In the Dark

I woke up last night, so restless I knew I was suffocating.  Before my dramatic panic could gain a good foot hold I realized that in my sleep I had smashed my face into a feather pillow and was literally a little short on air. Now chuckling at myself, I rolled over, waking myself up all the way.  I quietly got up before I could toss and turn my darling awake too and headed downstairs.

Char excitedly jumped into my lap as I sat on the couch.  We played 'chase the string' (which is way more awesome in the muted light of 4 am than ever before known.) This cheered me up for a bit but as he settled on my chest for a cuddle my thoughts again soured...

Age is marching on my face.  I have gained ELEVEN frigging pounds in the last three months. Every day, I woefully eat my Greek yogurt/ raspberry breakfast and then later munch down my loaded veggie salad, snacking only on almonds, hard boiled eggs and bell peppers... while I resentfully glare at skinny coworkers snacking on cream cheesed bagels and raspberry muffins.

I get to work in the dark.  I stare at my computer screen, checking internet references against word docs, without access to windows.   I leave work in the dark. I get home and make dinner.  I sit in a dark living room and stare at a TV, the blood in my ears sounding thick and heavy.  My art sits silently collecting dust in the company of many double stacked unread books. We stay up late.  I sleep badly.  I get up in the dark.

My special kind of hell is a regular happy world for others.  I am confused why I don't seem to adapt. I have struggled into this ill fitting sweater every day for years now.  Years and years.  Everyone around me seems to be just fine with the hours, with the commute, the grey walls, shared lunches in windowless break rooms and dress pants. Why am I not just fine too? Why am I slamming my inner fists against the walls?

I went outside yesterday, during the day.  Watery December sunlight kissed my face for the first time in three days and just for a moment I felt lighter. So today, as I got to work in the dark, I carried with me my tennis shoes. At 9 am, an hour and a half in, I traded my heels for them and walked around outside for ten blissful shivering minutes. 

'The Bug', Ego and a Vaccine

Our perception of self worth and value tends to be deeply aligned with our pesky testy fragile ego and as such it is an incredibly powerful aspect of the human condition, ego can be a serious force to reckon with.

I have my own ego issues, of course, but they are not usually sports related. God and fate did not see fit to give me a reasonable sense of spacial awareness or much by the way of eye hand coordination.  I respect the high possibility I may die carrying the laundry down the stairs some day. So when it comes to sports, of any kind, I hold myself back, take extra care and never compare my progress to others.

And this detached approach works well for me.... Until I catch 'The Bug'.

'The Bug' happens when I get really interested, invested and begin to see 'Dramatic Improvement'. Symptoms include an awakened fiercely competitive six year old self, hair brained determination and a complete lack of concern for possible bodily harm. Having the 'The Bug' means that I will now measure my progress with a ruthless and unforgiving memory.

Skiing is a great example.

I started skiing on gentle runs in the rolling sprawling hills of Harrisburg. I loved it; each time was chaotic movements in a splendor of heavy snow and coupled with fantastic car wheels.

Then I moved to Utah and had a couple of days on snow accompanied with the skilled aid of my dearest. Having grown up skiing on a racing team in Utah, he is more than proficient, ridiculously fast and a persistent instructor. Under his tutelage I went from sort of up right and mildly paying attention to showing some assemblage of 'Dramatic Improvement'.

I remember my first run taken with 'The Bug' and an inkling of confidence... As of that run, I have clobbered my face, free fallen, lost skies, blacked out and seen the inside of the First Aid office at Snowbird and Alta. In the name of 'The Bug' and my burning desire to be awesome; I have become a fanatical devotee to my crusade -despite my natural state of klutz.

Getting 'The Bug' is not a given occurrence though.  Scuba diving, for example; My darling introduced me to the world of diving years ago but the whole thing only enhanced an already acute awareness of my squish-able self. Diving is cool, awe inspiring and down right scary. Scuba diving remains in the category of 'Improve and Proceed with Extreme Caution'

Flying has been in this category up until last October.  I treated the whole thing with watchful meticulous routine and warily eyed interest. Then last year, after a summer of monsoons, cross winds and blown out days, there came a mystical week in October. For six days, in a row, there arrived warm/ cool autumn air, bringing straight and even winds with golden sunsets.

