November 21, 2011

Feeling Thankful

If nothing else, the last six years have shown me you have to be alert and look out for the often vague and obscure signs pointing you in the right direction.  Life presents unexpected twists and turns and if you spend too much time looking in the rearview mirror, you're kind of missing the point.  I was led back to Boston, my hometown, a move I never would have made had I not been paying attention to the signs.  It's been an interesting transition, trying not to cut the tethers of a former home, maintain them from a distance, while beginning anew in a changed place that I remember loving so much.

With the dust of the move settling and with the world's spin slowing down, I find myself nearly upon Thanksgiving, living in a new home and not having to travel very far to break bread with my little family for the holiday.  My house has been warmed with the constant presence of family and friends and I have a new job that I love and am challenged by everyday.  Nearly every year that I lived in Washington, I made the trip back to Boston for Thanksgiving.  I traveled sometimes by plane, sometimes with a U-Haul in tow (much to my parents' chagrin), needing to off load stuff that wouldn't fit into a studio-sized apartment. This year, however, I will travel an hour by car to my parent's home, with one of my favorite people, Ryan, and a heart overjoyed to be here.  I have a lot to be thankful for. 

Looking back to 2009, with overloaded plates of my mother's delicious meal, my family and I toasted to our well-being.  There was my divorce and my Dad and Stepdad had each had their respective surgeries.  And though none of us were quite out of the proverbial woods, we were getting there, inching toward regaining our health.  It was a good holiday - we had each other and life, which had proven to be turbulent during that previous year. 

One year ago, in 2010, I spent Thanksgiving in Washington, with my dear friend, Keith, and his wonderful friends.  It was well-attended by a prism of people with varied histories and colorful lives.  We all came together, many of us not knowing anyone but our hosts, to share a holiday of incredible food (three types of turkey), wine (copious amounts of wine), and many laughs.  Washington can be a cold and transient place but even if for just one day, we were family.  It remains one of my most treasured memories of living there.

What strikes me most about looking back at the unexpected events of the past is having the ability to cherry pick from it the lessons learned.  Of course, I have the luxury of distance and hindsight and with that comes a certain philosophical outlook.  Admittedly, when you're down in the trenches you aren't thinking how wonderful it will be to know what lessons you will seemingly pirouette out of the quagmire with.  Friends of mine and I talk now about where we all were only one year ago and how in 2012 things will be evermore different than they are today.  I find that rather exciting. 

For me, there is very little I would change about my past.  You can beat yourself up for the mistakes, but what good would it do?  What's the saying about life giving you lemons...add vodka?  No wait, wrong adage.  It'll come to me.

Life ain't perfect.  And I am so thankful for that.

June 19, 2011

My Tale of Two Fathers

You don't have to go very far back into my family history to discover it's an interesting one.  I've told the story a thousand times, possibly more, and it seldom fails to entertain - and even raise a few eyebrows. The best parts, if you ask me, have taken place in the last 30 or so years - coincidentally, not long after I began to walk this earth - but it really began earlier than that.  The abridged details go something like this:

My mom and dad were hippies who weren't married when they had me. They broke up, amicably, a year or two after I was born. My mom met my stepdad, Eddie, when I was three and they were married when I was five. Dad met Leslie, my stepmom, when I was eight.  They dated for a decade before marrying when I was in my second year of college. I was in both of their weddings - a flower girl in the former and I read a poem in the latter.  Neither set of parents had other children.  We vacation, celebrate birthdays, and spend holidays together.

The typical family structure, though, is learned from an early age. The image of a Nuclear Family is ingrained in our psyches and deviations from this model somehow don't feel right to the tender mind of a five year old. I was about to watch my mother walk down the aisle with someone other than my Dad, and I had some difficulty in accepting this transition. My childish, naive desire was to have my birth parents together living the "true" image of family. What perhaps none of us knew at the time was that our family would become one of the truest parts of our lives.

