Anew

 

 

Like the way your fingers tingle upon the touch of a new lover's flesh...so my hands feel.  Taunt with excitement, slightly terrified and more than a shade awkward.  It's been nearly five months... 

 

If you don't know the story of the red paintbrush, read the beginning of this tale here. 

 

I was devastated.  Even now my heart pounds as I think about that day.  My hands curl slightly...that feeling in your stomach like you've fallen a great distance.  One hundred and forty-nine days since.  One hundred forty-nine days without unscrewing a tube of paint.  A summer packed full of children and trips to the pool and long evenings spent reading on the front porch.  Every so often I would wander into my studio...and breathe.  Liquid sunshine, the smell of charcoal and paint and wooden canvas frames would roll over me like warm ocean waves.  I would run my fingers over the soft brushes that waited patiently in the empty teapot....and quietly leave.

 

Truly it's unlike me to be so...cowardly. 

 

But there it is.  I was afraid.  Oh, so robust of me to use the past tense there--because I am still afraid.  It's difficult to explain the uncertainty that has taken root in my heart.  Even with hundreds of canvases behind me....they were all painted with that brush.  

 

School commenced and I found myself preparing for our annual bash, the Soup. (should you care, you can read about it here.)  This is quite the undertaking as we open the entire house to guests--every bedroom, bathrooms, the mancave in the basement as well as the third floor library and my studio.  You know how when you have friends over there's always a room you shove crap in and shut the door?  We can't do that when expecting so many--which forces me to de-clutter and clean every scrap and nano-meter we live in.  A tad overwhelming, but hell--I'm done cleaning till after the holidays! 

The Soup was on the 13th....and a part of me cringed the entire evening as I was faced with the same inquiry over and over, "So what have you painted lately?"  Ummmm.....nothing?  Everything from early spring has sold so what was left on the walls was older; ones I don't like enough to hang or cannot part with for some reason or other.  And mixing the chocolate chips into the pancake batter the next morning, (while sipping a delicious chocolate wine, I might add) I came face to face with the apprehensive artist now living in my home.  She gazed at me from the reflection in the kitchen window.

 

Sunday and Monday were party-recovery. (dear Lord above, I am not twenty anymore)  Tuesday and Wednesday I cleaned and cooked.  And this morning I sent the boys off to school, tidied up....and pulled on my gear.  Clothes ancient, covered in paint and ink.  Dabs of olive green and ocher, cobalt blue and crimson; the rip in the right leg gaps a bit, framing the skin of my knee in a strange motley way.

 

It took eleven brushes...they felt wrong in my hands.  I kept switching them, one into the teapot after another, the splash of water a harsh reminder of my neglect. 

 

Later I sat, this painting staring back.  It's not large, only 10 x 12 or so, and this is just the first stage.  The part where I force my mind back into my dreams and attempt to pull them out and make them tangible.  Sometimes I love my work best at this stage, for here they appear much more like real dreams...blurry, the edges undefined.  From here though, my waking mind clarifies, delineates and eventually finishes the work.  If I like it, it lives.  If I don't....my, how I do love the magic that is gesso. 

 

I feel almost as if I'm dating again.  The alieness of these brushes....it's rather like taking a stranger home for the first time.  Incorporating the foreign into the most intimate aspect of my life. 

 

Starting over.  Something the human race is renowned for.  Our ability to adapt and accept transitions, to forge on after overwhelming loss.  Relationships, marriages, parenting...new jobs, new challenges.  Life after abandonment, disease and graveyards.  I suppose my fear is really founded in my own selfish aversion to change.  My comfort in how it was.  Pathetic, really. 

 

Some roads we find ourselves upon are not our choice.  But each leads someplace from where we are.  Here's to knowing I don't want to stay where I am....so one foot in front of the other. 

 

I begin.

 

 

 

  



Confessions

As the years have ticked by, I've become rather shocked at the accumulation of secrets I have stashed away.  Somehow I once believed that grown-ups were much more unconstrained.  As a child, I suppose I had so many rules--endless, they seemed--that the fantasy of one day living in my own house, buying my own food, and staying up until dawn shredded the night with her glorious golden fingers....how beautifully liberating this would be!  Ahhh, at last as adulthood enveloped my world, I became well versed in the tango between freedom and responsibility.  These two dance partners swing you from one set of arms to another, back and forth.  One's embrace light and fragranced with violets and spring rain; the other's fevered touch makes your heart pound with possible discovery, the bouquet darker...a musk of surreptitiousness and clandestine thoughts.

That which we hide.  The silly and the desperate.  What you really think or feel, what you wish....though my mother's voice echoes in my mind, "if wishes were fishes, we'd walk upon the sea."  Expectations and predilections and longing.  Appearances and impressions and the battle for authenticity in an increasingly two dimensional world filled with photoshop and spell check.  Yet--I've found several friends who do indeed share all, tell all, reveal all.  There is a certain...missing.  These are the ones addicted to soap operas and talkshows well-stocked with melodrama and theatricals.  Perhaps lacking in their own closet space they seek out other's.....then again, perhaps I am merely unaware of how deep their closet goes. 

.......

I've recently acquired a nightgown that I love so much I abhor taking it off in the morning.  Some day there will be a knock at the door at noon and I'll pay for this.

I have gotten up after the house slept, crept downstairs and warmed a slice of brie....and ate it with a knife and fork.  Cheese enslaves me.

I fantasize about making love in an elevator. 

I paint to Damien Rice's "O" all the time.

I often eat ice-cream in the shower.  Something about the icy treat while under a scalding waterfall is a sizzling contradiction. (I've also been known to take a Guiness in--the perfect ending to an exhausting day)

I have extreme nail-envy of several of my close friends who have lovely, long fingernails....with no work at all. *sigh*

I was once mistaken as a boy in my young teens when I had short hair.  This has led to decades of long tresses, clogged drains, and wayward strands baked into cakes.  I no longer bake cakes.  And I will DIE with long, tangled grey hair.

Sometimes I think the most terrible things....they should make bleach for the brain.

I flip off my coffee maker when it's empty.

.......

The sunless sky mocks me this morning.  Whispering that it isn't nearly as late as the clock proclaims....that I don't have to get dressed quite yet. (mind you, it's not as if I'm lounging--I've stripped the bedsheets, done two loads of laundry, cleaned the kitchen, shooed children out the door with lunches packed and the appropriate paperwork signed and tucked into pockets, swept the steps, fed the dog, and set out the bread dough to rise...all while wearing my Marilyn Monroe nightgown.)

Secrets.....does confession change them?