i can tell i am in a 'she'volution. not as life-altering as the one in my mid-thirties, when i determined that the only sane course of action (or, rather, action that would preserve - return? - my sanity) was to go back to school & (l)earn my way to a new career. but i am in another span of time when i feel a significant acceleration in expansion, questing, and finding. it is not fueled by any sort of desperation, which propelled me ten years ago, but rather a gradual realization that there is more that i want (need) for myself. and that, as such, i should
do something about it.
so, it is an accumulation of decisions that, when viewed together, point to another set of wings that must surely be sprouting from my back. or unfurling from a long hibernation ~ that is probably a more apt description. they are altogether familiar, but in their long sleep the wings have become strong with lush colors and intricate patterns of sunshine & shadows. and they are mine.
before i married & moved away from my hometown, i frequently did two things. first, when the LLBean catalog arrived in my mailbox each month, i circled all my wish-fors, carefully creasing the corner of the page into a small triangle. when my bank account swelled (just a little) with my paycheck, i returned to the wish-fors & sent off the order form for one or two of the items. at age twenty-two, the concept of saving much money did not particularly occur to me.
the other thing i did was take art classes. i took pottery, metalworking, stained glass, more pottery, & i think a watercolor painting class (at the time, i preferred the functional - albeit asymmetrical - art i produced on the pottery wheel). i've
drawn since forever, so perhaps that didn't feel (at the time) something i needed to pay in order to do.
in the past two decades, i have tried my hand at various home-based crafts - producing cloth purses, curtains, pillows, knitted scarves, hats, & occasionally a meal or two - none of which particularly inspired me for any length of time. i was in my
practical stage, i guess. born of necessity, with two children, no paid employment, an excess of exhaustion and a paucity of uninterrupted personal time.
then came graduate school and a wonderful new career, into which i poured all creative fire with grand results. along the way, my children passed from elementary school to middle school - and now from middle school into high school. & as they have become quite close to self-sufficient, time has returned to my hands in a drizzle that has turned into a steady stream.
as i became aware of the drizzle of time - and, at first, filled it with long overdue nothingness - and the drizzle became a
thread of time coursing in and out of each day,
i took a drawing class. saturday mornings, when teenagers were asleep & demands on my time could be delayed, shuffled to another part of the weekend. & the drawing class was a series of remembrances - oiling long-ago ways of looking at the world, of translating the tangible onto paper with a pencil. oh, yes. i remember this.
& then it was
summer, and time opened up like a deep gorge that would take me eight weeks to cross with only occasional, requisite pauses to feed & water my fellow trekkers. i mean teenagers.
so i took up yoga
and
i signed up for a painting class
i painted two things:
a still-life with green apple
& a klimt woman
the art class & the yoga were very similar for me.
in each, i was completely absorbed in the now.
didn't receive too much instruction on how to go about this
(which was good & bad)
so just started putting paint on the canvas
& guessing.
ghost lady
reference points
Day 2
brought ghost to zombie life
trying to figure out
how to make her look
less like a clown
& how to do that
colorful robe!
trying to refine,
but she's still not looking
at me.
Day 3
working on colors
& working...
got really brave
& fixed her eyes
felt
(just a little bit)
like an artist