It was while I was in the seventh grade - Middle School - that they went to the Open House together, as parents often do.  Yet it was my Dad and Stepdad who were in attendance.  It's one of many stories that is well-versed in my family: Mr. Losert, Principal at the time, was speechless with shock, eyes wide as saucers, when he saw Dutchie and Eddie walk through the front doors together.  He was familiar with both my Dads and who they were in our small community, either athletically or collegiately.  The obligatory questions were asked and both of my Dads explained that my mother had become sick that night and they would both be filling in for her.  I had taken for granted this event at the time, as most teenagers take for granted many things that do not directly affect their lives.  But more so because that was the behavior I had always known - family acting together for the benefit of each other and their one daughter.  It was the status quo and it worked for us. 
 
I was brought up by both of my fathers, having lived with Mom and Eddie five days a week and spent the weekends with my Dad.  My childhood is a fond collection of comingled memories where both of my fathers exist.  Still in the early stages of our father-daughter relationship, Eddie attached training wheels to my bike and patiently taught me how to ride it on the old, Livesey Park outdoor skating rink.  Dad and I, during our weekends together, would watch professional wrestling on Sunday mornings and play out our own match right there on the living room floor.  Eddie had always been an excellent golfer and he and I would often play mini-golf together or go to the driving range.  A protege, I was not, but I always loved spending that time with him.  I love New England summers as much as Dad does and we would pack up his big, blue van with a cooler of sandwiches and cans of soda and take off to the beach for the entire day.  The only thing I loved more than a day at the beach was the gloriously inevitable pit-stop at the ice cream shop on the way home.  Lucky for me, Dad loves ice cream as much as I do.
 
During my high school years, Dad always came to my track meets, sometimes Eddie joined him and I remember how proud I felt to see them standing together.  One particular memory I have was the state track meet, my very last in high school, and it was my 18th birthday.  All four of my parents had shown up to watch.  I had done particularly well that day and after my events, they all piled back into one car to leave - Moms in the back, Dads in the front - but not before I heard my father's voice bellow from the open car window as they drove off, Happy Birthday, Alyyyyyyyyy!!!!  It always felt so right that they were together.
 
On holidays and other occasions when I visit Eddie and my Mom, Ed always tells me ten or so times (I usually lose count) how good it is to have me home.  Whenever I talk to my father on the phone, he often tells me how proud he is of me before we hang up, even though I may not have done anything to specifically warrant it.  They always showed me unconditional love.  I'll never understand what it is like to be the father of a daughter, but Fatherhood, and the love they each showered me with, always seemed to be effortless and expressed with grace.  Fatherhood came so naturally to them and they made being their daughter easy. 
 
In early 2009, Dutchie and Eddie both became seriously ill within months of each other.  It was an unthinkable, implausible experience to be faced with the mortality of the two closest men in my life at the exact same time.  Eddie was diagnosed with Myelofibrosis - the scarring of bone marrow tissue - and Dad developed advanced prostate cancer.  There was an incredible outpouring of support from family, friends, and the community for each of them and their respective diseases.  Dad underwent surgery to remove the cancer in its entirety and Eddie had a stem cell transplant and sustained a near-eighteen month recovery.  The endurance of their spirit as well as the support around them is a true testament to the great character of these two men.  They are both healthy now and, for that, we are all incredibly lucky and grateful.
 
At Christmas, my mother's dining table is always crowded with our little family, Grandparents included.  It's always the best meal of the year, likely due to her excellent cooking, but also because we are together.  These past two years have been particularly poignant with a toast made to health, life, family, and happiness.  Following dinner, and after several bottles of wine, the five of us play digital bowling or some other game on my parents' Wii.  We have the time of our lives, laughing and acting silly. 
 
Today, as I share this story about my Dads, what is self-reflection for me and my Father's Day gift to them, I acknowledge that I wouldn't be who I am if it weren't for their presence in my life.  Along with my Mom and Stepmom, it is because of Dutchie and Eddie that I am a human who is loving and respectful, friendly and kind, patient and accepting - all the things I have collectively learned from them.
 
Happy Father's Day to my two Dads.

Dutchie, Aly, & Eddie, 2005

June 5, 2011

Thinner

I was naked and begging to be wanted.  I was trying to seduce him but the look on his face only showed disdain for me.  Even though we were just newlyweds, it had been months and I was fed up with his excuses.  I had run out of reasoning - his and my own.  I wanted to understand why I had entered a marriage that so quickly turned cold.

