muse
A semi-feud with a professor and yet to go back to studio since Monday. Days move quick, like their deft fingers and even a nap can't save me from the anxiety.
I've been stuck on. On and on and on
Stopped caring to pick up pieces. Stopped caring when I open my mouth, so wide
You can't take this high I'm on. I haven't been this inspired in a very long time.
And I am relearning a curve, a height I forgot that is not easy to reach. It's a slow process to reorient my mind. I'm a little dizzy.
I'm making a piece about the flood. I am tripping over self-doubt because there isn't anything else to worry about at the moment. I'm using colors; it's a painting.
It's hard to know anything other than process. I can't see anything past process.
I am introduced to the importance of vacation and being centered, one quick step toward a decision and things fall into place.
Movement is hard for me. As of late, my mind has finally settled from previous trauma. I can't help snuggling down inside stability; starting clean from living without hope for years—I just wanted to preserve that cleanliness. Like a freshly laundered shirt.
So I skirted purchasing things and plunged into twelve hour sleeps. I learned a hard day's work, 9–5 to stay alive, and found no rewards. I wrote three pages a day, organized into annotating scripture in the morning, morphed into a real-live flood and plumbing issues. I was addressed internally, brought out externally, fussing the entire way.
Pointing fingers the entire way. Things have fallen apart before, it's material they say, and I know better. There's no issue, just slight inconvenience to move and do "a think about it."
And so I was brought to a land with misty rivers and sunsets that aren't seen through windows. A place that changes temperature without warning, dropping dead pine needles and rain occasionally.
Funny how just touching toes into cold spring water rearranges the soul.
Two days back to back of "9–5 just to stay alive," I submitted a writing and a proposal to respective individuals. A roving gift has set me spinning and I've appliquéd one south Vietnamese goat to muslin. House season 5 is almost complete and I am happy, consecutively happy for the first time in a long time.
Yesterday morning I remembered a distant relative of mine. I paused in the bathroom just before a shower and remembered her from last year. A call later that evening revealed her accident, that she had been hit by a car on her bike in the morning.
I learn this morning that a friend's younger brother broke his leg, and I'm here almost disbelieving. I suppose the new month of August is a good time as any to begin healing.
I've been rewarded the past couple days with easy work schedules: reading Deleuze and magazines, holed up in a library. I wake up when the sun does, washing off the night. I write three pages on scripture handed to me on a small, white paper. I work from 8:30-5, eating when I can and running to meet plans, elsewhere. I am being called.
I have made it through two pages in The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque, and I am hoping for another two today. Writing my notes just ten minutes ago, I knew déjà vu.
This means I am in the correct place. I am centered and moving on the right path.
Cold water rush of oil pastel drawing, I filled eight canvas pages last night. Detailed painting is coming soon.
Yet to have quiet time at work, so Folds research is fairly slow.
I haven't known color in over three years, just blue and values. I am wondering if this is immediately relevant to fold research or if I have finally built my foundation.
I've set my research deep inside folds and I have too many canvases to love. Stuck on The Heist, stuck on WWII, stuck on. No more floundering, just forward movement, when. Set free, you say.
I can't decide to commit a year in advance, let alone a week in advance. I'm allergic, I say.
I will restart my five artworks. I have enough blank pages.
"I won't lobby to finish the book before, it wants to be left alone as of yet.
This book arose because I needed a coping tactic. I began drawing 'Abstract Expressionism' because I knew I would have to feel the hurt sometime, and the longer I put it off, the more I needed my hands to stay busy.
So I crossed my eyes and let the patterns run. I stopped looking and set to work on compressing. I grew further inside myself, organizing the trauma in neat little boxes that were made to not spill anything. So stoic I didn't even have to crack a smile.
But then came deeper the blue and I could not shake the attention. I drew big heads and stared straight into my eyes, looking for nothing on purpose. I did not want to face that I had made a horrible mistake, choosing body over spirit (already my handwriting has begun to evolve...)
I write this in a blue pencil form. It's so much easier to declare the hurt as futile because others have suffered much deeper than I; at least I have a bed and people to love, even if they live far, far away.
So 'we' stick our nose up, declaring we are perfect and the hurt can't touch because it lives in boxes with anti-leak. There is useless reason to boast weakness. But love as a cure to this, fills up and takes away the need for these boxes. The music is the finishing wire to pull me out when too deep because I ignore it 95% of the time when I am making.
It is an artificial save from myself."
Here at the end, we know. It's another shoeless spring entrance. I've already compressed and added it to my timeline. Four years ago bought exact tears and I've yet to collect more.
It's both sad and strange to know another human that holds an incredibly similar trauma. I knew the signs but I left her be and re-read Beloved for the third year in a row instead. I am blessed to know her. The past eight years are justified simply because I can connect to the broken parts and know.
I knew when a different girl was stuck on one word repeats, stamped in a row to make an opera. I knew it was because the brain needed a rut to control and couldn't be moved just yet. I have obsessed over one word for days and weeks, meditating on it. Leaving it alone only finally when my body healed that spot for me.
I knew the condescension toward naiveté wasn't out of hatred; rather, it was out of missing and needing love. It was about "when will it be my turn," and "when will I be redeemed."
Maybe this is why I made a map, because I needed to take inventory to learn how to be redeemed. That really inventory doesn't define me, my identity is not school or my work or the people I know.
Knowing my identity isn't confined to a label is the most freeing thing.
I'm documenting dreams and filling out a social schedule. I'm lusting after a Filofax planner and Beyonce's new album. Research is slow because Breaking Bad replaces all motives. A betta fish moved in with me; he's yet to discover I feed him at the same time daily.
I want to rent a wall space permanent, a whole semester unobstructed mapping. It requires a 16:9 lateral movement of butcher paper beneath loose quoted ideas. The wall in the center of studio will do. I will sign the lease on January 27th.
Past few days I've tested my frustration and each conversation resolves the same; "keep doing." Funny how one has blessed guidance but no fine print about reassurance,
Self-doubt is a blasted think.