The Things You Say...

The only sounds you could hear in the studio was the soft creaking of the press and someone grinding away at an old image on their litho stone. My instructor (also my advisor) stopped his rounds and leaned over my lithograph, fresh off the press. "Your technical proficiency is impressive," he said. 

He himself was a talented printmaker. But as an instructor, he was quite reserved so all of us in the art program would collect each word like precious jewels. I felt myself warmed by his observation. Still he stood over my print. And then looking up at me with a curious expression, he added, "But you don't have anything to say."

I nodded. It didn't even occur to me to be hurt or insulted. It was just an observation. And he would know, wouldn't he?

It didn't occur to me to dispute his statement. I took it as I assumed he intended -- a matter of fact. Over the course of 20 years, I would live out his pronouncement. His voice becoming the one in my head, saying, "I'm a good craftsman. I just don't have anything to say."

It's why I pursued a a professional career in graphic design instead of enrolling in the graduate program at the Art Institute. At least my technical abilities would be put to good use, in service to other people's ideas or causes or movements... people with something to say.

Have you had an experience like this? A defining moment in which you realized that some belief you had about who you are was actually borrowed from someone else? Perhaps then you've also experienced the thrill that comes from shedding it, like a heavy coat that you suddenly discovered you don't have to wear anymore.

You Can Rest

It's been a couple of weeks since moving from my little apartment to what my kids and I fondly call "the flat," I'm exhausted. I feel like I could sleep for a hundred years.

But who will let the dog out or unpack the boxes still waiting downstairs or make sure M's basketball uniform was clean for tomorrow and... who will write the post and pay the bills and settle this month's accounting....

But try as I might, on this overcast Sunday, I can't will my body to move. one. inch. Have you ever felt that? That strange temporary paralysis when your mind is awake but your body refuses to acknowledge it? It's as if I'm frozen by a sleeping curse.

Perhaps it is my stubborn insistence to orchestrate this move like I was still 20-something and move everything except the big pieces myself. Or perhaps it's the compounded 41 years of thinking that way... you know, I can do this -- this life -- all by myself! This morning, my body is not having it for one more second and I am trapped in my bed underneath an invisible hundred pound boulder.

My mind wandered to this painting, propped up in the windowsill of my studio, just just steps away from the bed, through the glass-paned doors. And my heart aches a little from its divine reassurance. It's a sort of blasphemy to think that the world revolves around my ability to get things done. It's an insidious lie that we're alone in it.

You can rest.
It's okay, every now and again, to put it all down.