Twenty minutes earlier, sitting alone in our dark dining room, as I had done so often, I slugged back two glasses of wine.  I needed the alcohol for courage, but also to dull the disappointment that I knew was inevitable.  I was so god damn disappointed all the time that I had forgotten what satisfaction felt like.  But most of all, I was angry: at him, but really at myself for letting him do this to me, to us.  Drinking was a great way to get in touch with that anger - and I was angry a lot during that time.

With solid intentions, I trotted up the stairs to the bedroom where I knew he would be lying in bed reading.  I was a 10-pound thinner version of myself now, comfortable and confident in my own skin, but still feeling a sort of doomed anticipation that this attempt would end as so many others had.  It confused me, but gave me a goal - a puzzle to solve - and a resilient determination to not give up.  My attempts to persuade and seduce occurred more often and aggressively, but were all deflated in some way or another.  It was as if he was challenging me and I was sure that my determination would outlast his many acts of withholding.  He was going to concede, so I thought, to having sex eventually.  

But let me first clarify: Sex isn't just sex.  It is a vast and complicated landscape of need and emotion, pleasure and trust - many things of the physical and subconscious realms that we so seldom even consider.  (And let us not forget that it's good-ol' fashioned fun.)  Sex is Love and connection.  It is physical desire, but it is also channeled through the desire for affection, attention, nurturing, and comfort.  These are the subtleties, the bi-products, of Love.  Sex is, or better yet, should be the affirmation that Love is present.  At its best, it can be a beautiful soul-baring experience.  At very least, we should hope, it is proof that base physical desire is reciprocal.  Hey, I can imagine worse things.  But when sex is continuously denied by someone you love, the connection that it creates can't exist.  Within the context of sex, it is through the connecting, the response one receives, the acceptance and return of ones desires and affection that one feels Love.  Well, that's my opinion of it, anyway.

For him, it was a nuisance, an uninvited duty at the end of his day - like taking out the trash.  My desire for him complicated his life and muddied his own desires, whatever they were.  There was no connection lacking for him by way of having or not having it.  Sex was, after all, not about connecting for him, but an inconvenient obligation that he thought he could wriggle himself out of once we were married.  And wriggle he did, with one excuse or another.  You know the typical ones claiming headaches, fatigue, or an artificially aggrandized dissatisfaction with the state of the world.  With every excuse he made and for every one of my failed attempts, a block was mortared into the growing wall between us.  Why do you need this?  Why are you keeping track?, he would ask me.  Why aren't you?, I would say.  The tethered bond I had once felt to this person waned with each day we didn't communicate about the enormous elephant in the room. 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

He didn't bother to look up as I pushed the door open and walked into the bedroom and so he didn't see that I wasn't wearing anything.  To him, it didn't really matter what I was wearing or not since what was on offer had little appeal anyway.  Despite knowing that, I slunk, provocatively, from the foot of the bed over to where he was laying.  I noticed his grasp on the book became stronger, as if to avoid my advances by pretending to read.  I grabbed hold of it in an effort to throw it aside but he held on tighter so that it became a barrier between us.  A look of frustration and annoyance came over his face but what I noticed most was that he looked afraid of me.  I thought, at first, it was fear of what I wanted to do with him.  I now know, it was fear of what I would only months later find out.

I was once again denied, not surprisingly, and I couldn't bear it any longer.  Don't you know it's been four months since the last time?  Have you fallen out of love with me?  Are you having an affair?  Because I was so exhausted by my own sickening curiosities, I asked all of these questions and more.  Deep into that night, a pregnant pause filled the room, flooded with his inability to speak the truths that needed to be said.   Many hours brimmed with our private internal monologues.  My stomach ached with wanting the truth but I was overwhelmed with an apprehension to know it.

Finally, breaking the silence, his mouth opened to speak what would become the most unforgivable lie ever told.

You used to be thinner and I'm not attracted to you anymore.

.

