Me and the Wild thing

Usually it’s a statement, “You should sell your art!”

Sometimes it is a question, “Why don’t you sell your art?”

Questions of this nature bemuse and flatter.  I am puzzled because I know I am not particularly good.  I am charmed because perhaps they feel what I felt while painting.

I married the most intelligent, brilliant and handsome man.  We live a life of adventure, friendship and beauty.  Life, work, pets, dinner, dishes –most of these daily tasks bring me happiness and satisfaction.

Despite this incredible life... there is something restless inside me.  And I feel I understand people who fight to live happily while sharing space with something inside them.  When ‘this’ rises up inside, I must rise to greet it.  If I do not, if I decide to ignore or fight it, 'it' and it's rip tide of need will shred my sanity.  You see, inside of me, there is a wild thing. 

The last few weeks were on fast forward and I haven’t painted At All in over three weeks.  Not one sketch or doodle.  My hands began to hurt first; I started to clench and flex them in my sleep.  Next my eyes start to look hungry in the mirror.  Now I am half listening to people around me, half of me checked out in distraction. This growing, hyperventilating need to pull into myself; to sit alone in a grove of trees found only in my head -it is about to consume me.  This starved feeling had begun to torch all other feelings into ash –my nightly dreams become a frantic race to my imagined trees and as I nearly reach  them - the morning alarm again goes off.

Early this morning, still short on time, thinking about a lunch I haven’t packed, a phone call from a recruiter, my boss’s email, a class I need to take a look at, laundry in the dryer –Instead, for a moment, I went outside to watch Lone Peak disappear in the oncoming storm.  I watched the cloud cover expand, thick and wet, as it draped across the mountain and I listened to the softest smallest wind breathe….please…

Two hours later I took twenty minutes to lay a base of blues, purple, grey and greens on a stark white naked canvas.  I cannot tell you how it feels, I can try:  It is oxygen flooding into my hands, a feeling of water and wind in my lungs and my terrible torturing tension eases. 

You see, I am not a religious person and I am not fond of the idea there could be a guy in a beard hanging out in clouds, delivering bizarre rules.  However I do believe in the Wind Woman. I believe in the prophetic powers of sunflowers, dreams and instincts.  

Here is the complication about selling my art:  Each painting is a spell I cast using paint to reflect the light breaking in my soul; I cast out an imagined silver and gold net to draw in emotion, the moment, the point of view I am seeing. 

I have always hung them where I live so every time I walk in, I rest when I see them.  The wild thing relaxes.  Safety, beauty; the intangible threads of my life woven into these small bright windows.  It doesn’t matter to me if they are good or correctly scaled or controversial and strange.   They are me.  I painted them for the purpose of existing.  I painted them because it made me smile.  If they make someone else smile that is exciting!  Because they felt what I felt and I have successfully expressed my truth; We are all connected, no one is as alone as they think, wish or fear. 

How do I sell that?  What is the right price tag?

Just fly

All of us hide in ourselves. We hide in makeup or no makeup or in too many or too little clothes. We hide behind smiles, behind boasts, behind silence; we are all hiding.

Watery warm autumn sunlight kisses my cheek and jaw line. The Wind Woman plays lightly with my hair. She is whispering in my ear, her cool bare breath against my face, tickling me into a smile.

People are flying and I want to fly too. I came out here to watch, to be inspired, to talk to the Wind Woman, the Lady of Wild Hair and Random Tangents. Lately I am afraid of things I want and I wonder why. Is it a mortality fear? Fear of aging, am I overly sensitive to the fragility of my human body? I had pondered this two days ago too. I thought about the fear when I launched and flew but then completely forgot about it as I excitedly landed EXACTLY where I wanted.

‘AH HA!! TADDDAAAA!!!’ I shouted to myself, this included an imaginary high five to self too. Out loud I only quietly giggled to myself, mildly drunk on my happiness. I launched again, caught up in the surging glory of success. I continued to forget about fear as I flew back and forth awhile –until I unexpectedly bumped into it again on landing.

When I notice something about myself I notice it in others. Or imagine it in others. Either and/ or. Most of the time I think no one notices I am watching them; trying to understand how we are all so alike and yet so separated. Occasionally, I think my ‘observing’s’ are noticed by some and that some become suspicious and think me suspect of something. When I notice them noticing, I wish I could ask, “I see this in me, I think I see it in you. What conclusions have you arrived to?”

