Day 3 of 92

4:21pm.  Typed the title and wondered, will I, can I keep this up?

Took the day off today.  R went to the Men's Shed.  I was supposed to go to Life Drawing but had a pitiful night, 3rd in a row, and just didn't have the energy.  Drawing like that, 3 hours of total concentration, takes a lot of energy.  At least from me.  Come home wrung out.  Sometimes satisfied and wrung out, sometimes disappointed and wrung out.

Worked on the fussy face of the nude.  Lifted the details with blue tac and have suggested where before I drew.  Works much better.  It fits in with the rest of the picture now. 

Funny to be working on nudes.  I do have another drawing, coloured pencil, which is more my usual stuff - starting out one way, a little surreal with a bird and an arm, but if the past is any indication, what I have on the paper now will be vastly different by the time it's finished. 

Spending these 4 hours on my own is nourishing.  Don't have to be doing anything.  In fact I try and not do anything constructive like too much housework, or berate myself if I don't work on a drawing or do yoga.  If all I do is read or watch mindless tv, somehow that's enough to recharge something in me that needs recharging.  4:27pm.

I Come First, don't I?

A few free hours while R is in town.  I find it odd that I don't sink into solitude with the same ease I used to.  It isn't that I have trouble being alone.  Au contrare!   I value time spent alone, mistress of my thought and action.  The difficulty is lack of practice. 

Just spent an hour reading a book (The Barbed Coil by J. V. Jones).  I used to read for hours at a time.  Now I'm either making busy or I'm on the computer.  At the end of the day, after I've made dinner and my time is my own, I try and read but the tv is on and concentration is off.  Find I have to go back and reread bits to familiarize myself with characters or situations I should already know.  Even now, the call of the computer is strong.  What a blessing and a curse the digital age is.  I'd miss the computer if I didn't have one at the same time as I know how much time I waste clicking away on it.

(Oh no, there's a hare come out in broad daylight - 2pm - to nibble on the flake of lucerne I've put out for the horses.  Jamaica is lazing in the sun, it's another cold and windy day although sunny.  I hope he doesn't see him.  Jamaica's not asleep.  I can see the glint of bright brown eyes.   If he looked 45 degrees NE he'd see the hare.)

In a much better stronger frame of mind than yesterday.  A good nights sleep helps.  Yesterday was the day following the second night of little sleep.  Because I function and get through the day I act as though insomnia doesn't have an affect but of course it does.  I don't think as clearly, I'm more emotional and I mask tiredness with activity. 

(Ah, the hare has had enough and hops away on long strong legs unscathed.  Jamaica dozes on).


Reading on the Rebelle page about the only productive tip a creative sort will ever need.  Do the most important thing first every day.  I'd modify that statement to read:  Find the time to do the most important thing every day. 

I've got up in the dark to take the dogs and myself for a 40 minute walk while the stars shine overhead just to be alone and exercise at the same time.  I've got up an hour earlier, again in the dark, to write 3 pages longhand  while following the Artists Way.  I've got up an hour earlier to do yoga in the dark in front of the fire before work.  Now I get up just before dawn to feed the cats and horses and birds.  Creative acts come later.

One thing I never had to contend with before was responsibility for anyone other than myself.  Yes, I looked after animals, usually a single cat, but with Self as my Motto and Creed, and a cat being a self-sufficient creature it wasn't much of a stretch.  Now, at this late stage of my life, I am having to learn responsibility of and for others.  While still retaining my I Come First credo.  My I Come First credo now has riders; subsections and provisos so it isn't as awful as it sounds. 

But I no longer do the most important thing first thing every day.  It's usually toward the end of the day when I balance the art board on my knees while sitting on the couch with a cat or two and R at the other end. 

Post Parting Regression

It would take at least a week of solitude to fall into myself again.  But I only have until Monday.  Today is Saturday. 

When did I lose the ability to think, to follow a thought thread to a conclusion or at least an opinion?  I think in thought bytes.  Nothing more substantial than a quick acknowledgement of 'Oh, that might be important!' before moving on to the next ephemera.  I'm one of those multi-taskers that multi-task themselves right out of the ability to stop and think.  I equate busyness with meaning when busyness is keeping idle hands and idle minds occupied so I don't have to confront the emptiness and fear and shame which knocks at my idle mind. 

