I was able to varnish her yesterday, this woman reading. It’s always the most joyful magic, watching the colors of the painted and glorious self come to added life with this layer.
I guess it’s the same in real life. Under the varnishing of love’s protection, this is when we really shine. Unburdened by the fear of losing what we have. Being able to take the chance of the day’s exposure.
When I listened to her sing in front of her 15 year old peers, standing alone on the stage, the notes braving the audience, my second and third thoughts were, oh, she’s really good, and she looks really beautiful. My first thought was, she feels loved. She feels loved enough to risk it all. And I was happy to be a small part of that varnishing.
Simply by the title of his show alone — Perspective should be reversed — I think I have my memories in the right place. Staying with dear friends, we went to see the David Hockney collection at the Palm Springs Art Museum. I love his art. I always have, but being there, with them, is what remains in my heart’s permanent collection. Experiencing it together, rather than the art itself — my reverse perspective.
Passing this week, he fills the internet. He once said, “It’s the very process of looking at something that makes it beautiful.” And we did look. We looked at it together. We looked at it with eyes of France. With memories of Chicago. With collective music humming in our heads. With “remember when”s and “I can’t wait for”s swirling in our midst. And isn’t that what art is, what music is, what friendship is — all that color.
When I painted Margaux from her balcony in Marseille, I suppose I wanted to see what she saw. I wanted, want, her to see me, seeing her, seeing out there. I want her to know that it is indeed the very process of looking that makes it beautiful. It is. She is.
It’s all I have to bring today. These colors of friends and family. This thought that maybe if we experience this world together, it may be just a bit more beautiful. That’s my perspective.
I was told once that our brains are like filing cabinets. And depending on where the memory is filed, is how they come up. Sometimes they are filed by color or date or sequence. They could be filed by event or object. So, for example, if you were thinking of a woman in a yellow dress, it could be filed under yellow, dress, woman or party. And being who I am, I see not only the filing cabinets, but also the person scurrying around with the files, who I call Vern, because that’s his name. Sometimes I have to encourage Vern. Sometimes I have to thank him. Other times, like this morning, he simply makes me smile, pulling up a name I was looking for weeks ago. He waves the file overhead and grins sheepishly. “It’s Carol Feldman,” he says, the name of your junior high gym teacher.
She was filed under her face — a face that appeared in my sketchbook. That’s why her name didn’t come to me when I was talking about the gym activity. You wouldn’t recognize her by the clothes that I painted her in. But I knew her face, and so did Vern. Immediately I was beneath Central Junior High, in the dimly pink basement that we called the girls’ gym. And Vern wasn’t wrong. For it wasn’t her physical prowess that I remember. Her athleticism. Her zip up track suits are but a blur. But I remember she was kind. That she had a gentle smile. A relief, really, from all the math problems and social studies. And so how fitting to file her by face, her kind and gentle face. I pause in my sketchbook, run down the teenage stairs, waving, “Hi, Miss Feldman, Miss Feldman, HI!”
There is the rush to protect, but oils cannot be hurried. There-in also lies the advantage. Paint can still be moved. Decisions tweaked. And the painting improves. It turns out this permanence that I think I so desire, can be avoided, leading me to something better.
The ancient stoics had a saying — The obstacle is the way.
It has always been elusive. This patience. My heart struggles to capture, so it tells my hand, you give it a try. And joyfully, my hand, never burdened by lessons already learned, picks up the brush, trying to capture a moment of still, of within. And maybe it’s not patience after all, maybe it’s just being. Because patience itself implies perhaps still a waiting. And in all that naivety of hand, my heart admits, that WAS a good try. And it simply rests in the moment. In the light. In the being. A moment not captured, nor improved, just a moment. And I am saved.
I had this idea. That all was forgiven. I don’t mean just with me, although that was a good start. I mean with everyone, the world. And I suppose it seems silly. It seems as unlikely as the bird atop my head that brought the thought of this peace. And yet, there it rested, tucked in tangles of hair and misbelief. And I closed my eyes to slow the doubt — nothing chases away the hope faster. Maybe it was the Peter Pan collar, bringing these youthful ideas, I thought. But my heart said, “Don’t laugh away the magic.” And I coudn’t see, well, only deep inside where the thoughts were taking root, where the thoughts thought, hoped, that maybe you felt it too, forgiven. Maybe it was messengered in. As easy and light as that. And my heart smiled, sending the confirmation of what had been given. Sending it through lengthened neck and blushing cheeks and all those hopeful tangles, and behind lid, I knew, I somehow knew, that even if it left, flew away with all that hope, all that forgiveness, it still was all possible.
You could hear the tapping of tiny feet on the terrazzo floor keeping time with the second hand of the clock that hung above the door. Knees hitting against the top of desks. Pencils clicking. Hearts begging to be recessed into the playground of Washington Elementary. When she could no longer voice the math tables above the din, Mrs. Strand would roll her eyes, drop her shoulders and release us sans the bell, knowing that if anything was to be received in the afternoon, all of this energy had to be released.
Some days as we stomped and trampled our way back to the class, draped in a chorus of “I’m not finished yet,” she would wave her hand and tell us to run around the lot one more time.
What do you do when there’s no longer a daily phone call. No email from the one you love. No embrace to be gathered in. No laughter to capture, bent over at the waist. No tears of tenderness caught in heart’s lap. What do you do with all of the extra love?
