The Studio is Set Up

Last night I dreamed another painting and I can't wait to start it this weekend. I have some things to tend to first, drat it all.  It had to do with the South of France and a dream I have had for about five years.  When I am panicking about the future, when I feel alone, I dream this dream of a big yellow house.  It is probably best described as a Victorian farmhouse, with a deep wrap around porch. The trim is white.  I am almost always in the kitchen, the sunroom hallway leading to the old barn, which is now a four car garage with a studio above it, or in the sun room.  There is a country kitchen with two ovens and a huge table that seats eight without the leaf.

The house always smells like oatmeal bread fresh out of the oven; that's my specialty. One winter when I was shut in almost all the time, I learned to bake bread the old-fashioned way. I would make the sponge, and then add my salt, oatmeal, remaining flower, and sometimes finely ground walnuts and pecans. I loved kneading the dough because it gave me an upper body workout. I always made enough for three large loaves. I especially loved punching down the dough.

People say it's a good way to let out aggression, but something in me always thought that putting negative energy in my bread was not a good thing. I try to name people and things I love when I knead and punch the dough. Silly? Probably, but who cares.

Anyway, in my dream, I live with at least three people. Rarely are those people actually in the room with me. Sometimes I hear a guitar in the background. Other times I see a familiar body bent over the flower garden that fills the U made by the corridor, garage/studio, and a wing of the house. Sometimes someone has just come up the gravel driveway and there is the sound of bags of groceries being put on the floor by the front door.

Always, always I am content. I am getting ready for company. I am singing. I am wiping my hands to go out to the garden. I am calling to someone that dinner is ready. Always the dream is in the middle of some activity that represents a full life, one of absolute contentment. I am never aware of whether or not I am romantically involved with anyone--it is irrelevant.

The other night I dreamed my house on a hillside in France, when the sunflowers are in bloom. I looked out at distant rolling hills striped in yellow and azure, and the walls of the room I was in were French blue. There is no other blue like it.

I had not dreamed my yellow house dream in months, so I saw it as a sign that I truly know my next phase of life has begun, and that I see it as good. And that is ironic, because I am coming out of three days of being quite literally bedridden for all but about three hours of the day--broken up hours. Even that didn't matter, once I paid attention to what my body was telling me.

This will come as a surprise, I am sure, but I had pressed myself a tad too much, trying to get everything done, wondering why I could not do what I did at forty-two years old. I'm only fifty-nine and have four more destroyed disks than I had then. What's the problem?

The non-word "duh" keeps springing to mind.

In my dream, however, I looked through a window that had hanging plants at the edges, to these beautiful hills, and one, lone tree that came across the scene from the right. One branch of some delicate small leafed variety,  dancing at the edge.  And for the life of me, that picture screamed joy to me and I have to find a way to translate it to my paper, don't you think?

Whether the dream is France or Pennsylvania or central Massachussetts, whether it is near a river, a lake, or the midst of the mountains, the house holds a family of women, with an occasional man floating through. The house holds light, and safety, and laughter. And this time the outdoors was the same, and as far as my eyes could see, I saw nothing but harmony, color, and light.

It isn't often we get to feel that way, I don't think. Or perhaps we can, and we forget to hold onto the center of our souls. We drift too far into the static of life, maybe. Or perhaps it's just me.

Regardless, this weekend the paints come out and I will paint my way home inside.

Again.

Running away, but not to Red Bank

The never-ending water story will not end until I find about fifteen thousand dollars or sell the house. Well. One way or another, I must find the money. I have tried to  come up with an amusing way to write about all this, but, as we who are royalty say, "We are not amused."

Not even a little.

We are, however, running away to a retreat center up in Rowe, Massachussetts--in the Berkshires. My friends have pooled resources to send me as an early birthday present. I will have my own cabin with bath, queen-sized bed (of COURSE) and kitchenette. The center, however, offers all three meals in the price. I have access to their kitchen to grab breakfast and lunch food, and their vegetarian chef prepares dinner. I will be the only guest in the whole place and I will have the use of part of the dining hall for a studio for all three days! I can leave my stuff set up and simply paint.

It is a writing and painting little getaway. I need to be away from the house, and be able to put the ridiculous little blow ups that are occurring here on hold for three nights. I've chosen two paintings in progress to take, and will begin a third while I am there. I am putting some of my things on a flash drive and am taking my poor old laptop which must be plugged in to work--and I have to duct tape the cord onto the laptop for it to stay in. However, then it works.

I think that the dancing and the incantations and the good wishes kept me from drowning in the muck, so this is good. I worked on the Red Bank and West Longbranch entry, but could not locate my comic timing. I think I left it in Hoboken by accident.

I DID join a singing group at my Unitarian Meeting House. A women's singing circle. The room is very large, but our group is not, so the sound does not set off my trigeminal nerve. This is wonderful, because for about fifteen years, singing was my main form of meditation. I sang in three choruses, and sang at house jams in PA, when I went out there. Sometimes it's a little too "women who run with wolves and channel their inner goddess while their inner children dance" for me, but mostly? Mostly it's a marvelous group of really smart, funny women who are learning not to worry whether the notes are "wrong" and dare to play with harmony. A voice jam, sometimes. Harmony is my thing, not solo work.