April 21, 2011

Nonna's Hard Blink

I often only concede that I am part French and part Italian, which is actually all parts fallacy since I am one-third Portuguese, an ancestry that I rarely connected with.  Being a French girl at heart, though, the only way you'd know I am Italian is that I call my paternal grandmother, "Nonna", the Italian word for "Grandmother".  My father, with his seasoned New England accent, pronounces it "Norna", adding an "R" where there should not be one.  These days, my grandmother - Nonna herself - signs her cards "Nona", having misplaced one of the "N"s sometime over the last ten years.  She also goes by Maddy and Madeline, but even family members who she is not Grandmother to call her Nonna. 

Aside from the four people who take credit for raising me (I often refer to them as "all of my parents"), my grandmothers were, and continue to be, very involved in my life.  I would spend weekends with my Dad as a child, which meant spending much of that time with Nonna - and boy did she spoil me. 

One such anecdote goes something like this:

A look-a-like of Nonna's bad-ass car
Circa 1981
I loved McDonald's happy meals as a six year old: The cheerful box it came in with its clever, clasping cardboard handle; the pickle laden hamburger wrapped in bright yellow paper; the too-hot, crispy French fries that made the condiment packets warm; and the free, unisex toy, which provided either joy or curiosity, depending on which side of the gender fence it was leaning.  There wasn't anything about the happy meal I didn't like. The great misfortune in this was that my mother strictly forbade me to eat fast food and anyone who took care of me knew this rule - especially Nonna.  But being the lovingly stubborn and forthright Italian Grandmother (she was sneaky, too), Nonna would pick me up in her beige Ford Maverick and drive us directly to the nearest McDonald's, defying my mother's rule, and enthusiastically order me a happy meal.  There I would be, sitting shot gun in the Maverick and smiling widely in anticipation of all the savory splendor I was otherwise not allowed to have.  At that moment, no one in the world loved me as much as she did.  Nonna knew there was no harm in this clandestine arrangement since I would never reveal our secret and, of course, withholding the truth from my mother wasn't necessarily lying, right?  I am not sure how long it took for my mother to discover these covert, fast food operations.  But when she did, Nonna begrudgingly brought our drive-thru affair to a halt and devised other ways to spoil me - most likely with some other form of equally noxious food. 

When we were together, Nonna and I played simple games, the type that didn't require a lot of props or money to play them.  She would let me dress up in a hodgepodge of her clothing and mine, don a handkerchief on my head and pretend to be a maid that "cleaned" her house.  Admittedly, it was the closest I ever came to actually learning to clean.  Other times, allowing me to rearrange her furniture, Nonna would watch as I carefully constructed fort-like tents with draped sheets and other found blankets.  I would take up most of her living room for days at a time and hide myself away with only a flashlight and drawing books.  I believe there may even be photographic evidence of these strange events stored somewhere in Massachusetts.

In those days, Nonna was young enough to go out dancing on Saturday nights. She was a spry and spunky lady, widowed at a far too young age and she would dance on these particular nights with a large group of her coupled friends. She never shared with me the details of those younger, single days which a child's mind could not understand. But in a recent year, I spent an afternoon listening to her tell a short collection of colorful stories.  Her gray eyes, now filled with cataracts, sparkled as she gleefully recollected those fond and carefree memories of her wily, young self.

Being a hot-blooded Italian, Nonna has occasionally gotten angry. I recall a very memorable photograph published many years ago in The Boston Globe that captured her - the gray-haired, 70-something-year-old President of the Massachusetts Senior Action Commmittee, in a very heated debate over state Medicare reform.  While standing on the steps of the Massachusetts State House with an incendiary expression on her face, eyes large and aggressive, her lips in the shape of something serious being said, and she was very clearly wielding her forefinger in an unsuspecting political opponent's face.  It was glorious.  I bet the poor guy never anticipated being embroiled with five-foot-two Nonna.

