You think it’s an apron. And it is sometimes. The proof is the paint splatters that are beginning to gather. And it makes sense around my waist, as a quick brush off of excess water, or a change of color, but it doesn’t really explain the spots around my neck straps. Those are probably because of the dancing.
While the music plays along with the strokes, there are some songs that just won’t take no for an answer, and soon I am dancing like no one but the portraits are watching. Partnered by the brush in hand, I will get pulled in, hence the paint on my collar.
My neighbor continues to ask, though I’ve answered many times, “Are you a singer?” I’m sure she hears me on the way to my studio. I say, “Sometimes.” And I am a dancer sometimes. And sometimes a poet. Sometimes a baker. I suppose I used to give the answer no. Not anymore. Because I am sometimes all of these things. And more. And it’s not a judgement or declaration of things that I do extraordinarily well…but rather if I can say, “Well, I had a time!!!! Wasn’t that some time!”
And the song will change on the player and I am a painter again, but I smile above my painted straps, tap my foot, and know the truth of all that can be.
Receiving a letter in college was monumental. We shared a community phone for our floor, and had to pay for long distance, so it was rarely used. The mailboxes were the tie to the outside world. Located in the entrance of our fifth floor walk-up, what lay behind the gray square door was significantly tied to the speed at which I could climb the stairs. One small letter could erase the added weight of my backpack, loaded down with the likes of Shakespeare and other anthologies. Anticipation picked up each foot. Thumb trying to break the seal before opening the door. Books thrown on sofa, I cracked the remaining seal, and breathed in the connection. And I was saved.
I could always count on the weekly letter from my mother. Sometimes my grandma. An occassional random boyfriend marked with a mascot of another school, or PFC. And I learned quite early on, to get a letter, you needed to send one. To be lifted, you had to do some lifting.
When I was painting her yesterday, the stories ran through my head. Up and down the staircase of my heart and brain. All those things I needed to say. All those things I needed to hear. And I wondered how you would see it. When you saw her. At first glance. Was she getting the letter? Or was she sending it? I suppose it depends on if you are needing to hear something, or if you have something that needs to be said.
We’re always navigating through both. And I guess the key is to keep the chain open. To be lifted. To keep lifting.
Life will weigh us with worry and “other anthologies,” but it will also give us what we need if we choose to participate.
Forgiveness comes so easily as I allow the portrait to come to life. I actually enjoy the beauty of the becoming. I hope I can do the same in real life. With others. Possibly even me.
It’s easy to get hung up on the timing of things. People often ask me, “How long does it take to make that painting?” “This painting?’ There is no answer. Or there is every answer. I know with repetition, some things come more quickly. A bird can appear readily, because I have ridden that wing so many times. I have fluttered and flapped. And still, not every time is the same.
I smile because isn’t it the same when it comes time to “snap out of it” — the mood, the feeling, the getting over. I’d like to think it comes “more readily.” I think it does. But I’m learning it’s not just about the getting through, but the beauty of becoming. As messy and unfinished as it all can be, it can be beautiful before it is complete. Before forgiveness, before healing, before love, it is all still beautiful, within sight, within reach.
So I keep fluttering and flapping, from hand and heart, and with this morning sun, every answer awaits. And so I become.
For five days I read the book. Eagerly returning. Thinking about the characters in between. On the last page, I flipped for another. That was it? The ending? Huh.
It’s not the first time I’ve enjoyed a book without loving the ending. And still, I had to remind myself that time wasn’t wasted. Time was enjoyed, no matter how it ended, or didn’t.
How do we respond when there’s nothing at the end? It’s never promised. And it occurs almost daily. How do we react when the response is underwhelming? When the email goes unanswered. The post lacks response. Even worse the love.
We’ve all felt it, I suppose, the arms drop mid hug when you yourself are not finished.
It’s then I have to think, why do I do what I do? I paint because I have to. Writing — the same. Loving, just as with both, it has to come out. And with it all, it is joyfully terrifying.
