Everything Is Good ... Gone for GOOD reasons this time

Sometimes timing is freaky. I sat down to write this and there was a message from one of my followers. Timing is all. Anyway, I will be online next weekend with studies from the three, yes, count 'em, THREE paintings I am working on. I have been singing a lot. I am not sure that I have mentioned that I sing. In fact, the group of women with whom I sing every Thursday night formed a smaller group that practices before the larger circle. We performed together at a coffee house just over a week ago.

I will be honest. I was hesitant about joining the singing circle. The first two times I went, I was uncomfortable with the GoddessEarthSpiritIsOurMotherLoveUnitesUsIntheInfinite sort of thing. Until one night we all broke into harmonies, and a sound unlike any I've been a part of flew around the room, catching my heart and making me tear up.

We could be singing Blah, blah, blah, for all I care. It's the sound that gets to me. And somewhere along the line I became a clear soprano. I've never been one before. I could sing soprano, but it was never easy. So I can BELT out an alto rock song as well as I could when I was twenty, and that sure is fun. (I sang "White Rabbit" extemporaneously, before the thing started.) But now I can harmonize with a clear, sweet soprano voice that comes from someone else in my body. No. Really. Must be. Can't be me.

And I am leaving for Littleton, NH on Tuesday, to scatter the last of my sister's ashes in the Connecticut River Source Lakes. One of them. We'll decide that on Wednesday. It's long overdue, but I could not have traveled so far until now. Her best friend--my other big sister, to me--and I will go and come back home on Thursday.

ALL three paintings were inspired from my hospital story. It will take a very long time to finish two of them. One is nearly done. As I said, I will put some studies of them in here, so you can see what I have been up to.  Whether or not I will publish the last hospital story remains to be decided. Not for a bit, I don't think. My soul's flitted off to different things for now. I tend to listen to that voice.

AND, I've been using my exercise bike three-four days a week for about an hour each time. This requires a two hour recovery, but it is finally helping me start to lose the sixty pounds I have that I should lose. I've lost ten... in six weeks, which is slow. Still, slow is okay. I am not out to win a beauty contest. My goals are clear: to get as healthy as I can get and to keep walking. Period.

There was one week that was brutal, but it was only one out of the last five or six weeks. I was terrified, truly, because both feet were numb for three full days. I could not drive. Walking was odd, to say the least. I could feel the impact of each step when I was barefoot, but not as the sensation of the skin, more as the impact of two solid surfaces. It took a full week for the pain to subside, the swelling to go down, for the feeling to fully return. Didn't want to write about it. Didn't want to talk about it. I simply wanted it to go away. Which it did.

I am struggling a bit with the decision of whether to stay only one more year in my wonderful home, or give myself two years. Money, of course, is the issue. I have limited assets and they will be depleted by half if I stay two more years. I am eligible for enormous subsidy by going into a small elderly or assisted housing place. I don't want to go. And I don't know whether that's a spoiled brat talking, or whether it's a legitimate voice. I have room to paint here. I would not, elsewhere. The wait list is about a year, so I may do it, just in case. I want to stay in my new home. Paint. Have company. Feel this alive.

That's the thing; I am alive in every fiber of my being at last. I have not been like this for weeks in a row ... not for three years now. And even three years ago, it was short-lived. Since Jean Ellen died, I have been partly numb and asleep inside. I was awakened when one man returned. He brought out the Jetty in me again... I have to admit that about him whether or not I want to! He did. I almost lost her again when I lost my health, my career, and my home all at once, but nope. She kept yelling at me to let her come out and play.

And one day last week it occurred to me. He was the one who had said, "I wish you could wake up every day and Jetty could tell you what she needs: to rest, to sing, to write, or to paint ... or all three, without your having to worry about money, without your having to panic." I turned that into MY words as soon as he was gone. And I resented him because HE was going to rescue me.

Blecchhh.... pity pity pity. Since when have I thought I needed rescuing? Ugh.