But people are hiding and dislike nothing more than being found out.

Back to today. The air is calmer than yesterday, rich in dense cool air, rising up like lazy champagne bubbles… My Wind Woman sighs her question softly ‘Would you like a glass?’

Yes, yes I would. Despite falling over the dog, then the cat and then my shoes and dropped coat; somehow I make it out to the park with my head attached. Carefully, systematically, I pull and lay out my wing and my things. I call my dearest to tell him where I am. I strap in, flight check twice and pull up.

It was perfect -until my glove caught in the brake handle, came off and I flopped the wing over trying to catch it, making myself laugh. Redo was effortless, launch was clean, and up up up I went. I made a very low bench, the kind that had me grinning all the way, wondering if I would land on the trail.

On the back ridge, looking at the romantic lonely Timpanogos and her snowy ridge outline, studying the fairy land that must be Lone Peak, I decided: Sometimes, maybe we are afraid of what we want most because it is what we want most. Nothing is as disappointing as hope unrealized; so the more we want and hope for something, the more we are guarded against it.

I told my Wind Woman my conclusion. In answer she shook out my fear like dust from an over trodden door way rug and told me ‘Just fly.

Head in the Clouds

Nice painting huh?  Nice, peaceful....yawnnnnnnnnnnnnn

I have the window cracked and the Wind Woman is racing to whip up another hot August thunderstorm and as she dashes by comments, "That's boring..."

Before I can do more then scowl she's off again and I hear the trees laughing....

well...it is boring...


Out come blues, blacks and yellow!  Rise and rise!!

I am playing 'Prelude' (From the Unaccompanied Cello Suite No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 on Master and Commander) and it is blaring from my personal computer -My fingernails are stained and there is a roaring in my ears, echoing the electricity outside -!


"How go the close outs in the markets?"

...blankly I turn back to the desk speaking to me....
WAIT I am on a conference call!  For work!  but I am at home!  Right!!!

I silence my computer, un-mute the call and give my market's updates while chewing on the end of the paint brush and resting my chin in my hands. 

The call ends and a glance in the window's reflection tells me I have paint on my face.

In soooo many ways.

Finished 16 X 20 X 3/4 Acrylic "Head in the Clouds"

“Let’s go for a Bike ride!”

Something the size of my face is directly in front of me on the narrow path but as I am careening capriciously at warp speed (maybe 16 mph!) in darkening twilight -There is absolutely no way I am not going to smash it.  

Happily it flutters up, just in the nick of time, to hover with me.  Its wings must be heavy; heavy enough that as they pump up and down, I feel the air next to my cheek moving.  My sweat is intravenously pouring down me as I struggle up the smooth dirt track and then I’m suddenly cooled by warm summer evening air as I spike forward and down onto the rocky downhill trail.

‘Giant Black Moth’ or ‘Bizarre Small Bird’ or possibly ‘Little Strange Bat’, whatever it is, hangs out with me for a few turns.  I think it is asking “What on earth is a human unsteadily winding by at this hour doing here??”

To answer that question…

“Let’s go for a Bike ride!”  This sentence was exclaimed around 7pm.  It is the end of another baking blue day here in the high desert mountains of Utah so we waited til nearly eight to head up to the nearby canyon. 

According to maps there is a nearby canyon bicycle trail head that runs all the way to the flight park in our neighborhood.  The game plan: Drive up, ride home and then take the second car back to retrieve the first.  

As it appears to be a mostly a downhill track, when we arrive, we go the opposite way, about half a mile.  Why? Because that is up hill and we want to make sure we get a little exercise before our easy cruise home… As we back track to the trail head, we go under the road through a tunnel.  I have a spontaneous thought, “I don’t want to be on a trail at dark, this short dark tunnel is uncomfortable.”

This trail we thought was downhill?  It begins excruciatingly steep as this skinny path is entirely uphill.  

I focus on three goals: breathing, not running into the mountain and not falling off the mountain.  My muscles, so sadly out of oxygen and strength, burn me alive until a rush of endorphins gives me a natural high.  I may be ‘older’ but my body still has the ability to kick in! Yay! I wallow in the glory of lightheaded gasps and the thrill of trying and sort of succeeding.  