And would I spend hours getting the reflection in her eyes, the soul that can’t remain ruffled in the dress…would I do each leaf, each flower, each stone, any differently if you cartwheeled or simply walked away? Singing as I paint, I’m reminded of the words of K.D. Lang, “I gave my love, didn’t I? And I gave it big sometimes!”
So there’s my answer. I will reach for the words and the paint. Without knowing the length of hug, I offer these arms.
Today I get the Paris Review. Each one a treasure. Words and pictures. Stories and poems. A world held in the palm of my hands. Often clutched to my chest, as if the turning of the pages could not insert deep enough. You could think that it was simply the couture of all things France, but I will tell you, that I felt the same in our unfinished basement on Van Dyke Road in Alexandria, Minnesota, chubby hands wrapped around the newest issue of the Reader’s Digest.
Seeking relief from summer’s heat, I curled into the damp cool of the cement, and traveled my way slowly, armed with the directions given in the previous school years, from Mrs. Strand, Mrs. Bergstrom and Mrs. Erickson. I sounded out. Acted out. Laughed out loud to gather in the medicine the funny section claimed to offer. Lived out loud on every page.
And the thing is, it didn’t tell me my future. But it gave me the assurance that I would have one. Each letter a small taste of what was to come, if I dared the turning.
I don’t know what this day will bring. It may be the Reader’s Digest version of something glorious to come, or simply the cool comfort of what is. Either way, I will be saved.
Our heat arrived before the calendar said it was summer. I suppose that’s always the way. It’s funny to think we can prepare for life’s arrivals. Maybe there is no ready before, but only a willing when.
I have often wasted my time with questions of why. Or the blaming of who. I hope I’m spending less time on that. And more time on the now what? Some of my best creations have come from this. When why turns to wonder, words pour out on the page. Paint flows freely. And love breaks through all the cracks of mistiming.
I don’t shake my fist at the sky’s clock. I simply go into the pool. It’s time.
It’s my fingers that remember the three button sequence to activate the dishwasher. I count on muscle memory daily. Readying myself at the pool for the first time of the season, I knew if I just did the hard part, get in, that my arms and legs would take over. My head would turn to breathe. My brain would tell my chilly, but beating core, “oh you only have to do a few laps,” both knowing that when reaching that number, I would up it again, and again. Each muscle nodding to the one that always won out, the heart. I smile, certain that I will never finish loving you.
Walking by a photo or painting. Hearing the opening notes to a song. Breathing in the scent of flowered hope. The sequence is activated and I think of you. And it’s such a relief to know it. To count on it. To feel it to my beating core. This love.
When the new challenge seems difficult. When I think it perhaps too much to get through, I remind myself, I only have to get in. The heart will see me through. I smile, and go a little deeper.
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 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.
It wasn’t until university that I studied the Renaissance. And to be more accurate, we studied the Renaissance Man. I cringe at that now. Not only because we only studied men, but because we didn’t question it. I didn’t question it. And this being my first year at a liberal arts college, in the midst of fulfilling the requirements, taking science and math and English and art history, wasn’t I actually living it? And not having come from a generation of “you can be anything you want,” it might be surprising to think that somehow I still saw the possibilities. I still believed in them.
I didn’t have the words for it then, but I hear them now. Neil deGrasse Tyson tells us, “Most humans who could ever exist, never will. And so the fact you exist at all, is against stupefying odds of who gets born and who does not. Realizing this, you are you. I am me. We are alive. We get to die. And to get to die means you get to live. Any moment you spend squandering those moments you are alive, does disrespect to all those who will never even be born.”
I suppose it’s within this respect that I eat the bread that I made for breakfast. I play fashion show in the garden. I put together the weed wacker in the garage. I paint a bird in my studio while listening to music. I write a story. I read a book. This won’t get me studied in Ivy League universities. (But if you know me, you know the “Ivy League I admire most anyway.) I’m not even sure that it makes me interesting, but it does keep me interested, and that’s the most important thing. I am interested in still learning. In becoming. In not disrespecting all of those that got me here. In not “squandering” my moments. I am here. We are here! We get to be alive. I still see all the possibilities.