Well, last week I realized I WAS asking myself that question every day and had been for a month! Only in his words, with the addition of "to focus on getting stronger, to dance" in there. And I am trying to put the money stuff OUT of the picture again for at LEAST six months. But I do ask myself that question. And the answer lately has been all combinations of focusing on getting well, dancing, singing, and painting! AND, without the OR!

Sometimes one steps away from the computer to fill the well. That's all. It is always temporary. I cannot imagine my life now without writing, including my blog, even if only fifteen of you eighty-eight are willing to hang in there with me.

So I will take pictures of my paintings, tell you their stories, and ramble on and on next weekend. Thanks for thinking of me there, all of you. Life is a miracle to me. Truly. How can it not? A couple of nights a week, I turn out all the lights, I put on my gypsy skirt and a tank top and I dance to music from the nineties, the music I danced my way to freedom after my husband ran out of my life. Peter Gabriel's "Us" and Bruce Hornsby's CD with "Fields of Gray" on it. Not all my FAVORITE music, but selections that I cannot stay still for. And they remind my of those years in my forties when I was slim and strong, but in pain and trying to find my solitary strength and joy. No one can see me, including me. All I know is the music, the dark and absolute abandon, while I set the girl free.

See ya!

Finally! Translating inspiration into a Painting

Again, this won't be a long entry. Well. For me, it's not that long. Oh, who am I kidding? It's long.

Writer's Block Is Painter's Block
I have been blocked at the painting table this last week.  I have been dreaming paintings for weeks, but the moment I sat down to paint after the week of storm chaos, nothing.

I sat with my taped down paper, all my beautiful brushes, my tissue papers, everything out for me to use and... nothing.

The demon voices from childhood clamored instead, in their original forms and in the "grown up" permutations.

"You? An artist? Your sister was the artist, not you."  This voice is the counterpart to the "You? A writer? Daddy wrote the book. You haven't published a goddamned word, except for that Stanford stuff. Advertising, really. Just schlock."

Clever voices, those. You all know enough of my family to be able to figure out how those got there. And here is one of my favorites, interchangeable for singing, song-writing, regular writing AND painting. I call her Mom's 'Demon for All Seasons.'

"You just like the sound of it. I am an Artist. A Writer. I am apart from the rest of you somehow. Who do you think you are? You're not such a much, any more than anyone else. Do something real with your life. Something practical. If you won't be a teacher, get into banking, or something that will pay the bills. An artist. Save that for the weekends."

That one is the age old WASP voice of New England. Modesty is THE virtue above all virtues, followed closely by practicality.

And there is the one that goes, "You know you'll screw it up. You haven't really screwed something up in a while, so this one is going to fail. Really. Why even bother?" And I sit there, with a loaded brush, poised, terrified to put it onto the paper.

Yes. Terrified. And what will happen anyway if I "screw it up?" Yes. The earth WILL swallow me whole and spit me out as unfit. Even the earth will find me objectionable. Yup. And the painting will be so awful it will confirm the other demon voices and I will never paint anything someone will want; I will never paint another painting I like; I will run out of money because I never paint another painting that is anything; I will have a shopping cart and sleep in a cardboard box and wind up having to use a  surf board with wheels to get around.

And I get so engrossed with that bizarre image that the paint dries on the brush and I start laughing and give up for the day.

That was a game Jessie and I used to play when she got into  her own "I'm a loser because I cannot write this paper perfectly" mode. We'd play, "What's the worst that can happen?"

And Jessie and I would build this elaborately ridiculous story of how her life would be over, she'd lose her friends, all of her family would reject her and--Jessie liked this--we would spit at her when she entered the room, and she would become homeless and die. This usually got her writing just so she could "Get it over with and be homeless and done with it all." (And she rarely got lower than a B+, much to her brother's disgust.)

Only with me, I would simply start laughing and then remember Jess and tear up and then walk away.

