i watched this documentary about this man al carbee from maine  - who is now dead --- who had an artistic obsession with creating scenarios with barbie dolls and photographing them.  he was alone, his wife dead - she was never actually interested in his artistic pursuits when she was alive-- and he had created an entire world for himself in which he lived and which he created.  only very much at the end of his life did his work go public in an exhibition at the local small museum and shortly after that he died.  his work was bulldozed when his ramshackle big house was taken down.  the only things of his that survive is what he sent to the film maker over the years via photos and video.  all the actual installations were destroyed.
so this is a life.   and more and more  i come to the conclusion that there is a futility in what i do in the long run.  not in the short run, but then maybe life is actually only lived in the short run and the long run does not matter.  there was a naivete about al, a simplicity and sort of stupidity, an amazement and marveling as he uttered platitudes that somehow seemed to resonate with me:  if you are a creative person, you have to create.
al just lived. he spent money he did not have on his art and his duplications.  he just wanted to be buried and not have a funeral. he had no children; the film maker and his girlfriend became his children.  he gave,  he produced,  he created,  he lived in a world full of stuff.  he seemed insulated from worries, and seemed independent of others, though delighted when they discovered him.
i am now soon 65 1/2 years old.  i cannot help but think of myself as old and see myself in the shadow of the coming end.  i need to deal with a major financial problem that i have ignored over many months, and that frightens me.  but it really should not, i tell myself.  it is a matter of seeing myself differently and accepting and affirming this.  i need to see myself as a poor woman, and live like a poor woman.  i need to align myself mentally with my own grandmother who lived a simple  life as a widow, and a lonely life with her retarded son, my uncle.  i need to align myself with al carbee who just created and created.
after the divorce ( almost 14 years ago) i never really accepted what this meant for my financially and that i was now in a different league.  my ex has a house, the vacation apartment, the cars, the rich wife, the business and compared to that i am deficient and poor.  i grew up in the 50s when the implicit assumption was that things would go better and better.  and they did for me:  i ended up in a 6 bedroom house in the fancy neighborhood.  then it was a small house in the lesser part, then the apartments and how i am across the bridge.
 i wish  live a truly independent life on my own terms all the time and at all levels of my existence.  i wish i could let go all the time of the need to be affirmed or acknowledged, and just live for myself, and by myself taking care of yossi as i do , of course.
i think i am at a crossroads here. for myself personally.
sometimes i wish i could just drive and drive and drive, on and on never ending, away and away.