Cottage by the Sea (in nail polish)

Happy October everyone!  My September in France, staying with an editor who lives with a big old sweet dog in a large 2 bedroom flat surrounded by park-like woods for 800 euros a month, reminded me of the myriad of ways we can choose to live and at what cost. He is some 20 - 30 minutes from the beach by car, and some 30 minutes from the mountains, living in a Montpellier suburb 4 metro stops from the town center, and where everyone seemed to be so kind. I received so many smiles and warm greetings everywhere I went, even on the metro. This afternoon, home at my place, I pulled out the bottles of toxic nail polish I was going to throw away when I noticed they were damaging my nails, only to save them for painting. (I've already painted a mandala with them, and they are so toxic smelling that they remind me of how the French-American artist, whom I admire so much, Nikki de Saint Phalle, died in La Jolla after all the years of breathing in the toxic paints and plastics she used in her art). This simple cottage by the sea painting shimmers with irredescent gold, as you can imagine from the bottles, but you can't see it in this photo of the painting. I may edit this and switch it out or add another photo when I can figure out how to capture the sheen. But I've decided to paint some childlike paintings imagining where and how I would like to live. By the sea is my ideal. But the other thing I realized while staying with the editor is that I get so much more writing done when there is another person at a desk in the room across from me, doing the same thing. I realized this might be the case when getting together weekly with a writer friend and sitting across the table from her writing pomodoro style-- 4 sets of 25 minutes of work with 5 minute breaks in between and then a 30 minute break after the 4 sets, and you can start all over again)-- and we did this at either of our houses. We would also have a table full of food the whole time and usually a bottle of wine. We did this for 3 years, though not on any schedule since she lives on 2 coasts. Otherwise, whenever I've been living with or married to someone, they work outside of the home, so I have been used to working alone since I was a kid, really. And after this trip, I see my ideal is to have a colleague working in eye and earshot daily. I may have to start imagining more vividly and with more details, since when I have done this accidentally I find at some point in the future that I step into a deja vu.

LOVE!