Memorial Day Weekend

There's something really wonderful and soothing about spending a morning doing normal things -- walking the dogs, gardening, cleaning -- with the knowing that it is akin to setting up the stage for a grand theatrical debut: tonight, I get to create something beautiful . . . over and over again until the holidays are over. I've amassed a pile of sketches and photo references over the week for my collection -- and now that the rains have passed, I'm excited to let my wood panels dry outdoors while brewing sun tea and making chocolate-dipped almond shortbreads.

Painting is, for me, cheap therapy.


It's like diving into the abstract void of my emotions -- staring at the shimmering supernova that swallows galaxies and star systems, blotting out suns into the pastel cascades of oil slick -- where words plump on my tongue and air fills the hollows of my cheeks, but seem too much and too full pressing against my teeth. Sometimes, I have dreams where my teeth are following out, and I can feel my tongue flapping like a fish against my lips. A stream of hallways, black mirrors, and an unending bus ride across the city that winds around the sea. Early morning silent movies.

What artist or poet hasn't imagined the sea a sheet of glass, and the sky merely flattened paper? Artists and writers attempt to explain themselves and their environment without reference to intelligence -- it is the call of Intuition, and the career-choice of the discontented. To attempt to defy gravity, extend a finger into a black hole, stare into the sun . . . using only words and images. Everything is just words and images, a semblance of normality and the predictable weather. The rain gone muddy on your brown skin.

Ah, this weekend . . . . cheap therapy, silence, and the birth of beautiful things.