laundry vs. art

beets dropped onto a canvas
all images from my most difficult year in  school
when I was trying to find my way...

The clean laundry pile is 7 loads thick.
I should fold it.

As a kid my mom dumped the clean clothes onto a wide slab of table.
She boycotted folding when I was about 10.
Funny thing, she called it the clothes "folding" table.
Shortly after the introduction of this table, she left our family.
Drank heavy for 5 years, and started wearing tiny skirts.
Even though she stopped folding our clothes, she couldn't carve out enough space for herself.
So she had to take it by force.

I take mine in the sprouts of the morning, before anyone is awake.
This is when I swim and run and write.
I scribble eerie self-portraits just so I can remember the lines of my eyes.

Yesterday I went to open studio at Poor Yorick.
Close to 50 artists laid out their colors.
As I slid through in my flip-flops and long blue dress, I realized something.
I've realized it before, when I went to France, and wandered the galleries there.
Art is not romance, or magic, or high above any other human activity.
It is just one more thing we do.  It is an attempt to make sense of a life that is senseless.
We have to put meaning into it, give it shape, and form, and define it.
Or else it swallows us.  Like it swallowed my Mom.

My professor in school said, if you don't make time to paint, the laundry will take over, and you'll never paint again.  As I studied art in school, I struggled with the separation of identities.  Am I an artist?  Or am I a mother?  Am I someone who needs art or just someone who dabbles in it?  Am I this or am I that?
It is this rigidity with identity that keeps me in my eating disorder.
Sarah with the perfect body.  This is what I have to be.  Any deviance is unacceptable.  Any unnecessary food a sin.

But this is not the best lesson art can teach me.  On the other side of this flimsy structure is the true lesson.  Not just of art, but of life.  It teaches me that everything is in flux, and that is okay.  I can allow things to change without making excuses or trying to force a stop.  I only need to be in the process and paying attention.

I stood at the kitchen sink crying into Andrew's chest before I left for the open studio.
"I'm fat and ugly and I don't have any friends.   Everything seems sad.  I don't want to go by myself.  But I don't have any friends.  What happened?"
Bottom lip protrudes and I am five years old.  I must feel sad now. He holds my cheeks in his hands. His eyes look straight into mine.
"It's going to be okay, Sarah."
And I cry even more.  I want to say, I know.  But clearly, I don't.
"Don't drink the wine," he says.
"I want to drink the wine," I say. "But I'll just end up crying in the parking lot.  I won't drink the wine."


We smile at each other, and I go.  I see all the human artists holding up their hopes to anyone who will look.  And I am glad they have the time, the ability to do it.  It is a brave thing to do.  It is a hopeful thing.  I feel something I've not yet felt when viewing paintings.  I feel gratitude.