And I'm so damned hard on myself.  I'm going on 60 and I'm still flogging myself daily for not having a perfect body.  Isn't that nuts?  When will I let all that crap go?  I exercise 2 hours a day (1 hour yoga, 1 hour walking) and enjoy the benefits of health and flexibility yet what I really want is physical perfection. 

It is breathtakingly sad.

Yesterday I dug out my huge art book in which I've stored all my loose drawings, paintings and sketches that aren't framed and hanging on the walls (the grandkids counted 51 pictures on the wall, most of which is my stuff).   Anyway, I was surprised and pleased by the amount and variety and yes, talent displayed in these works.  Not all were good, some were, many more weren't, but they were mine, they were individual and creative.  And numerous!  I have a serious body of work developing.  Won't matter one whit after I'm gone.  I'm no Grandma Moses, discovered and made famous in her dotage.  (But I'm vain enough to want to be).  The importance is in the doing.  I've always said that.  But do I believe it?

Or is my real worth to be measured in my ability to be unselfish and care for Richard?  I blame him for part of my inability to settle.  I listen now.  Since he fainted all those months ago and was carted off to hospital in an ambulance, I listen.  Part of me has become a sentinel, watching for the Enemy.  Of course it's not his fault and he doesn't know that part of me is always at attention. 

So while he is away for a few days I try and discover myself again.  Try and quit flicking between windows (just read about Clementine Hunter, a poor cotton picking black woman from Louisiana who taught herself to paint), try and be a bit more forgiving of myself for my imperfections. 

And try and start another painting before he gets home.  Drawing is more calming than meditation.  I find like repetitive detail, something to lose myself in.  Something to fall into while I'm alone.
 

Mental Housekeeping

Overcast.  A soft day.  Later it will be hot, sticky and uncomfortable but this early (7am) it's still a balmy tropical morning. 
     There's something wonderful about being alone for awhile.  Moving to my own rhythm, listening with an undistracted ear, moving through space without the gravitational pull of another person.  I love it.  I need it.  Not forever.  I want him home but the novelty is luxurious. 
     So what to do with this day?  Not eat is one thing.  I've learned to love cooking.  What I cook I eat.  Will be nice just to have liquids today.  Plant the Black Bean tree in the yard where the summer heat and drought killed a small tree I'd planted a few years ago (put a dripper on it too late).  Repot some other plants.  Take Balthazar out for a pick.  No work for him, just pick.  Work on my painting?  Read a book.  Do yoga.  Have another coffee. 
     Decided after my little scare of a few days ago that it was time to reassess what I was feeding my mind.  Every day, through various email subscriptions, I was reading about the horror in the world; the cruelty, the mindlessness, the greed and because that was my steady diet I was, in a way, perpetuating it.  There's the voyeuristic quality involved too - why people slow down at a car accident - which had me reading crap I shouldn't have.  I know how susceptible I am.  I know once the image is there I can never be rid of it.  Animals Australia sent me a membership kit with flyers depicting, with graphic photos, the barbaric treatment in factory farms.  Glanced at it, saw what it was and threw it away. 
     When I was 12 or so I saw an image of a starving kitten, dirty and abandoned on the street.  The image was from some animal welfare group.  I cried and cried and cried - and am tearing up now thinking of that long dead kitten.  I can't take it.  The wall is breached.  The filter faulty. 
      So yesterday I unsubscribed from those groups.  I kept Greenpeace, Animals Australia, IFAW and a couple of others but the worst ones (as far as my oversensitivity goes) are gone.  I then subscribed to planet affirmation and good news stories. 
     I do believe we hide our Godlights under the delusion of matter.  Our corporeal form comes, we think, with a license to behave like barbarians.  Because we can affect matter, I suppose.  It's more accessible than our Godlight or at least more easily perceived.   We shove matter and it moves.  Suddenly we have the illusion of power.  The power of life and death, the power to cause pain, the power to accrue 'stuff'.  But it's an illusion.  But such an illusion!   Yet the illusion is maintained with lies.  I know the cruelty in the world is also an illusion - but it's one I can do without.  Call me a coward.  It's true.  I am a coward.  This small corner of the world I can protect - to a point.  So I do.  I love what is mine to love and  for the rest of it, drape the world in imaginary skeins of kindness.