As for the spirit stuff, I think that this is MY problem, not a problem with the group. I'm just not comfortable with it is all. I am wary of goddess talk, just as I am wary of god-talk. My spirituality is my own, which is why I moved toward Unitarianism. I think, though, that this is something like a twelve step program--I take what resonates and leave the rest alone. ALL of it leads to music, so I thin I should simply get over myself and be grateful we have such a group!

Lifelines. I am surrounded by lifelines and it is a wonderful thing. BUT, I need to get away from here and envision once again what I want my path to be, and how it can be when I am finally unencumbered by roofs and sewers and plumbing and electricians.  Even though I will have about two thirds of the money we hoped I would have from selling the house--two thirds of just enough to get me through five years--if we sell, I know I will be better off than many are. I will still have a few years to find a way.

For now? For now I will enjoy every moment of my retreat. I don't care whether or not it rains. I will be in the mountains somewhere by a waterfall. What more do I need than that? Ironic, huh. Water has been less than friendly here, but I want to be by a waterfall. Perhaps I'll do an incantation. No. Better not.

Regardless, I am excited at the prospect of Tuesday through Friday. I will write about it when I come home. I have sent for my sense of comedy and I hope it will be sent back. Perhaps I can tell you the lovely story of how I was rejected for food stamps for not giving information for which I was never asked... I am filing an appeal.  Or how my lawyer is trying to prevent the town from penalizing us for not paying off a sewer lien on a sewer hook up we were told for fifteen years that we did not HAVE.

Ah, but that all is for another time. Today I tutor. Tomorrow I clean and pack. Tuesday I get in my car by 7 a.m. and wander north... meander is perhaps a better word.

Dance, pray, chant, laugh--all of it is good. I Hope you all are enjoying this spectacular May--New England in her Spring splendor.  I do not think I could really live all out and to the bone in a place that had no Winter. I HATE Winter a good bit of the time; but unquestionable, for me, it makes May all the more spectacular.

Take care, those of you who read my blog. Before I write, when I relocate my voice, I think I will need to listen to YOUR voices in your blogs.

... when I come home again.

All Things in Moderation--even Fear?

I have to start with saying that I realize I'm mistaken. My blog has been read, and it is more encouraging than I knew. Thank you. I'll let the rest of this entry stand largely unedited, however...

My very first blog, that no one has read, mentioned that desperation can force us to go after what we want. Maybe it's fear, too. Most of the time fear has paralyzed me. Why, this time, it galvanized me makes little sense to me. Perhaps over-analyzing would be a waste of effort. Regardless, I seem to have done what I needed to get the word about my new business, Paint, Paper & Pens. I have had inquiries after just a week of having one ad and a bunch of flyers on tables.

Furthermore, the inquiries sound as if the women are excited about what amounts to playing with art. Playing. Not hardcore, serious art lessons. I'm going to have water-based paints, glue, good quality tissue paper, and treated water color paper as the backing surface. I'll be helping people quite simply to lose their fear of "doing it wrong." At least, I hope I'll be doing that. My idea of success, from the personal angle? If people laughed and lost a fear of exploration, and if people choose to go on and take "real" art lessons. Financially? I want, one day, to pay my bills doing this work and writing again for universities.

I never thought that, with the credentials of writing for Stanford and for Northeastern, that I would not be able to write for other colleges or universities. The economy is what it is. If I were to be honest, here, I have to say that perhaps I have not always written the proper inquiries either. I'm too informal sometimes. That being said, I miss the writing and stimulation of learning something brand new every week.

Still, I have not allowed myself to go all out with my own creativity in more than a decade. Like millions of women and men, I have deferred what mattered most to me inside for what I thought I should do. We women like to think men always do what they want. Bunk. They may claim offices in a home so we wind up working in the dining room... and if they want the garage, they claim it. I ask you, though, how many men, if what they want to play with is art, allow themselves to do that? Look at the painting classes in night schools and community colleges. In our culture, it isn't particularly acceptable for them in most areas of the country. It should be. Blogs let us throw those thoughts out into the universe.

In my case, there seems to be little chance even a random pair of eyes will see. (WRONG) Yet I write. I am trying to think before I write and say only what I feel no problem with the world's seeing--regardless of whether or not they really do.

I am terrified of what I am doing because there's no net. I have no safety net. I won't let my son be that--I'm too young and so is he. I feel I need to have another twenty years of independence, for his sake as well as my own. Conducting workshops will make me explore my own abilities again. The prep work already has. I had forgotten that I do interesting pen and ink sketches. I had forgotten that I am even good at that! I will at last have the space to spread out and finish two paintings I'd forgotten I'd even started, let alone that I liked them. I will charge a quarter in my workshops for every self-deprecating comment, and I wonder whether I may be putting more quarters in than anyone else.

I'm starting the business, though! For real. I have cleared the studio space. I have a couple of enrollees who are not people I know. AND, I have my own blog started. I hope I'll figure out what to do with this in a more constructive way, but for now, I simply write. I tell the virtual world how happy I am for the first time since I moved away from my home state for two years, to Central PA, a beautiful, artistically vibrant area of our country. I began a solitary adventure then and found what it was to be part of a community, instead. Now I start on a journey to create a community here, and I'm doing it all on my own. Life is good; it is scary, but it is good.