We also have the "Your ideas suck and who the HELL wants to read your drivel or see your torn paper scribbles?"

Any of these voices sound familiarly inane? And toxic?

Okay, so I do know that you simply have to keep showing up at the blank paper, no matter what. I have done that with my writing--whether it's with the work I do offline or my blog. I have looked at the blinking cursor for so long that I've written songs to its beat. Bad songs, but songs, nonetheless. In my head, where I cannot possibly see them as productive work. God forbid I should actually admit to myself that writing songs, good or bad, is showing up at the page! After all, my intent was to work on that poem I thought of when I was cleaning the kitchen, NOT some song that no one will ever sing because it is so pathetic.

Finally, we get to "You are almost sixty. Who on this EARTH will care what a sixty year old, overweight woman who walks like the Hunchback of Notre Dame has to say or paint? Where on earth do you get OFF even trying at this late stage? You are no one." Yeah. That one is my favorite.

Light through the Wall of Voices
Only finally, I hear Julia Cameron talking to me. I was lucky enough to do a workshop with her several years back. I see her and hear her voice.  "If you wait to start, then you'll be even older than you are now, so why not start?" Sometimes she words it differently, but always the point is the same. So you feel you are too old to start now, so you are going to wait even longer to do what you love? And is the only reason you do this to make money? NO. I have no idea whether I can make a dime more. And I'll certainly have no idea if I do not produce anything.

I write because it is the only way I can process my life EVER. I started my first journal when I was twelve. It wasn't a diary. It was a journal, and it's where I first wrote that poem about the old man and his shack, with the eagle. Since that time, I filled more than forty journals. I tend not to have journals per se any more. I have random musings in a folder on my desk top, and a beautiful handmade "journal" by my bed for snippets when I awaken in the morning. But writing was a habit I developed long ago. And when I peek into a really old journal I see drawings, too...

When I get to the voices I've acquired through the years that are NOT demons, I feel the change inside. I feel something fomenting. First it is anger and all those pathetic tapes that run no matter how hard I try to silence them. And I start telling each one off. You may laugh at me in this, but it is the only way I know how to ditch them. They will never shut up permanently--they are ingrained. However, I have learned how to get them to shut up long enough for me to find my groove again.  And once I start, I am very glad I live alone, because I do it aloud.

I scream at them. "Jean Ellen would be HAPPY that I am painting! And Dad would LOVE it that I wrote for Stanford. How DARE you tell me that was schlock. It was good work. It was wonderful work and IT WAS WRITING MY BEST! I can be an artist if I want to be!"

Oh, yes. God forbid I do anything quietly or rationally. Did I ever mention that when I went off to college, I thought I would be an actress? Big surprise there, right? I address them all. That happened Friday morning. I was just plain ANGRY.

The Transformation begins
And Friday night I lugged a formless, nameless painting --the one I began on my retreat -- upstairs. I did not work on the one I thought I would begin. I worked on one where all I knew is that it kind of looks like choppy water. I said aloud, "PLAY with it, for God's sake. Don't worry about what it is, what it may be, just play with it. Screw the voices. To hell with anything but the process. JUST PLAY." I stomped my foot, which, of course, hurt, but when you are six, you don't care whether or not it hurts. If you are mad, you're mad. Stomping is what you do, at least, if you are six-year-old Jetty.

So I played. And then it began to look like the Lake on a choppy day, the way it did when I'd gaze, unfocused, down from the picture window in the cottage, the one by the giant field stone fireplace my grandpa built--on the daybed, tucked there under the window, with the enormous wood box at its head, the old record player in its beautiful wood encasing at the foot. The room always smelled like pine. Sometimes I would open the wood box top and just smell. I'd climb onto the wood box, crouching, and leap from the box onto the daybed, making sure my feet never touched the floor so that the alligator under the bed could not get me; a cheetah pouncing. Then I'd lie on my stomach and slither up to the window, lean on my elbows that rested on the sill, push my nose against the glass and stare. I was a hissing cobra, and my elbows and head were the hood. But finally I would simply lose myself, seeing nothing but the water, dancing. White caps and sparkles and every shade of blue. Sometimes a maple leaf would drift in my line of sight, and I would blink.