On other occasions, Nonna's angry face would surface as a result of her being fed up with my father or me teasing her, which sometimes she would take in good spirits - sometimes not.  There was a hidden threshold between when Nonna was having fun and when she had had enough.  During these episodes, with pursed lips and a melodramatic air, she would, in rapid succession, blink both of her eyes causing her entire face to twitch in an ostentatious manner, the vibrations of which would ripple well past her wiry hairline.  She would repeat this behavior, presumably until she fatigued all the muscles in her face, in the meantime bringing our fun to an abrupt end.  Words were not necessary.  Several years ago, without her knowledge, I coined her signature move: Nonna's Hard Blink

Nonna would sometimes display her disapproving hard blink just to let me know too much time had passed since my last phone call to her, or that I perhaps had something to do with the bad weather that day.  She would look at me, with those Crushing Eyelids of Displeasure, say in her throaty voice, "Hiya, Monkey" (the origin of this pet name is still unknown to me), and hard blink her way into eliciting a hug and kiss on her soft, wrinkled cheek.  I guess she doesn't realize I give those willingly.

She turned 91 in January.  Life is slow for her now.  She likes her white toast and cigarettes and plays cards for pennies with the community of same-aged people that she lives among.  I saw her on Christmas morning, first exhaustively unfolding her creaking body out of the passenger's seat of my father's car and then shuffling her steps doggedly to the front door of my mother's house. 

Nonna's spirit is still strong, but it is evident that her age and the difficulties that come along with it frustrate her.  She has a sharp mind, but has given up the freedoms that a young person's body allows.  She moves slowly, much of the time with assistance.  And she stopped driving seven years ago due to being completely blind in one eye and nearly so in the other. 

In a continuing gift-giving trend, I gave paintings to my immediate family members this past Christmas.  It has become an annual tradition and a reason to paint but also an excuse to avoid the commercial trappings of the holiday "spirit".  The funny thing about family is that they seem to adore whatever piece of art I give to them whether it be out of pride or affection - or perhaps, with any luck, they actually like the piece I created with them in mind.  Over the years, my parents' and grandparents' homes have become veritable galleries of my work.  My mother, for example, believes that since the dawn of my life began in her womb, all of my original paintings naturally and automatically belong to her.  This is a belief that I have unquestioningly affirmed since she does indeed have many of my original pieces. 

Painting for Nonna this year proved the most challenging because her eyesight has severely degenerated.  It seemed perverse to give her a gift that she would have to struggle to gain enjoyment of.  I quickly realized the error in my thinking since, even though she may not fully see the image on canvas, in the end, she would deem having her granddaughter's artwork on her wall gift enough. 

On Christmas morning, I carefully watched her reaction as she opened her abstract flower painting, a departure from my normally detailed subjects.  Her eyes strained slightly as she took one close look at it through her bifocals and said proudly, "It's so, so beautiful, Aly." 

That's family for you.  

Nonna's "Wildflowers", Christmas 2010


March 31, 2011

Having Courage

A man with whom I work, Jeff, has a quiet demeanor.  I do not know him particularly well, except that he is the type of man that exudes a confident warmth, a gentle humanism.  Never superfluous in his speech, he has a calm disposition, soft spoken but also articulate.  When I have the opportunity to see him a few times a year, I am happy to talk with him, usually about work or how he fared his three hour commute that particular day.  He is the sort of man that when I see him, I smile and greet him warmly - something that does not always come naturally for me in my current work environment.

The one thing I know about Jeff, outside of his professional character, is that he has a wife who has cancer.  He has talked to me about her several times.  I don't know her name, I only know of her disease.  Having not seen him in several months, I recently asked him about her health.  He shook his head with a somber resolve that expressed without words that she is not doing well.  He said, “We are enjoying our time together.” He went onto briefly explain that the medical attempt to cure her through chemotherapy had failed and her prognosis to live is approximately 6 to 12 months. Jeff appeared stolid, composed while talking about his wife, leaving out the emotional details.  The balance of her life would be about bringing her physical comfort and “enjoying their time” together. 

Jeff talked with me about an upcoming trip that he and his wife were especially looking forward to.  A business trip would afford them the chance to visit Charlottesville, Virginia - a beautiful town with shops and old buildings and home to a classical university designed by Thomas Jefferson.  Cobblestone streets and sidewalks abut antiques stores and cafes.  Amorous couples walk slowly, arm-in-arm, through the streets.  There is a romantic and laid back air to the place.

