Blind spots

The Golden moment - 60" x 48" acrylic 

Back sore like a set of old scaffolding threatening to collapse.  Every morning I wake up with aching muscles.  I can always find my age somewhere, in the arch of my foot, the small of my back, the ridges along my waist or bolting up the front of my thighs.  It used to be I could run everyday and experience no pain.  I could climb rocks in the desert from sun to sun and not ache.  Now I am always aware of my deficiency.  And once again, I am having the experience of "Those old people knew what they were talking about."

I am not fresh anymore.  I am not invincible.  I am not immuned to the rigors of time.
Yet, I always think I was "better" in the past, and this is not true.  I imagine I was more free, strong, honest, creative...so I look to my old journals, and I find that I have been doing basically the same thing all along.

This one's from 2005.  The year I quit drinking.

 Degeneration of sunflower 60"x 48" acrylic  2008

"Talking about writing as artists and dreamers do.  
In our flip-flops
 in our lounging
 in our thick-rimmed glasses
 in our apathetic shaggy hair
 in our youth
 in our uncertainty
 in our sickness
 in our hope.

barely able to breath through the cloth of our pretense we are all eager to try.
It is so satisfying to put it out there - all that we know.

And  I jump right in 
wagging my tail, tongue sloppy, eyes darting for the next bone."

6/2001

These are the sunflower series I painted in school

"Last night I was haunted by my artwork.  Every painting seemed to be alive and so desperate. Each one had been intended for the answer, but instead became just another beautiful expression of something so much smaller.  Ironically the sadness was in the beauty.  You would think that was the whole point, to create something beautiful.  But that's only part of it.  It is to create something which reflects the madness I feel. To stop it in it's tracks long enough, and completely enough that I can look at it and find peace.  So that I can know it has some sense.  It is real, and not merely circumstance or pre-programmed feeling.  That's why I'm in such a hurry."

I suppose there will always be some sense of inadequacy.  Maybe I will always know that the perfect expression is impossible.  Because I have blind spots.  But what a shame it would be, if I let this keep me from trying to express what I do see.