In my excitement to do the daily work in my sketchbook, I can’t overlook what I have already completed. There is a luxury to the right hand page. A free flowing of gorgeous oil paints. It’s easy to get lost in it, without worry or care. But it’s only when they are dry, that I am able to add to the left.
In my eagerness to create, I have remain aware of the other page. There are still many options — pencils, pens, fast drying acrylics — all will allow me the joy of art making, without hurting previous work. I look at the completed pages. Birds and humans. Those that have become. Aware of this, I know I must never be careless. I hope I’m doing the same in real life. With real life.
They make doctors take an oath, “first do no harm.” (Perhaps we should all have to.) Oh, I understand, we get excited in all of our progress and movement. And it is so simple to move ahead without regard. But I, we, could take more care. Just being aware of the other page, the other human. We can keep moving forward and still enjoy, still create, without doing damage. Without doing harm. I remind myself daily, signing it on the page, taking the oath in my heart.
I don’t think it’s an accident, this walking up to the things we didn’t know existed, we didn’t know we needed. On our last trip to the US, I was strolling Linden Hills. I saw the bookstore. Already knowing my suitcase was full, I knew I couldn’t add the weight of more books. And yet, my feet shrugged my shoulders and I walked inside. Forever drawn to little things with feathers, (hope itself as Emily poemed us), I saw it on the table. Flat bookmarks with pens inside. It was if they saw me coming.
But maybe that’s always the way with hope, if we pay attention, it will lead us to where we need to be.
Is it hope I’m painting daily? Surely it is peace — this meditation of time and feathers. And perhaps that is where hope best lives. Not in a flurry — even birds know to rest. Secure in the flights to come. So too, I mark the daily hope, with the gentle stroll that led me here. And I am saved.
There’s probably a path worn from my daily trek to the hills of the Montaiguet. But I can tell you, I have never walked the same way twice. (Sure, if you’re going to count by tread marks, but my travels are led (or whisked away) by imagination, and are more like the darting of the birds to the stories just behind the trees.
I suppose I started on Van Dyke Road, dragging a wagon full of fellow wanderers — more than willing participants in the sunlit adventure of the afternoon. No rules or fences, only wonder. “I wonder if my hand could fit in there?… or if my doll could reach that highest limb? If the elephant I won tossing rings at the Douglas County fair missed its friends, and were they waiting in the North End? Could we all survive on one can of Chicken Noodle soup? Could the wagon actually take flight if pushed fast enough down the hill? How do you get grass stains out of a baby blanket? Is there a secret land in Hugo’s field? Could my mother always find me?”
My feet may not be as quick, by my mind is still as wistful as the wondering wren. The sun comes up, and I flutter.
I don’t remember the first thing I put into the drawer. For the longest time, I thought it was just a facade. It was stuck, so I never forced it after trying once. I sat in front of it. One day I think it moved with my knee, so I tried again. Et voila! I laugh when I open it now. It’s completely full — I suppose the saying is true, it goes little by little, then all at once.
I suppose it’s true for everything. Life and love. I don’t remember getting older. I write every day about my “little by little”s, but I don’t recall a time when my heart wasn’t full.
It’s so delightful. When people get into your “all at once.” You can’t remember not loving them. I know you’ve felt it — people with whom you are ever in mid-conversation. No matter the time or distance. No matter the rise and fall of life’s breath. They are ever with you. Ever filling you.
My knee brushes against the drawer that I didn’t know I had, and I smile. Love will always find a way in, and stay.
There is a little patch of pink flowers near the entrance of my studio. When I enter in the morning, or early afternoon. They welcome me, wide open. I don’t have a clock beside me. I paint with the light. When it becomes too hard to see, I wash my brushes, and call it a day. I gently walk past the sleeping patch of pink.
Such is the nature of all things, I suppose. I’ve always done my best thinking in the daylight. My grandma told me it would be true. My mother too. As I buried my face under quilts and covers, “Things will seem better in the light,” they said, and they were right.
I’m reminded daily. Even the flowers know when to shut it down. So I try to do the same. When it becomes too dark — as those creeping winter thoughts can become — I petal myself in, and think of how the pink remains, it’s just time for a little rest.
The morning arrives with all its promise, just as promised, and I reach high into the light.
It seemed there was always one kid in every class who believed they could fly. Never testing it out on the monkey bars or a tree branch, but going straight to the barn roof. For me, bravery has always been more of a staircase, a ladder. Something to build upon, daily. I started with books. Each a step in confidence and curiosity. Rungs of empathy and encouragement. And when the words I needed weren’t at hand, I penciled them through my heart. Writing not because I had the answers, but to find a way to them, and even more often, in all of my hopeful confusion, finding a way to simply rise above. Word by word.
That’s why I’ve always trusted people who read. Praised the teachers and librarians. Befriended those in the nook. Traded the bookmarks and the reviews. Sniffed the inside of spines for fuel. Shared the secret views of every “barn roof” and above. Knowing that we’ve always had the ability to rise up. To get beyond. To fly.
