rules for tight rope walking and art

A flurry of art has been dispersed through my hands this last week.
I find myself picking paint chips from my fingers while I talk on the phone.
The skin is dry and never quite clean.
I have been circulating through my painting pants, the ones I wore in college.
They have swipes of red, black, and green from my palette knife across the thighs.
There are no words for this state of mind.
Everything is immediate and I loose track of time...of children.
Yesterday Beckam fell into his forehead on the cement floor, after which a golf ball tried to burst through his skin.
My response was, "Where did these kids come from...oh yeah...they're mine...and one of them is hurt."
I extricated myself from the tight rope I was so intently walking and stepped onto solid ground.
Into the real world where children need their mother's warm voice.
I cooed softly at his ear, and cradled his thick body into my painted jeans.
"Maahhhmm....I bonked my head off!...." he wailed.
But I know he is gonna be okay.
I let him trickle off to the next injury, take a deep breath and step back onto the tight rope.

Philippe Petit walking the tight rope between Twin Towers 1974

I watched a documentary once, about a man who walked a tight rope between the Twin Towers in New York City.
An animated French man who wore tight black clothes and spoke with his whole body.
If he fell from that height - over 1,300 feet - there would be no question.
But he wasn't on the ground where his death waited.  He was in the immediate space of the cable upon which his feet were poised like a dancer's.

Philippe Petit lying on the cable between the Twin Towers in NYC

I gaped at the screen where I watched him lie down on the wire and rest easy right in the middle of it. I knew it was real, but didn't know how.  How could a human allow such a thing to happen?  There can be no holding back, no hesitation for such magic to occur.
This is how it feels to paint.
Granted, I will not die if I loose focus, but the state of mind, I imagine, is the same.
I stand back from art that I have made, I know I made it, but I don't know exactly how it happened.
There are basic rules...breath,...always breath...
       - start with big shapes and move to smaller shapes
         - value is more important than color - it decides everything
            - let the art be what it wants to be
               - fall in love with your work at every stage
                 - have fun...sometimes
                    - keep going until it's done.

Sprites in the woods

I am refusing to be well.

I have stopped asking why I do this to myself.
It is enough to know that I am human.
All I know is that when people ask me,
"How are you?" it is not their voice asking the question.
It is their digging eyes trying to excavate a person they expected to find.
They figure it must be buried, so they linger on my lashes and reach deep into my pupils.
As you might imagine, this is uncomfortable.  I look away and mumble something about being tired.

Last night I took a personality test with my friend, Lauren.
http://www.16personalities.com/
I score ENFP.  Great.  What does this mean?
 http://www.16personalities.com/enfp-personality

She says I am an "Inspirer"
I like the sound of that.
So I ask her to go on reading.
She tells me it is important for me to stay centered.
I need my alone time so that I do not become too scattered.
If I am not mindful, I will skip from one inspiration to the next, never finishing anything.
I have seemingly endless enthusiasm which is contagious and causes me to be spread too thin.

I think about the unfinished mural I started at USARA.
The wall painted into an ocean with sun setting into it.  Orange, pink, Purple, green starfish litter the beach.  It will be inspiring...when it is finished.
It has been on my List of Things Which Nag Me for months.

She is right.

I have not been writing.
When I don't write, I get disoriented.  All the words dissolve into each other, and I am lost.
I don't know how I feel.
I get confused by people's response to me.
As I am by my husband's reaction today.

"ENFPs are fiercely independent, and much more than stability and security, they crave creativity and freedom."

When I don't write, it feels like someone else is sucking up my creativity with a straw.
In reality, I am letting it drain right out of my feet without ever tasting it at all.

There are so many projects available to me.
I am overwhelmed by them.
I don't want to get organized...but I do.
I am excited to paint murals.
I ache to write every day.
I want to have a vigorous response when people ask, "How are you?"
It's just hard.  Domesticity is hard.
And sometimes I feel like I ought to put my head down and just fold laundry.

Another friend once said to me,
"I realized the other day that the problem with Sarah is that she is too domesticated."
I had never thought of this before.
I thought I could be content at home.  In reality, I thought I "ought" to be content.
But just as the personality test says:  I crave creativity and freedom.
So I must find a way to honor both, my home and my ambition to chase sprites through the woods.

simply writing

dating :)

I realize as I read my friend's blog...that I have been going way too fast.

She posted pictures of love notes from her husband.
A simple gesture of their initials scribbled inside a heart, in pencil, on the backside of paper scraps.
It only takes 1 minute to slow down and to remember why I begin and end each day with my husband.

Instead I've been shouting to my him, "I....love....you....!" from a moving vehicle.
That vehicle is me.
He does not hear it.

The other reason I know I'm going too fast is cuz I have not posted a blog in weeks.
Now let me clarify, when I say - going too fast - it is not a productive kind of speed.
It involves searching the classified ads for used rock climbing shoes, re-organizing my car (which is a joke), scrolling through Facebook, examining my skin for blemishes, and the worst offender - scanning celebrity photos on OMG.com.  This is how I know that I'm avoiding my own soul. Celebrity gossip is the antithesis of spirituality.

So it ought to be no surprise that Lydia came hissing up from the basement yesterday.
Hers is the voice of escape, of entitlement, of self-loathing and of isolation.
She fears everything.
"You are a writer who is not writing.  An artist who is not painting.  Everyone is in your way.
You are a failure.  You should run away...Run....Get OUT!"
She loves Radiohead, Ryan Adams, and the soundtrack to Requiem for a Dream.
She relishes the empty belly and she takes pride in her own ribs.
She is smug and rarely speaks.  She is a watcher of people and she writes it all down in her notebook.

I have not heard her screams for a long time.
She wants out but does not know there are no bars.
They are painted on her eyelids.  The cold of their steel is in her own palms.
She makes herself sick because she is afraid of everything.  She wants an excuse to stay indoors.

But I know her.  I know what she is.  She is me.  And we are in this together.
So I take her cold fingers, and we walk out into the sun.
We look up into it and let the waves roll over us, all the while keeping eyelids up.
I breath in my nose and air fill my chest.  It goes down into my empty belly and swirls.
Tears slip and the top of my head tingles.  My ears relax and my shoulders are untied.
"God please take this.  I don't want to run away.  I'm scared...I'm scared...I'm scared.  I'm sorry."

Ugh...and this is how I stay.
I stay and there is more work.  There is always more work.
But it is work I chose.
I want to be a mother.   I want to be Andrew's partner.  I want to be a writer.  I want to be a painter.  I want strong muscles.  I want to be a teacher.  I want to give all that I have.

Pepper and Sophie

Sometimes I just get empty, but life keeps demanding.

So I go to the source.  Now I wish I could say:
No more celebrity gossip.  No more laundry.  No more Facebook.
From now on I will write and paint and love and see it all the time.  The great reality will never again be forgotten.

But instead, I am simply writing this blog.

At the end of the day, I went to an FTR meeting.  I told the real story of my day.  I brought my kids and they watched a movie in the other room.  They interrupted the meeting.  They are kids.  They were being kids.
Afterwards my Mom picked them up in her little white tic-tac of a car.
I went for a run with my group through downtown streets and the moon was a magnolia petal floating over pink mountains.
With my sweat also trickled out the last bits of acid and I felt smooth.
Thank you to that group for holding space for me when I needed it.

"You can get through anything in life by simply breathing."

~ Aunt Lucy (one of my best teachers)