Permission

The laundry is not done, nowheres near.   This place could use a vacuuming, dusting, window washing, and the bed needs to be set up.  I sleep on a mattress on the floor that is a size too big for the bed frame, which has now been kindly, dearly repaired with a walnut beam from an old New England loom.  The floored mattress was handy when there was a cat who needed insulin shots as he couldn't hide under the bed, but he has been gone for two or three years.

The manual defrost freezer belonging to the refrigerator has formations in rounded chunks, the onion drawer is sprouting, and I could toss out the sodium-inflated canned soups from that company we all know whose serving size is about 1/2 of a cup.  They keep the serving size down so you think that well, 480 milligrams of salt is all you're getting, but that goes according to how much is spattered into the bowl.  The saucers in their ads sure allow more than a half cup per, and often is shown with that other devil, a grilled cheese.  Ach!  Why do the good things kill you slowly?

But the point is, besides the last paper for the last college course, I am surrounded by necessary chores that aim nagging fingers at my conscience.  So, all the cats are brushed and given clean water and litter, the fish tank is replenished and new filters battle the algae infestation currently being waged.  I should get my agoraphobic arse out and go for a walk.  I should try to fix the left turn signal in the car, the instructions are there from the internet.  I should call my brother.  I should consolidate student loans.  I should I should I should.

Here is what I want, unashamedly:  to make eggs, to draw in beeswax on eggshells and dye them until each color has its turn and then to melt the wax away, revealing a bit of some small god from days when Paleolithics practiced animism, the belief that everything living or inanimate has a spirit.  I talk to the cats, the car, the plants, the fish, and myself.  And you.  The eggs sit on the table with penciled designs, along with the dyes and a new electric kistka for drawing.  Pounds, pounds I say, of beeswax await melting.   Do I make a deal with myself?   The guilt at making art never disappears, tossing insinuations that I am lazy and wasteful for using time as a plaything, when it is better suited towards useful products.

I know, get over it, go make something.  What I create often brings me joy and not to sound full of it, but I can enchant myself with some of the drawings or ideas that spill waterfall heavy with fluidity.  Not all are winners, but there are favorites.  Once accomplished, I like to go on to the next, quickly.  But here is good news, even though the years have trod on some of my dreams either through neglect or inability to cope, there is a new stage of life arriving, this last phase of creative push.  The subject of the last paper for the last class, I am using an idea learned in one of last semester's courses, that of women attaining eminence in their sixties.  I think I can do this.

Once children are grown and degrees are attained, there is an open period that can be filled with art, art and more art.  Freed of family, as it were, women can devote time to their own development and craft.  God bless you if you were able to do it when younger, it was a gift of the universe--me, I had difficulties dealing with health and circumstances, and would not have wanted to spend hours in the studio while my son was living at home.  Oh!  Damn me for not going to college before, I was so intimidated by the world that anything outside the door had claws waiting to snatch.  Well, hell's bells, hindsight blah blah.

But here is my chance to flood life with mediocre illustrations rising to amazing illuminations in paint, pastel, and my dear eggs.  I make little men out of plastic resin and those wooden, jointed mannequin models, of which a dear friend said were creepy.  Neat!  My trinity consists of paper, pen, and ink dabbed from a bottle, crow and hawk quills charged and ready; layered courses of pastel colors jigsaw together into human faces, there's my meat and drink.  The thing is, there are months, sometimes years between projects, and I have missed many opportunities for creation and growth due to the inertia caused by Being Good.

Do you recognize yourself in any of this?  Have there been materials gathering dust in a cupboard's gullet or perhaps you dream of traveling places seemingly out of reach?  Is there a barrier?  They can be genuine, but determine whether the wall is true or if you would rather stay safe, untested, bound by inflated responsibility used as a fable to avoid risk.  Who knows?  Only, just don't be hard on yourself, for who cares why, just get out there and fake it until the new becomes comfortable.

I must finish this paper, and then I am free.  Sorting out is next, for to devote a life to art needs no clutter, and interests should be pared down to minimum.  My dreams are still here, still vital, still a marker as to who I am as time's plumb bob courses back and forth through days and weeks, months and years.  Maybe I'll begin a book.  Maybe I'll eat a can of dangerous soup, maybe I will be able to create into my nineties.

Dreams, sleep, and wakefulness, which is most important?  People are rushing home in this late afternoon, returning from jobs away to jobs at home.   The sun is now descending past the apex of heaven and will shortly dissolve into the lake, releasing the night air filled with the scent of growing spring grasses and buds. Paddle your coracle to shores far and pebbled, listen to the fish tell you of dreams coursing deep under the rippled surface of the water, dreams liquid, living, loved.  Find yourself, I will wait for you.  Good night.