While in Charlottesville, Jeff, in his understated enthusiasm, shared with me that he and his wife would be seeing Cirque du Soleil for the first time.  There was a detectable upbeat giddiness to his voice.  They had seen it on television, he said, and it looked wonderful.  As he spoke, I recalled my own experience seeing my favorite Cirque production several years ago and how it consumed and overwhelmed me emotionally to the point of tears.  I was amazed that what I was seeing - an elegant and gorgeously choreographed, stunningly costumed, intelligently written, beautifully woven patchwork of talented dancers and skilled and courageous acrobats - could be derived from the soul of another human being; that the creative charge from a person's vision could be turned into a tangible, visual, and beautiful expression.  I have never felt so overjoyed before or since by any other form of art.  I felt thrilled for him and his wife to be able to share a moment of sheer enjoyment - visceral and emotional - and for my coworker to have a memory like this to forever hold on to.

While I listened to Jeff and related to him my Cirque experience, finding myself with choked back tears for this man and his wife, I felt deeply compelled to say all the things of sympathy and condolence that one should, somehow muster words of eloquence that offer solace and wishes for emotional peace.  What I wanted was to show him in his time of need that I was human too, that I cared and understood.  But in that moment, filled with my silence, he offered a prolongued, gentle glance back at me graciously letting me know he heard me and he understood without me having to say a word.  It was a compelling display of his forgiveness, grace, acceptance, and connection that given his circumstance was a powerful deed.  All I could do later, finding myself safely alone, was cry for him and my lack of courage to express all the things I only wished I was able to say.  The weakness of words might not have done justice anyway.

"You can't feel compassion for someone unless you can personally relate to their experience", I heard a high school teacher once say to our class while discussing "Les Miserables", the classic story of love and redemption. I recall being suddenly angry all those years ago to hear such a blatant admittance of selfishness.  But, as life has proven, there is much truth to these words. By way of selfishness or not, it is essential, like breathing in air, to relate whichever way we best know how. What else is there, other than to relate and connect with others?

Of the things that I think of doing should I ever find myself with mere months to live, several things come to my mind. I think I would be painting more to create a legacy on canvas about what I was most passionate.  I might want to hike, if I was physically capable, in India or South America or Asia.  Maybe I would spend my last hours with my head on my loved one's chest, listening to their heartbeat or go camping in Africa, drink wine by candlelight and read my favorite book for the last time. I’d think about how I would tell my friends and family how much I loved them so they would always remember. Or maybe I'd see one final performance of Cirque du Soleil to know again how it feels to be delighted, enraptured, and amazed.

There are those people who I admire that give and love courageously, without barriers and fear, express freely without second guessing themselves.  I hope to learn something about courage from my coworker who showed me so much of it.

February 7, 2011

The Ebb...and Ever More Ebb...of Creativity

Creativity can be capricious, haphazardly wandering in and out of my life.  Thankfully, the periods in between satisfying artistic productivity - let's call it creative hibernation - has evolved over the course of the last two years.  I no longer experience weeks or even months without the need to create something, a sign that creativity and acting upon it have progressively become a regular part of my life.  This is a blessing but also a curse, since the burning internal plea to be creative is more often extinguished by fear or fatigue.  (Must remind myself to resurrect my copy of Art and Fear.)

I envy the artists and craftspeople (craftswomen, if you prefer the less politically-correct idiom) who have the opportunity to create on a daily basis.  They seem to always have the time, the means, and the energy to put things into action.  These days, I consider creativity a fickle friend, similar to, say, sexual desire:  it's always there in the background to some varying degree, but can be particularly insatiable at involuntary moments - and seemingly dormant at others.  But, you know what THEY say about the grass being greener, having to force "creativity" out of necessity could also take the fun out of it.  Or at least that's the excuse I am using.

The small town I grew up in had one small high school.  It also had, among others, one chemistry teacher, one girls' gym coach, and one art teacher.  Mr. Raposa taught the art classes during my freshman year before retiring that following summer.  He was also my mother's art teacher, revealing not only his general age but his goodly experience as an artist and educator.  He was the kind of man that had a deep, raspy voice (I think he might have been a smoker), silvering black hair - grown to a more carefree length than most teachers - and an obvious artistic bent that made him seem cool and young for his age.  A man of his tenure and laid back nature was just what we young endeavoring artists needed, but he gave enough direction to really teach us some new things:  integrating classical poetry and art, "seeing" something as opposed to merely "looking", and experimenting with various art media and styles (paint versus pen and ink versus pointillism versus expressionism).  What I liked the most about him was that when he looked at you, almost through you, it seemed he could see you for all of your artistic potential.  It felt kindred in some ways.  It was encouraging and it felt good. 