And Grandpa would bring me back home with his laugh, having witnessed my transmutations.

And so I began painting nothing but water. I collaged long lengths of tissue with the flat side down, curves and bumps on top, in every shade of blue I could make.

When I was done for the evening, I stood my lake against the oak desk that was at the cottage, too. The one Grandpa did his paper work at,  by the one light, in the evenings. If I peeked in after bedtime, opening the swinging door from the bedroom hall, I would see him bent over papers.

"Jet. Aren't you supposed to be in bed?" I would see an eyebrow raise and I would giggle and run to my room again.

I played last night, too. And again, for just a little while this morning--long enough to get that darker blue just so, there, toward the top, to balance something or other that I cannot name.

But now I have to shower and get ready to go tutor my nephew. He is working on an essay about the difference between Lao Tzu and Confucius. And then he needs help understanding Mendel's Principles and how to make and use a Punnett Square. And he wants to get the jump on mitosis...

My brain will hurt by the time I get home on Monday, so I will leave my playground upstairs for now, so that I can use it and recover.

But here's my point. I am working on a painting for real again! And I like it. And maybe no one else in the world will like it, too, when I am done, but it does not matter. And that's the point, isn't it? Today I will be doing something that matters for and WITH my nephew. We manage to have fun in the misery of it all! I love science, which is why I loved my work for Stanford. All of it is real.

Life's a gamble most of the time, isn't it? Every day it is a 30-70 shot whether or not my legs will work. The odds are in my favor, but as the day progresses, the odds shift drastically. Yet I get up. I show up and I make them work. I'm not so sure that my painting and my writing are so very different. I have a friend who asked me why I bother trying so hard to keep walking, since I cannot do the things that are FUN--hiking, going to art shows and museums, taking a trip to New York and things like that.

I walk because I can. I walk because I can still take care of myself as long as I keep on walking. I'll do other things for fun and take the trips inside my head. And I don't know what I might miss if I STOPPED walking just because it's hard.

What will I miss if I stop writing just because I don't know whether or not other people will want to read what I write, let alone pay money for it? And what will I miss if I stop painting? I remembered my grandpa again. He lived for me as I painted. I had not thought of those days in a long, long time. I can smell the cottage again. All from playing with my papers and paint. What will I be missing if I do not try to paint the autumn leaf that will drift into my view, there, over the blues of that water? What will I remember when I paint a few sparkles there, among the white caps?

I don't know. It isn't worth the risk, the not trying. Isn't that why we do what we do? Isn't that why we search for the picture to snap? The painting to create? The story to tell? Is that why the Stanford professors just had to start another business when the first, second, and third didn't quite work? Are they afraid they will miss something important if they do not take the risk?

Somewhere or other, with people who are driven to create, to explore, the risks of missing something outweigh safety. I don't think that would necessarily be the right thing for every person to do, but perhaps it is what drives some of us. I don't get a rush from the risk itself; I get the rush from the process and then something indescribable when it works. I don't like the uncertainty, actually. I hate it; but I need to do it anyway. It has little to do with courage, though. I simply love to fly.

Not an original thought among any I wrote today, but they are the thoughts that get in my way, and the thoughts that take me home ... and the thoughts that allow me to fly.

What about you? what are your demons and what thoughts are the sails that catch the wind for you?

Oops. I had best at least get my shower taken! Have a wonderful couple of days? (well. More than that, but it will be tomorrow night before I get back.) Editing will not do for today, and I hope that I read about your demons and what you do to shut them the hell up.

Showered, dressed, and studying my Mendel. I had to turn my painting to the wall, so that I am not distracted. Bye for now.