I put it on canvas. On paper. In sketchbooks. Inside loaves of bread. Serif it to every story. And still it remains. Knocking at the morning door. A foot tapping, knee banging, eager hearted reminder that I will never finish loving you. I give thanks for that, every day, and run once again around the block.
“America is my country, and Paris is my home town.” ― Gertrude Stein
I started discovering myself long before I moved to France. My mother saw to that.It wasn’t so much that we went on vacation when I was young. But we did travel. With neither plan nor map, we drove. When we stopped for gas, my mother placed one foot out the door. By the time the second foot landed she would say yes or no. This was not a judgement so much as a choice. And not whether she would actually fit in this place, but whether she wanted to. Visiting nearly all of the states, I won’t give you the list of “no”s. There were hard yesses throughout the country, but the easiest of these came in New England. One small, elegant, cultured town after another. Streets lined with freshly painted houses. Groomed lawns. High fashion behind screen door porches. Lobster on paper plates. Accessible luxury that not only agreed with her, but was her. I don’t know why we love what we love. I’m not even sure it really matters. I guess the most important thing is knowing when your are in the middle of love’s embrace. When your feet stop and say, “we’re here!” When your heart beats louder than any reservation your brain can come up with. When you don’t just feel alive, but you feel the fresh warmth of being born, again and again. When the only word is yes.
I have a recipe for bread. I can make it in a cocotte (a cast iron French oven), or I can make baguettes. Same ingredients, but different taste. I can’t tell you why it’s true, but only that we love it. When the scent rises with the morning sun, I am my mother’s daughter, driving on paved streets of the familiar unknown. I am still my country, but I am home. I slice the steaming baguette, add the butter and honey, raise it to my mouth, and say, “yes!”
I’m not saying it’s where “the brave dare not go,” but to take on a sewing project does require a certain amount of will on my part. I suppose it’s why I keep my grandma’s photo beside the sewing machine. For her it came naturally, or had to. It was at the Husqvarna shop next to Jerry’s Jack and Jill where she first showed off her skills to me, using words like serger, bias and basting. We ate toasted marshmallows from the recent grocery store purchase while the sales clerk tried to keep up. I knew I was in the presence of greatness. Nothing tastes sweeter than that.
My mother could sew just as well. But she didn’t have anything fancy. Her machine was an oversized gray metal that sat inside her closet. She had to wind the bobbins by hand. There was barely room for two of us inside, but I needed to be near. If she used sewing terms, they were in her head. There was no space for flair, but I could feel it. Again, I stood in the presence of greatness.
I am forever a proponent of using what you have to get what you need. So yesterday, I made an apron for painting in the studio. That’s not the whole truth. It was much more than that. I first rummaged through my old canvas tarp. Found a piece large enough to make a pattern. Cut it out. Took the plastic cover off my machine. (Took out the handbook — it had been a while.) Followed the instructions to wind the bobbin. To thread the machine. Hemmed each side of the apron. Ironed it. I had nothing for apron strings, perhaps the most important part. My husband found old belts from martial arts uniforms worn by the children. Perfection. My needle unthreaded twice while sewing them on, but who was I to quit? — quitting is not the string to which I will always be tied.
Soon it will be covered in paint. And get more beautiful every day.
When I say “use what you have,” of course I mean material on shelves and thread in drawers, but mostly, I suppose, it’s using the strength I have been shown, and the love that I’ve been given — nothing greater than that.
When I think about the countless times I have sung exuberantly into my own fist, (reaching those certainly standing in the back row), it’s not really a stretch that I would put a bird into a French outfit and give him a microphone.
Who is to say what is your Grammy, what is your Louvre? The other day a young woman recognized my painting of her grandpa out of a sea of Tik Tok photos, and I was hung beside the greatest in Paris. These lives we’re creating are limitless.
When I first met our neighbor she asked if I was a singer. Without hesitation I said yes. Don’t I sing all the time? It never occurred to me that she meant professionally. (Whatever that means.) After getting to know each other, it became clear to her that I wasn’t a “singer,” but someone who sang. I shrugged and held up my fisted microphone for her to join in. Now she is a singer too.
When asked what they would like their super power to be, most people will say they would love to fly. The closest I’ve found is to let myself become —become a baker, a poet, a singer, a lover, a painter. While I sit in front of the canvas, fueled by homemade bread and the song that is playing, the bird appears and I am all of these, and I begin to fly.
I watched her at the kitchen table in complete fascination as she snapped open the yellow containers, L & R. She wet her fingers with the solution and placed the tiny disc between her thumb and middle finger, rubbing them clean perhaps, but more likely, I thought, working up the courage to place it in her eye. I held my breath as she balanced it now, her hand slowly rising. With her left hand she held her eye open, bringing the other closer and closer. Of course they had made her do it at the eye clinic, but this was her first solo flight at home. Would she do it? Could she do it? She blinked furiously, leaving her right hand under her chin in case a catch would be needed. But it stayed. Her blinking slowed. She smiled and I smiled. Holding in our victory lap as she plucked the other from its case and placed it. I blinked along in solidarity and cheered with both arms raised. She was my hero. My astronaut. My ever “I’ll go first, but I’ll never leave you behind.” I always made sure that she knew how I saw her.
I suppose I’m still doing that. Daily.
In the blink of an eye, it was all gone. That table. That house. But not the love. That remains. And I will always let her know.
