Gesso

Liquid white forgiveness. Thick, warm.....it drapes my canvases in layers of love, erasing the smeared and awkward. The crooked, the ugly....the failures. Plaster grace, gypsum clemency. I have canvases that have 3, 4...6 different paintings sleeping beneath the one that was finally accepted, hung, and purchased. The gentleman from Florida that took four of my forest series home with him has no idea that lying under the graceful branches of that shady path is a blackened thing. Angry. Two in the morning and four whiskeys and rage...it slumbers in the quiet of the woods.

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I've come to treasure that bottle of ivory exoneration. The morning after, when the tears have passed and the light filters through the curtains....I can start again.

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Mistakes. We all make them. Some of the landslide errors I've committed have decimated mountains. Tsunamis that have wiped my triumphs from the map...earthquake misjudgements leaving sinkholes and black chasms in my life. I've wept oceans, mashing palms into my eye sockets till there were bruises....redefined regret.
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Yet we breathe.

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The sun rises, the wind blows. Somehow the grass keeps growing and the dog needs fed and you pay the electric bill. We go on.

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So tell me....why do I still stumble so? You'd think that I'd learn to leave the light on, to watch my step. Sometimes I feel my snarls are simply hunkered down beneath the bed, festering. Am I going blind?

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Where is the gesso for life? Is there a magic pigment that will turn my monsters into ghosts? Take away their claws and give them fluff instead of fangs? I have faced them....I have paid. I am tired.

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It's not a quest for euphoria, I assure you. I'd settle for peace. I've known the mercy of the Lord, the compassion of friends...somehow though, the monsters are still there. Perhaps they live inside me.

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It's begun to snow again. Alabaster flakes blanket the mud and barren branches....gesso from the sky.

Healthy

It's funny, Websters defines healthy as: possessing or enjoying good health or a sound and vigorous mentality. And yet...I'm beginning to truly believe that your level of "healthiness" is just a direct and somewhat backwards reflection of your level of self-deception. I seem to be surrounded by people who are "making healthier choices"....while they wallow in pits of blackened tar. One friend brags that she spent an hour at the gym working out--and during our 20 minute dialog over the phone, she consumed an entire pint of cherry garcia. Another is discovering "Buddhist peace" while continuing to drown in the suffocating relationship she swears completes her. A fellow artist I know has taken up jogging...because he passes Mrs. Felp's house...and she offers refreshment of a most personal nature.

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His wife is thrilled with his new interest in getting healthy.

Life is a maze. We navigate with a slew of handicaps to challenge us. While one might be blind, another has no arms; one limps, one crawls... One has money, another none. Education, experience, hell--just good taste and manners can either put you ahead--or if you are lacking them, behind. So we travel. Questing after a healthy life--after all, health is the "key" to happiness. It matters not the magnitude of financial or relational wealth you possess if you don't have your health. Our media sports laugh-track laden shows that portray deception, ridicule, and exploitation as amusing. Our evening viewing is peppered with advertisements for new medications that have such gruesome side effects as to make one wonder who in the blazes would actually take them. Our salad bars are dripping with thousand calorie dressings, crunchies and toppings which eradicate all validity of wellness from the copious plates being carted by smiling people secretly confused as to why they cannot drop those pounds since they are working so hard to eat healthy.

Exercise, religion, food--has it all become one spiritual quest? Or just a billion dollar scam we all participate in. I suppose it might be...but what are we seeking? Excitement? Satisfaction? Distraction? Perhaps "balance" is the only real "healthy." As each of us indulges our vices, do we make up for it somewhere else? Like benevolent vampires? I wish I knew the weight of it all....does a thriving career balance out a disintegrating marriage? Does giving up a career to "stay home with the children" counteract slim Christmases and canceled vacations? Is being slender worth skipping cheese? (dear God, please say no) Where is the handbook that has the calculated mass of everything? Can someone please write one??

My personal system is called "what would you pay."

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My darling mother used to color her hair. And she cut coupons. Buying what was on sale--plus a coupon might save her 3 or 4 bucks! However, the results at times did not resemble those gorgeous Feria commercials. (shudder) There are actually shades of red that should be labeled "Whore in the Store" and "Cheap Corner Hooker Red." One Sunday I asked her, "mum...your hair looks like...well, if I had a magic wand, would you pay me $3 to fix your hair before you go to church?" She looked at me....and then laughed. She swore she'd never use another coupon. What would you pay to have it turn out just right? When you have that horrid migraine, would you pay someone the $15 you'd save to go to the Drugstore, the cheap grocery, and the discount market for everything on your list? That particular day, at that particular time--just pay the extra $15 and get it at one place. Is it worth doing laundry at midnight to spend the evening playing swear-word scrabble? Cutting the lawn in the rain so you don't miss the game? Skip the ice-cream so you can have the brie? What would you pay?

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Does sacrifice for iniquity equal healthy?

I'm just like everyone else. I justify, I explain, I rationalize my decisions. I seek to balance my hunger for the nefarious with bean sprouts.

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Twenty minutes ago I put Splenda with fiber in my whiskey.

Pressed

The new year is here. For nearly a week it felt like spring but the cold has returned, shrouding the night in ice and mist. The glitter and twinkle has been packed away in old hat boxes and stacked neatly in the attic. Green and red tablecloths nestled in with holly garland and mistletoe. I'm still amazed at the holiday wonderland that slumbers quietly beneath the eves all summer long. Such magic that in a single day the house is transformed with fairy lights and the smell of clove and spice. The excitement builds...gingerbread houses, foamy egg nog, crystal snowflakes hung from the chandelier.

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Perhaps the real wonder is how quickly the Christmas cheer that has surrounded us for nearly two months can be whisked out of sight in mere hours. The house seems to echo a bit.

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Either way, here I stand at my ironing board. The old blue cover frayed and stained at one end from spilled coffee on a hurried morning. Ivory damask with a lovely mossy fern pattern lies piled before me. A new season, a new tablecloth.

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Tiny flakes of white dance past the window as the hiss of the iron fills the room. Steam rises, the pale cloth smoothing beneath the ferrous plate. The heat feels delicious to my cool fingers.

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The rhythmic pass back and forth quiets my scattered mind and I find myself thinking of wrinkles. Sometimes it seems that a significant amount of my time is spent in this quest to eradicate them. Tablecloths and napkins, pants and soft cotton dresses...the crisp white shirts my husband wears to work. Curtains after a wash, the silk scarf I love to wear with my raincoat. The skin about my eyes.

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Who decided the lines resulting from decades of laughter should be injected or sanded or peeled from my face? Does it make me look younger...or just that I haven't a sense of humor? Would the world pause if the napkins had furled edges?

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I've made no new resolutions this year. Being healthy and loving madly seem to cover just about everything for me, but perhaps I will think more about these wrinkles in my life. Perhaps as they are natural and lovely in their sweet crinkly way...perhaps this is a battle I shall concede.

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Happy new year, my friends.