
The bluebells in the woods came and went and I tried to admire them as much as possible. I kayaked around the pond for the first time this year. I painted in gouache without a sketch to follow. I cooked quite a lot, including buttermilk drop biscuits and lemon zucchini orzo. I hacked away at some of the new bamboo shoots to keep the grove somewhat contained. And I went to the movie theater for the first time in a year! I drank too much and ate too much and kind of fell off some of my routines, but I'm feeling pretty good about April looking back now. And I'm just so happy that it's spring.