Absently, I overly tighten my grip and in response my front wheel wobbles, wheedling me violently to the right.  I turn back to the path just in time before I go sliding off...again.

I grin at my handsome man, just a few yards ahead.  This courteous, much more athletic partner of mine; he is once more waiting for me to catch up.  My stubby legs peddle harder to hurry and meet him.  I ignore the screaming of my labored lungs.

I stop just behind him and we notice the arrival of twilight.

Oh… Well the view is fantastic.  The contrasts of green and gold foothills merging into glittering lights of the sprawling cities below and cradled from above by a deepening blue sky –it takes my breath away -oh no, wait, that was the last part of the hill- but IF I had a breath to take away, it would have. I'm unable to pause my gasping to drink so I slurp in a mouth full of icy water and hold it until it's warm and then choke it down.

We are three miles in, about half way.  Do we turn back?   Do we keep going?  It’s a toss-up whether either is the better choice at this point. We decide to keep going. 

A few minutes later, just in time for twilight to turn to early dark, the trail, at last, officially turns into All Downhill.  We now have the relentless hand of time and vanishing light pushing us forward too.  The situation, regardless of whether it ought to be laughable is besides the point.  We are laughing despite ourselves.

I am riding my brakes, nervously picking my slowing way past sharp sage bush while simultaneously, trying to Not Look At the extreme drop to the right - which I notice, helpful or not; it IS increasingly hard to see just how far up we are… which also means it is increasingly hard to see the trail…

“Trust the trail, trust that it’s there,” My encouraging crusader heartens.  In between breaths he continues “the bike is more stable at 15 mph then at 2 mph.”

Bugs, I suspect grasshoppers, (why grasshoppers? Well they were in the news this afternoon so I image grasshoppers, duh...), pop up, on and off of my ankles as I whip through and past. 

I giggle to myself, ‘How is it we get ourselves into these types of moments?’   

About now the ‘Giant Black Moth’ or ‘Bizarre Small Bird’ or possibly ‘Little Strange Bat’ pops up and joins me for the ride. I chuckle as I answer myself and It.

Because we are adventurers!  Not the kind that make history or world records, but the kind the somehow scoot by on the tolerant good graces of chance and a bit of our own personal tenacity. 

I follow the shadow of my sweetheart, my best friend, his back tire sliding slightly for a moment as he hit a rocky patch in front of me; both of us are squinting, straining to see the disappearing pathway.

I can’t wipe the smile off my face. 

Decide

This is my year to "Decide" and Yesterday was a really big day.

My New Year Resolution is that one word.  Whatever it is in life I am thinking about doing, I am to decide.  Do it or don't but tackle the decision.

I also decided to stop being afraid of steep slopes. I decided to ski better and just do it.  I have since introduced my face to my knee, left a bruise the size of a soccer ball on my hip and generally done cartwheels several times down various runs.  But I Will BE a GOOD SKIER.   My darling, though wary since ever since I knocked myself out cold, has continued to be my tolerant exasperated instructor.

I skied the Cirque yesterday!!!!!  This is a Huge deal for me. I was excited /terrified as my sweetheart lead me and our friend along a mountain ledge about five feet wide on either side and drop offs on both sides that made my tummy leave me, (It, and my heart, promised to meet me at the bottom). 

But I knew I was ready, I've been working really hard to get to this point.  Finally we are at the end of it, at the ‘easiest’ spot.  I skied up to the edge, (which literally just falls away, poof, no more mountain, just drop out). 

I took two deep breaths and dropped in.  It is Spring snow, thick heavy, chunckety…. If that is a word.  Skiing on snow like that, deep solid snow, feels like being on wooden old rollercoaster.  The kind that afterwards you feel like you might have lost a filling or two from clacking your teeth together.  Yeah, that kind of snow. 

From the bottom, I could hear my heart and stomach cheering me on, “We’re right here when you get down!” I stood tall, muscles screaming, I pushed my skies into the slushy concrete, turned… and I DID NOT FALL.  The bright blue sky burned my grin into my face as I continued and made my careful and slow way down. 

And what d’ya know?  I found that not just my faint hearted tummy was down there; but my awesome friends too!  They saw I was coming down and skied over to cheer me on.  And we laughed and smiled together. 

Ah the victories found on Spring Sundays at Snowbird.