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.

Spring and the Celebration of the Mother of Mother

I keep thinking that I have written about this subject before, but perhaps it was not here. I think it was probably to someone in an email, or for another project. If I have, I'm sorry, but the story as written here, probably has a different rhythm, and the details will have shifted in emphasis. The truth of my grandma remains the same. I miss her sometimes still, as her joy for simple pleasure reaches through the decades and grabs me by the heart.

The Seasonal Dance ©2009
Here it comes again,
When spring smells stronger than fear,
And familiar dampness spreads like wine through veins.
Here it comes.
Again.

The season of loving
kills sobbing, and shoving
the pains of loss into a drawer,
I taste the juice of spring, 
blasting death—through the greening of grass,
and the yellow of branches ready to burst
with a sun-filled cacophony of over-bright flowers
that will fall to substantial new growth.

Here it comes again,
When spring Heaven beats loneliness,
for the company of colors too noisy to tolerate gray.
Here it comes.
Again.

The dancing in gardens
of steaming up-turned earth,
with worms wriggling back to the dark,
I dance my own ritual to birth—
Through the smoothing of edges, and clearing of space 
around shoots fairly aching to breathe;
through the weeds that have crowded their colors too long;
I discard what we no longer need.

Here it comes again,
When spring trumpets louder than pain,
for this birth that defeats any winter’s worst freeze.
Here it comes.
Again.


I associate Spring with my mom and with her mom... And I know it's Fall, but there is something about feeling one is coming to life again. And perhaps I am.

Seems appropriate somehow to write about Grandam M., Mom's mom.  When I was little, Grandma did the coolest thing for Jack, me and our friends. I was probably about Eight. When she would come, she would take out her teeth AND her glass eye to show us, and tell us all about them. AFTER she put them back. Then she taught us "After the ball was over..."

She also took me on my first wildflower walk and for some reason, all I remember is that the field was full of vetch, which  I thought was a completely gross name for such a gorgeous violet flower. Vetch. She also used to buy Jackie and me toys at Wallach's grocer, the corner equivalent of Seven Eleven® back in the late fifties. Mr. Wallach, like our neighbors two doors over, had come to our country during WWII, and, while he was a little scary, he still knew all our names and what we liked best for candy, and when we'd come to the store looking for milk and bread. But Grandma would buy us stuff. My favorite was the plywood plane with the elastic-driven prop, and my very first kaleidoscope ever.

We cut home through the field and I kept falling into holes because I was busy  looking at the vetch through my toy. Grandma kept talking about daisies, Queen Anne's Lace, and "verdure." God forbid she said something like "all the green" or even "greenery." No. Verdure.

I once told her, "Grandma, you speak in crossword puzzle words."

"Yes, darling girl, I do. But isn't it more fun than just using the same old words all the time?"

I shrugged, but I kind of thought she was right. She and my  mom fought constantly. Dad said, "Jean, the truth is  Helen just isn't all that bright."

Mom would  hold her palms out and just go, "AAAAAAHHHHHRRRRRR."

My favorite fight was this one.  I have no idea what the fight was about, but my mom was in the kitchen and Grandma was at the table, eating her obligatory soda crackers in milk... this means it was around 3:00. I walked in from school, and I was around 12.  I had recently realized I'd outgrown Grandma, because she had been on and on about trains the last time I'd seen her. Mom had taken me with her to Grandma's little efficiency flat and she'd dragged me into her bedroom, shouting, "Darling GIRL! Look at this!"

I waited and waited. Suddenly, there was a train. Yes. A train went by. Her hands went up in our familiar gresture of delight, "Dighdy dighdy DOH!" She would sing her arms abover her head, twisting her hands and arms from the elbows. I could not figure out why she loved the trains, but I managed to go, "Yeah, Grandma, that's great!" while humming the Twilight Zone music in my head.

She did that, though, over her soda crackers and whenever we had string beans. I just didn't get the thrill, but that was Grandma.

I walked into this fight, however. And Mom went, "MOTHER! You KNOW I am right, why MUST you persist in arguing with me."

"JEAN. I am your MOTHER. I don't care whether or not I'm wrong. Even when I'm wrong, I'm RIGHT."

And she got up in all the mighty dignity her 4'10" allowed and stomped out of the room.

I stood there just looking at my mom, who stared, mouth agape, back at me, until we both started laughing so hard we had to cover our mouths.