He also taught us something else:  If you don't feel artistically inspired, it's okay if you take a day off every once in a while.  We certainly weren't hearing mantras such as this from other teachers!  What I believe this instilled in us, though, was not a sense that we could get out of doing work, but that inspiration is so much a part of the process of making art and being creative.  It was a concise, but enlightening, lesson.

I find it particularly difficult to be inspired and creative during the winter months.  A day off from art every once in a while is rather a long, bitter season lacking in creative motivation, perforated by brief encounters of almost creating.  The coldness of these winter months has turned my formerly sultry relationship with art into a frigid one.  Frustration begets more frustration and the cycle of the ebb continues without a reciprocating flow.

This is the time when I look forward to spring and all of its resultant renewed senses and vigor for life.  The memories of melting earth and smells of soil and warm spring rain are buried deep in my psyche.  The growth that spring carries with it offers a sense of rebirth that no other time of the year can evoke.  For me, spring re-establishes a world of possibilities and catalyzes new goals, and often times, refreshes previous ones.  And so it goes, the cycle of intention.  Consistency makes perfect, right?  Or is that practice?  I could use some of both - and a little flow.

January 15, 2011

The Travails of a Live-Work Space

If your creative work space is anything like mine, I offer my profound condolences.  A live-work space is a formidable commodity to control if you juggle a full life AND endeavor to ritualistically squeeze out a few pieces of art.  This is why artists often have what is referred to as a separate "studio"...or as I prefer to call it, the unattainable, but wildly fantasized "Le Place d'Art".

When I was a kid, my bedroom was my studio.  My easel, if you will, was the surface of my bed where I would sit Indian-style, deep into the night, quietly listening to Led Zeppelin's IV ad nauseam, while working alone in my bedroom.  Being an introspective only-child made this easy to do.  I was never disturbed, not at those hours, and I find the memories of those freely creative, late nights to embody my young life. 

Now an adult, my bedroom is, curiously, still my studio - as well as my kitchen, living room, and office.  It is a room with a southward view and robust sunlight.  A studio by definition of real estate, it is based largely, as it were, on its meager size, not by its salivation-inducing distant cousin.  Living in a space not much larger than my childhood bedroom has proven to be simultaneously ironic and comforting.  Life typically causes our spacial requirements to expand - certainly mine has expanded and shrunk again over the years - but when I assess my live-work space, I have enough to accommodate both functions and negotiating the two within a small area always begins with good intentions.

But let me be frank: good intentions does not art produce.  Once the week's cumulative archaeological site of clothing, purses, laptops, gym bags and lunch bags has been cleared from the artistic working area, Pavlov's law does not suddenly take effect.  Tragic as it is, to sit at the table, paintbrush cradled in the palm, with the intention "to art" does not involuntarily fire the brain's creative synapses, causing a sudden flow of paint onto the paper.  Suffice it to say that making this constant and automatic connection has been one of life's enduring and puzzling difficulties. 

On the other hand, a dedicated art studio space lends focus not only to creativity, but also momentum, being continually devoid of the trappings of technology (with any luck and self control), toppling piles of the latest home furniture and intimate wear catalogues (must they send so many?), laundry in the wash queue, outstanding parking tickets to pay, birthday cards to send, and glasses of wine to drink (can one really drink and draw?).  And let us not be remiss in forgetting about the partially written, nonsensical, blog drafts.  Oh blasphemy!

What I can say in defense of having live & work joined in sometimes disharmonious union, is the constant supplicating that the creative space presents, with its coy but appropriate position, central in the room, gently imploring to gain my attention.  Art is a flirtatious nymph, longing for a visceral stroke.  With that, I must go clear off a table.  There is work to be done.