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| Adrift |
It’s January. It’s a new year. Everywhere I look I see indications of new beginnings. The daily calendar sitting here on my desk still has, virtually, all it’s pages. The tulip and daffodil bulbs I planted in the cold, wet days of October are making their appearance through the dark water-laden soil. Tiny buds are forming on the apple trees. Even the forsythia bush I pruned so severely last winter is, to my surprise sporting thousands of tightly bound buds. In a matter of weeks that bush will be aflame with yellow flowers. Promise of life refreshed pervades the air, the earth, the very soul of these days.
While the rest of the world appears to be waking up and coming into new life, I feel like I’m going under. An unstoppable tide is creeping up my legs, inch by inch threatening to swallow me up, take me away. The worst part is that I’m watching the water come over me, not even trying to swim to shore.
I can’t see my shore. Perhaps my limbs might get motivated to swim if I knew which way to go. I am treading water in the vast sea of my purposelessness without land in sight. How long I can endure is unknown to me. What I do know is that like all of life, there will be some future day when I will slip under the water, and drift away. In that moment I will take with me all that I have been, all that I have seen, all that I have loved, all that I have had to offer this world. That much is certain.
In my somewhat immobilized, soggy state I am turned inward . . . watching myself get up, get dressed, take out the dogs, feed the dogs, make tea, drink tea, make breakfast, eat breakfast, wash the breakfast dishes, grab the computer and starting typing while looking longingly through the window into the early morning fog, hoping to find answers. What’s the question?
The water hangs in droplets at the end of each green leaf on the rhododendron bush just beyond my window. I say to those droplets, “Talk to me. Don’t just hang suspended reflecting the meager light of the breaking dawn like some cheap, pre-lit Christmas decoration on it’s last legs. Help me! Can’t you see I’m desperate!” My last hope falls to the sidewalk as the droplets seamlessly join the dampness that lies on every surface in the winter of this coastal climate.
Maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s just a foggy day in my season. Maybe this will all evaporate when the warmth of the sun dries the fields, the mossy stones, and every surface and living thing outside these walls. Our long winter weeps on and on with the constancy of a bereft lover. As much as I’d like to believe that the sun could come out and heal all this, I’m not convinced. This gloominess feels deeper than that, a crevasse of uncertainty reaching into the core of me.
It might be that all the delightful energy and direction I had since some time before Thanksgiving has mysteriously evaporated. I light up like a Christmas tree bulb for holidays and family. I wear antler head gear, and sing my way through baking cookies, rolling out piecrusts, and wrapping presents. For me it’s like one long parade of fun from Thanksgiving through New Year’s. I’ve cooked, created, decorated, connected, packed, and even traveled while keeping up with all the ordinary responsibilities of my life. Never a dull, unsmiling, unproductive moment.
Now all that is past. It’s a new year, a blank page and a blank canvas in front of me. I don’t know what to do with any of it . . . Not the thousands of pages I’ve written, not the hundreds of paintings I’ve painted. Both are locked away. One in an external hard drive and the other in a storage unit. Safe, secure, and stranded. Just like me.
I am blessed and cursed with an ‘I Can’ attitude, and a curious mind. I came into this world with these attributes, and I wear them everyday, like permanent tattoos. I see something that intrigues me . . . marine biology, learning Spanish, forestry, animal science, farming, horseback riding, ranching, space travel, creating a retreat center, dog sheltering & rehoming, masonry, stone sculpting, carpentry, rock tumbling, welding, dancing, . . . The list could go on forever depending on the day of the week. I imagine myself living as a (fill in the blank with any one of the above) and think, “I could do that! I think I’d really like that!”
It seems my imagination is so powerful that I could morph myself into whatever I put my energy toward. This is a useful ability, to a point. A problem comes in when I endeavor to choose one desire and abandon the rest. I want to give birth to them all.
At this point in my life my energy isn’t a match for my imagination. I would like to put my less than prodigious energy to useful purpose, and to fulfill my life mission . . . The reason I’m here to begin with. This is where I’m stuck. I’m still asking, “Why are we here?” More recently, “Why am I here? What is there for me to do until I am no more?”
I don’t have answers. I don’t know what I’m really here for. I don’t know what I really want. All I know at this moment is that I am stranded.
That’s what this artist is thinking about today . . .
About the painting . . . “Adrift” . . . Subtle shades of gray, white, brown, and black drift unmoored across this canvas. There are days, when this is all there is . . .