I've been thinking lately, not so much about ballet, but about the imagery of ballerinas twirling in the traditional uniform of ballerinas: the tutu. This is not only an image from ballet, but in skating, particularly ice skating - the twirling dancer on ice. I think about ballet and tops and martial arts - how the sharp spinning edge of the tutu cuts through the tension of the air.

I don't have much to say, really. This morning, I was drawing. Yesterday, I drew a toad stool. Today, using the back of that page, I traced some of the lines that bled through the paper.  This was something different from the recent flowers and windsocks and rabbits and jellyfish and squares and triangles and suns and moons. A pink tutu filled the page. I've never worn a tutu - and really don't know a whole lot about ballet - but there it was - a lot of pink on white.

I'm at the library right now, and when I got here, I pulled three children's books off a shelf, kind of randomly as I usually do, without looking at the fronts of the covers. The illustrations and the stories help clear my mind before my own work. I used to write children's stories many years back, and I'm curious about what is currently popular.

One of the books today is about a robot kid who moves to a new town and meets up with an alien kid at the new school. Another is in Spanish - it's about feelings - los sentimientos. The third is called 'Todos Los Tutus: deberian ser rosas'. I don't know much Spanish, but I think this means something like 'All the (something something) pink tutus'. The cover art is of two funny kids in pink tutus.