Muggy, foggy, feeling, studio fan blowing. Been painting. Still feeling rays of clear blue streams, magnificent waterfalls, Steep, climb. Hiking in the ferns, heart pounding, another world. Engaged core; I’ve recently connected with it in Yoga. It saves my knees on the descent. I grab a few flowers, I feel like I’m still sweating from the hike, even though it was hours ago. My studio time flows. My time off is almost over. Yes, my time alone is almost over. I need to wrap it up. This give me anxiety! I need more time. The past week has been draining. Glued to my TV, watching the news. Not believing there are people who don’t care about other people with the power to destroy lives and not care. I get physically ill. My stomach hurts, I just take baths and lay down as much as possible. Today I hiked. I worked in my studio. My work is strong today. I think about pain, and death while working today, even in the backdrop of the beauty of the Cataract trail. The life of the birds and the flowers. Peaceful lake. We will carry on then we will die. Trump will be gone in less than four years.
Tag: painting
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As I took the Bayview exit off 580 my heart sank just a little. My mom’s house was right there, but she’s not there and I won’t be stopping to pick her up for the second Rhythm and Presence workshop. We won’t be excited together, talking about paint and abstraction, what we want to make, what we want to focus on. She won’t be sitting next to me on my drive out to Benicia. I wish she was. My mom would have loved the workshop, Carl, and Heather. My mom was a great painter. I thought that I could at least bring her spirit with me and I did. One day my mom said, “I’m not going to paint any more people.” She had decided to go totally abstract. I laughed because it sounded like she was mad at the people she was painting, like they had betrayed her in some way. She would have really enjoyed the Rhythm and Presence workshop. Time moves so quickly, I know what it means to be dead. That’s why I work so fast, I have so much ground to cover and so little time. I should be sleeping right now, but I can’t. I need to write. About my day. About my life. About my old Self. New Self. Only Self.
Alone in my minivan. My baby mobile. Today it’s my art mobile, filled with paper, half started, half done, undone, blank, ripped and torn. Paint, watercolor, acrylic, oil sticks, glue, brushes, and a lunch. When I stop and get gas I double check to make sure Jack and Fiona aren’t in the car. I get this feeling like I’ve gone on with life and forgot they were with me. But I’m Alone. I blast the radio scanning rapidly through the stations to find songs that aren’t boring. Thinking again, why didn’t I prepare a play list? Next time. The sky is half Fog half over cast, but balmy like Hawaii. I make good time, I’m always late almost anywhere I go now. But fifteen minutes is acceptable. There’s a lot to do, make sure the babies are all set up before I leave, get ready myself, I really wanted to take a shower, look somewhat presentable. Sometimes I forget to put on a bra and shoes before I leave the house, I spend so much time in my pajamas. As I was updating Lindsay on Jack and Fiona’s present states of minds I felt like I was in a movie and I was getting ready to go to work, probably a waitressing job at a late night diner. I never thought I’d star in that role.
But I wasn’t going to work, I was going to paint. Not to make money but to spend money. To release all that I had inside me, to learn from Heather and Carl and the other people in the workshop. I worked straight through, it just happened. I had so much work going I felt like I was painting myself into a box. I have to stay calm because sometimes I feel like there’s just too much and I start to panic. I used to work on one thing until it was totally muddy, ruined, and all my paint would be gone. Then I learned to work on multiple pieces at one time, but that still has the possibility of seeming crazy, looking crazy, making me feel crazy. Then I get something I really like, or several things. I think I broke through some areas today, I am in a new place now. I don’t know where that place is, I don’t have a clear meaning or idea. I have hazy feelings about it, in some ways. Maybe fear? Maybe fear to go where I really want to go? I think I’ve always been there deep inside, it’s like I’m excavating myself, digging a hole inside, scooping out my bits, laying them out in front of me, like a smorgasbord.
I know what it means to not be here anymore. When the white on the paper is nothing and everything at the same time. Some voids will never be filled, and time will never be got back. The places I go, the memories they conjure. Today emotions were triggered for me. Painting, my Mom, Richmond, all tied up in a knot, ripped apart and laid out on paper casting energy into space, into me.
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A lot of times a few people close to me read what I’ve written and ask me, “Are you OK?” they get worried, think I’m stressed. When I used to let my husband proofread my work he would tell me that I needed to add something about how much I love the babies or love being a mom. He said people would misunderstand me, think I was unhappy in my role. I want to write all the wonderful feelings I have about being a mom. But how do I explain it? It’s so complicated and I wish people could understand that part of it. I wrote “I love my time with Jack and Fiona.” Then I erased it because I do love it but it’s up and down. It’s not easy to constantly be saying, “Get off that, take that out of your mouth, come with me, that’s dangerous.” Ect. But that’s the reality of being a parent. There are many moments of pure sweetness, when I hear Jacks little voice on the monitor saying, “Mommy” or when Fiona is playing with her stuffed animals squeezing them all in her arms. When they run up and give me a big hug. They constantly do the cutest things, the love and closeness between us is like no other relationship I’ve ever had, except with my mom and brother. That deep, deep, connection. I can feel we are on the same wavelength. It’s a bond so strong it’s unbreakable. I guess I don’t feel I need to explain all of that because it seems it would be obvious. But my desire to write about the shit is unstoppable, I’m not writing Disney, I’m writing reality.
A thin layer of sticky stuff covers almost everything in the kitchen, little hand prints smeared on the windows leave a residue of milk, watermelon, sausage, beans, and cheese. The diaper genies are full and the smell from the dirty diapers makes me gag. My husband asked me if one of my friends is still in touch with this other friend I used to have, as we drove this morning on our way to take Billy and the babies for a walk. I didn’t know the answer, then he said that she, my friend I used to have, would be so upset that I was enjoying motherhood so much. This friend had told me when I was struggling to get pregnant that I shouldn’t have kids, that I wouldn’t be able to be an artist, and they (kids) end up hating you anyhow. She would tell me things like this a lot, but she also believed in me as an artist. When my husband said she would be upset about me enjoying motherhood so much I thought, I think she would be more surprised that I’m still making art. I’ve been working in my studio and writing consistently. I’ve been digging deep and so much has been revealed to me. The babies have helped me shift, they’ve taught me so much. The struggles that I’ve gone through every day since they’ve been born and the struggles I went through to get here can’t be summed up in a simple explanation of my life now and how I feel about it. I’m enjoying motherhood, I suppose, but I think I would describe it more as the biggest challenge and most difficult and exhausting thing I’ve ever done. Motherhood has the pull and appetite to consume me completely. To turn me into a mouse in a cage scurrying from one meal time to another, from one hug to the next, from sinks full of never ending dishes to activities and teaching I want to do with jack and Fiona. But I fight to keep my time as me, to paint, to think about things that don’t revolve on what new words Fiona is saying or how high Jack climbed today. I am a great Mom, I am 100% all hands on deck, I’m also an artist, I’m a person with ideas and thoughts, things the babies are too young to understand.
I don’t think everyday or every moment is supposed to be wonderful. I think the difficult times, the times I feel like shit are equally as important in my life. Those times are still my time. I used to beat myself up, want to always be happy and when I was depressed I thought I was a messed up person. Now I think I’m exactly how I’m supposed to be, any mood I’m in is the right mood for me. Time is precious and limited. The sticky floors and my sometimes feeling like a fading shadow on the wall insert me into the present time. And as I write about being a mom or making art, or when I’m elbow deep in glue and paint I’m documenting my time on earth, It doesn’t matter if I’m happy or sad, making good or bad art, it only matters that I’m still alive.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 