I tell you that I’ve seen her face before. Of course I have no proof because she lived in my head.
It was in the first grade when she quietly took up residency. Mrs. Bergstrom was perhaps the first to tie words and art together for me. She joyfully released us downstairs to Mr. Opsahl’s art room. Never unarmed, she sent us off with the discipline of a single file and the mission to create a puppet for a show during our next story time. I see her more clearly now, as this mixture of fairytale and educator. Because didn’t they both give us something to dream of, something to aspire to — and didn’t they both bun their hair, sleek, and tight, I imagined to cut the resistance of all the reality sent to weigh us down.
So this was my puppet. Part princess, part Mrs. Bergstrom, full-on my imagination. With an empty toilet paper roll, a mound of papier mâché, covered in acrylic paint, she came to life. She later sang and recited words from the chalk board, and she was alive.
I haven’t seen her for years, not until yesterday when she appeared in my sketchbook. Did she know she was needed? I think so. Did she arrive right on time to cut through all the weight? Yes.
She reminds me that maybe you need to hear it. Because sometimes you need to hear it from someone who has been there. That nothing is going to be easy, but everything is going to be ok. I smile and know, yes, this is why she came.
If you look it up in the dictionary, it has two meanings. Opposite really. Nervy. It can mean bold, or nervous. Both are probably true. And for me, usually at the same time.
Months ago, in the middle of a situation in Marseille, feeling both, I decided to Wordle for distraction. I know there are certain starter words, almost mathematical, to give yourself the best chance, but I don’t play that way. I usually insert a word that says something about my current state of affairs, a way to insert myself in the game. It’s just more fun for me that way. So I chose the word with two meanings. Bold and nervous, because wouldn’t you have to be, I mean, are you really being bold if you’re not nervous? Is there any bravery without being afraid? I typed it in. N-E-R-V-Y. The letters turned over green. One by one. I beat Wordle. I chose the word in a single guess. It was about me.
I three and four my way through most days. Sometimes two. Not playing the odds, but always playing myself.
Last night, reading a new book, Apples Never Fall, there it was on the page, twice. Nervy. Had I not taken the big chance, the big swing, with my Wordle word, I would have just passed this page without great meaning. But I had taken the chance. I had bolded and nerved my way in, and found myself again, here in the words.
I don’t want to live timidly. I want to be bold in the attempt. When I love, when I live. So when my reflection is offered back to me, I can say proudly, I was nervy.
It was one of the greatest mysteries to me, the perfection of the rows in the fields. I knew nothing about farming, nor even driving, when I asked my grandpa how he did it. “I just see them,” he said. “But how do you not run over it all when you turn the corner? Or get out of line when you take a sip of coffee from the thermos between your feet?” “I know where I am, and I know where I need to be. It makes it very clear.” “That’s a lot to see,” I said, still not certain that I would be able to do it. “Will I be able to do it?” “This, probably not, but you’ll see what you need to see.” “How will I know?” He got on the tractor, and showed me.
I don’t know the exact moment it happened. How I found my row. My place. But I did. It all became so clear on the page and on the canvas. People ask me all the time — How do make them so real? How do you bring them to life? The truth is, I just see them. And it is my hope, that they see what I see, and others too… then they will know they are beautiful. That’s why I paint the portraits.
I can’t tell you how it happens. So I simply hop on my daily tractor, and write and paint, and I know, somehow, we’ll all find our way.
Just outside my dorm room, I came across a red balloon. Nearly deflated after its apparent celebration, it merely hopped in front of me, seemingly hoping for one last hurrah. Who was I to turn away? I gave it a little tap with my foot. Did it blush deeper red as it popped up to my hand? I waved it on ahead. And we danced. It didn’t occur to me that my normal three minute walk to class had now taken upwards of nine. I took on the same blush of red as I walked in late. The professor looked at me and asked why I was late. “Because I grew up on a gravel road,” I said. Always a proponent of the specific, he smiled and let me sit down.
It was true what I had said. I had consumed hours kicking a single rock down the gravel of Van Dyke Road. It’s something, I suppose, to kick a rock on the paved streets of town, but it took special attention to traverse your specific rock in a sea of them. It started out simply, just a little tap by Weiss’s house. Then a quick passing of Alf’s. Once between Muzik’s and Dynda’s, I really gathered steam. Passing Norton’s I was ready to make it all the way to the North End, where all gravel went to rest in giant cliffed piles. Simply acquaintances at the edge of my driveway, we had now become friends. So certainly, as with any friend, I was ready to take it back home with me. Back up the hill. Maybe it was a foretaste of the feast to come, but I was unwilling to settle for any abandoning.
You get over being left, but one has to decide if you are going to be a part of the leaving. I wasn’t. So I kicked that red balloon all the way to my creative writing class, in a story that began on Van Dyke Road.