It's incredible what consistency will do. Launching, flying and landing six days in a row, of course, improved my confidence and skills. It also included my personal hook: 'Dramatic improvement'.

Perhaps 'The Bug' is intermediate syndrome, I have read a bit about it. Intermediate syndrome describes making 'choices not in line with one's actual level of experience, skills' and general know how. Regardless of what it is called, I have it, a burning, driving need to understand and accomplish, on my own, continuous improvement.  Along with 'The Bug', my ego now includes the unhappy trait of sensitivity when my choices are second guessed.

Then.... something did not happen to me, it happened to the one who matters most. I listened to the one with a prouder and stronger character than anyone in this world; swallow the first and exemplify the second, and ask for help, feedback and advice.

I think might have found a vaccine for 'The Bug'.

It's called 'Be Quiet and Listen.'

Headed Home

Lately, the Wind Woman had been something of a pill, delivering only turbulent rain or half-hearted little breaths of a breeze.  Just in the prior week, on THREE evenings, I stood clipped into my gear, sweating in my full face helmet, fingers fiddling with my lines, staring over my shoulder at the flag on the end of launch.... and no wind....

Additionally I was immersed in family chaos composed of college graduation, dinners, military commissioning, an impromptu bridal shower -All of which a happy series of events, of course, but also loaded with family politics and emotions.  

Naturally, it was fantastic flying conditions the two nights booked with family gatherings....

And then it was Sunday and although the weather was not predicted to be flyable, it was still Sunday, the most lovely day of the week.  I am very fortunate to have a deeply religious family and usually I am left Sunday as my day -no interruptions, no events. Ah Sunday, how I eye this day with excited scheming and anticipation.  

Sunday morning we pulled weeds, hauled branches and after four hours of yardwork, the rental property was a little more presentable.  That afternoon, we hurried to Alta to celebrate closing day by slugging through heavy slushy spring snow and admiring the array of inappropriate costumes and outfits (or lack of ).  

As we returned to the car, my darling man checked the winds on his phone and announced... "Hey! It's flyable!".

Skies and boots were never so quickly shed.  Tearing down the mountain, falling out of the car to swap our ski gear for paragliders, we dashed to the flight park.  

And it was flyable;  we stepped out of the car, into harnesses and off of launch into bouncy and perfectly ahhhhhmazing wind. 

We flew and flew, for around an hour until it was time to head home.

"Headed Home"

"11" X "14" X ".75"
Original Fine Art - Acrylic (Sealed to protect against fading/UV)


***I have decided this piece needs a lovely vibrant background... ;)

(Twitter)

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?

Sunburn

I itch in my own skin. It is a feeling similar to having a sunburn and then laying on it without offering any apology to it, not lotion or a glass of water. A dry irritated anxious feeling.

To calm myself I go to my brother’s website and I look at the landscapes he has painted and posted online. I think about how the air tasted that morning. Moist, cool and quiet and the world is breathing with the paint… or in another one, it is choked by blinding baking sun light and the stillness is sitting on top of the heavy air.

But the feeling of rest is more just a memory of an echo lately.

We planted ivy and trees this weekend. When I opened my car door and stepped out yesterday afternoon, I reverently touched the one closest to me. Green... I stoked the vine and admired the waxy color of life.

Green… and somewhere there is not a world gone mad. There are not grey walls and bitter silent revolutions eating inside me. People are kind on the road again, Strangers are friends waiting to meet. The world is as I saw it only a couple years ago… That summer we spent chasing storms.

Somewhere I am myself again. Where I write and draw. I don’t fight off people eight to five. I don’t fall out of bed and forget to say good morning to the dawn. And there is somewhere that my skin will feel like my own again.

I opened the garage door in my mind and looked at my door. Open road on an open door. Something is calling me. I am on trains in my dreams lately, speeding heart stopping fast trains. And something is on the other side of the train that I need. I keep trying to get to the other side but the train car shakes and rattles over the tracks, throwing me back.

I had a wonderful weekend. I felt rested and safe. I felt like laughing and teasing. But the feeling came back anyway, Sunday, at 11pm. I ignored it yesterday. Today it is in my face -and now everyone else’s too.

What is nagging at the edges of my thoughts?