But this was Grandma.

***
I grew back into her, though. When I was about 31, I went to see her in the nursing home, one town away from us. She was in a full-care facility by then, and was 92. Her one eye had little vision, she'd had a hip replacement, but was pretty well lame. I know she was in pain, but something had happened when she hit 85.

We'd thrown her a big party, and she turned to my mom at the banquet and said, "Dahling girl, everything else is just gravy. I think I better make up to you now, while I can."

I was sitting across from them, and I felt I was watching part of movie, shot through one of those hazy filters--the kind that used around movie stars before you could simply touch up their faces in editing... Everyone else seemed preoccupied with their own conversations. Mom was looking at Grandma with an expression close to shock.

"Mother, it's all right.  I know you--"
"No, Jean. It isn't all right. I've mistreated you your whole life, making you  not go to college, but sending your brother. Always fighting. Always angry with you. I love you. You're my Jeanie. My girl. Right now, today, I'm changing. Dahling girl, it's never too late as long as I'm breathing and I'm not going to do that to you any more."

My mother cried and grabbed her mom. And Grandma never fought with her again.  They had another nine years of something very special.

But I knew she was fragile seven years later, and I had an impulse to visit her one May, because it was lush everywhere, and because the lilacs were in bloom. I grabbed and armful from a neighbor's yard, because she called me her "lilac girl."

I found her in the rec room, bowling. Yes. Table bowling. I stood at a distance, while four people cheered her on, shouting, "Come on Helen. Just one pin. Come on, you can do it."

She missed the table, forget the pins, which sent her into "Dighdy, dighdy, DOH." And delighted laughter.

"Grandma," I said, thinking dementia was now hardcore. "What are you DOING? I thought you didn't like bowling anyway... and--"

"I HATE, bowling, Dahling girl, oh, LILACS! My lilac girl, oh, pretty."  And she handed them round and looked at my confused face, squinting her eye, trying to focus. "What's that you are wearing? Purple and blue. What a pretty blouse. Oh, dear, you just make my heart dance."

Now, really. Who gets to hear that from anyone? But I was on my one track. "So if you don't like bowling, why do you?"

She simply shook her head at me and said, "Because that's what they HAVE. They have bowling, so I bowl. I sure as hell am not going to sit in my room and die. They have bowling, I bowl. they have rhythm band, I clop.  They have ring toss, I toss."

She saw I was not smiling. She did not see the tears filling my eyes.

Suddenly, she whipped something out from underneath her lap robe. A large trophy. "Besides, where else could I get this!"

Engraved on a brass plaque,  no less, were the words, "World's worst bowler in the history of time"

And we laughed. She wanted to walk to the courtyard that day. This meant it was a very good day for her. Mostly she leaned on my arm, but since she was, by now about 4'8" and weighed only 85 pounds, it was no trouble. I don't think it would have been any trouble to me if she were twice her size.  She used her cane mostly to point out the flowers, daffodils, scilla, and a few peonies were coming out early. It was one of those springs that had come in a jumble, when suddenly the temperature jumped to 80 degrees for five days in a row, so the plants were confused. No gradual spring, this one. It was more like a Beethoven symphony--all the stops were pulled out. Or perhaps Vivaldi.

When I took her to her room, I helped her onto the bed and she asked that I open the drapes. Her roommate liked the dark, but she was home for an overnight. Grandma drank in the light, turning her hands in the warmth of the day. I sat beside her and something made me start to cry and I rested my head beside her there. I felt her hand stroking my hair, like a breeze, she was so gentle.

"My lilac girl, my little girl. Your mother ... she's  not lilacs. She's peonies. She is all bright colors and so ripe she cannot bear up under the weight of her beauty." I started at such a description. I didn't know Grandma knew my mother so well.

Then she sighed, and I looked up at her. She was crying herself. "Grandma? Are you all right?"

"Of course, dear. Of course. I'm old. You know I'll have to leave soon.  But the hardest thing of all? To leave all these colors. How can I leave all these bright shining colors behind?"

And this was Grandma.

***
If I am to be poor, if I am to live at the mercy of others' care, if I am to find that my world grows smaller before my time? I will do it like Grandma— with unbridled joy, and clinging to all the colors she saw through her one half-functioning eye. Her eye was the truest of any I have ever known.