Days before April 1st I felt the approaching date like distant impact tremors reverberating from the footfalls of a large and weighty beast. One year ago on April 1st I moved 7 miles down the road, out of our home to a funky lake house. I couldn’t take living in the city anymore. I couldn’t breath. I couldn’t think, or dream. I felt as though I were suffocating from the inside out. I needed quiet. I needed birds, fresh air, and water lapping against the shoreline. I gambled everything and moved to a place on a beautiful lake in the Pacific NW. I signed a month to month lease knowing the property was for sale, and I moved here anyway . . . Hoping with all my heart that I’d have a year.
I’ve had that year and looking back I feel that only now am I ready to do what I came here to do 12 months ago . . . Make sense of where I’ve come from and point my life in a new direction. Last April I had every intention of wading through all the thousands of pages I’ve written and pulling out pieces that I think have value for a book, a memoir, a blog? I wasn’t sure of form. I was sure I wanted to compile and ‘do something’ with the product of the many years I have risen in the dark and put my hands to the keyboard.
Last April I intended to define my body of artwork, resolve the pieces that are incomplete, photograph and catalog the many canvasses that stand, in a season of my dwindling finances and rising debt like unwanted orphan children in my studio. I wasn’t sure of form. I was sure I wanted to compile and ‘do something’ with the product of the many years I have put my hands to paint, brushes, scrapers, rags, and canvas at all hours of the day and night . . . Ah, a pattern.
I came here seeking resolution to very specific dimensions of my life concerning my work in the world. After a full year this is what I have--more embodied clarity of who I am . . . I think about things, a lot . . . And, I think best in the company of birds, beasts, trees, fresh winds off the water. In short, in the natural world. I think about why we’re here, who we are, where we came from, where we’ll go or not after we leave this place. I think about all the lives that compose the mosaic of our human family, and try to make sense of the way we harmonize and hurt each other. I think about pain and joy, life and death, art and meaning, young and old all relating to each other on this beautiful blue planet.
I think, then write about all the connections I make while gathering and sorting information running through me like a host of unruly hamsters in all the hours of all the days and night. I write to try to put this experience to words, and in truth, that’s understated. I can’t help myself from trying to put this experience into words as I couldn’t help myself from moving away from the dense inhabitation of city life to make my way among the trees and moving waters.
Words live like awkward placeholders for me in the face of the layered rich experience available in every moment we have breath. At times I feel the heat of anger welling up in my fingertips for the want of a cleaner form for all I am attempting to convey. I fear at times I’ll explode on the page like volcanic magma rising from the depths of the molten energy of my soul. Words simply cannot hold it all, and words are the tools I have to frame it in . . . Words and paint.
I paint all that I have been turning around in my thoughts and all that I have been perceiving with my intuition and attempting to put into words. I paint. It’s another layer of my deep drive to understand as much of the meaning of this life as I possibly can. I am like a scribe the brush manipulating fluid plastic that add yet another dimension to the story . . . And, it’s all story. For some reason unknown to me, I cannot cease telling the tale as seen through these eyes. As experienced through this heart. As felt in this body. It’s what I’m here to do . . . Tell the story with the tools I have available, my thoughts, my words, and my images. This is who I am . . . This is what I cannot stop doing.
No matter what happens in my life or my pocketbook I find myself in the main, ignoring the call to other intentions and goals and returning to the homeland of quiet thoughts, words and abstract images in paint on canvas. I am like the salmon swimming against all odds to the spawning ground, responding to a call home. It makes no difference that it can look illogical. This compelling, unexplainable drive to a single point in the water fulfills destiny . . . I am not so different. If I look over my shoulder I see myself swimming upstream with a laser like direction that at times makes no sense. I see that I always come back home, to the ground of my being . . . I think. I seek the natural world. I write. I paint.
With that in mind I guess it makes sense that this year hasn’t been anything like I thought it would be. I thought that by now I would have accomplished at least some of my goals. I have not. Looking back I notice that it’s taken an entire year to be here. I’ve needed to dig in and plants the roots of my soul in the good soil of quiet contemplation of water, and wind. I’ve needed to restore my senses and reconnect to myself . . . It’s taken the full year. I’t s not what I thought it would be, and it has been precisely what I have needed. I moved away from our home in the city for the sake of my life, and even though I am no closer to . . . ‘compiling and ‘doing something’ with the product of many years . . . I am more relaxed with myself and the passage of time.
Yes, I moved here with intentions, and goals, however . . . Underlying all, was one solitary mantra pounding through every beat of my heart, every breath of my lungs . . . Quiet. I need quiet. Not simply the absence of street traffic, I needed the deep quiet of the dark nights away from city lights . . . The settled order of the world that is my home, the world of nature where seasonal changes play upon trees. Where the surface of the water of the lake moves in a dance with the wind. Where the birds and waterfowl, raccoons and deer set the pace and tone of life.
This morning I stood at the lake shore and took in the soothing rhythm of gentle waves lapping against the sand. Every watery impulse moved through me as if we were of one massive heart pumping liquid life in and through all. I heard my name. Not the name on my passport and driver’s license. The name I inhabit in my being, given me beyond the constraints of time and place by the field of energy running throughout the cosmos. More of a signature of soul that exceeds the boundaries of this earthly experience. I felt my feet meld with the earth and knew my sanity that I sometimes question when looking into the chaotic tangle of this human experience. I knew my place in the order of things.
I came here to the quiet of the lake to reconnect with this knowing, and it’s taken the year . . . What now? I am taking the step of starting this blog, and I want another year. I want another 12 cycles of the moon to wander through the seasons and meander through the dailiness of life. Maybe I’ll get another year. Maybe I'll get to those goals I set a year ago, and maybe I won’t . . . One thing I am more confident of than I was a year ago . . . I am standing in my own skin, hearing my true name, more important to me than all the compiling and production I might do. This salmon is swimming home . . . On path and clear.
That's what this artist is thinking about today . . . @ the lake . . .