Breeding Lilacs, Mixing Memories...

April. How are we here, and not here- so long?

This year has its own inertia, its own chaotic ebb and flow that at times feels like it will spiral out of my control. “Why do you never speak?”

I have so much to say to you that I am afraid I shall tell you nothing.

We emerge, changed, wide eyed in the sudden sunlight. While I kept my studio space over the past year, I worked almost exclusively at home. The tides of productivity in my hands, heart and brain- unpredictable. Large scale paintings would flood out at the strangest times, in surges that wore me out afterwards. Small works, staccato, intermittent therapy.

Mostly, I felt like I was in the midst of Dry Salvages, in a contraction of creative energy. I still battle with feeling unworthy of the time to paint: undeserving the gift of time in the midst of obligation.

“For all is like an ocean, all flows and connects; touch it in one place and it echoes at the other end of the world.”

I began moving back into my studio two weeks ago. I’d been uncertain. I use my habits to maintain healthy inertia and work flow, and I am out of the habit of studio practice. Already an introvert, when I retreated to my home, those tendencies toward solitude swelled.

It felt really good to go in with some boxes and trash bags and get things cleared out and reorganized. I re-cleaned palettes that have sat, unused, for 13 months. I dusted paintings on lonely easels. I still need to mop, but for the first time in a long time, I feel free: lighter, unencumbered, joyful at having a dedicated space to create.

I began prepping for a solo show that had to be put off due to the pandemic, and I am finally finishing a batch of commissions that stalled out when the school year started.

It feels good to work.

I've been reading Demons, but I keep returning to the Brothers Karamazov for the truth and wisdom that burnishes a weary soul back to shining. Demons, like the Idiot, is a conceptual novel- driven by characters who represent ideas in parlor room dramas… but the Brothers K is like coming home. I find such hope in those pages: wisdom and mercy, and a keen understanding not only of what it is to be wholly human, but the sanctity of our human weaknesses that cause us to rely, beautifully, on humility, reconciliation, compassion, and love… and the one true source of those spiritual gifts.

As I roll up my sleeves in earnest, these lines “echo thus” in my mind:

“Be not forgetful of prayer. Every time you pray, if your prayer is sincere, there will be new feeling and new meaning in it, which will give you fresh courage, and you will understand that prayer is an education.”

To all things new, and to newly opened eyes: may we perceive our faults as blessings, and be patient with the faults we see in others. Cheers, to homecomings and happier times.

"Cinnamon and Sugary and Softly Spoken Lies"

October in Texas is alternatively blue skied and beautiful, and sweltering and oppressive. The diffused light of this most glorious month lies, sometimes: peering outward, you’d expect the air to whisper its sun-ripened promises, but half the time you’re met with a hot, brutal weight that embeds itself in your brain. Humid betrayal in the pale light. Autumn’s golden raiment is brown and crispy.

We went to Glen Rose with some dear friends to celebrate my daughter’s 12th birthday. It was the first gasp of fresh air I’d had in weeks, and a great, 108 degree gasp it was! Dinosaur Valley State Park is a treasure not too far from Dallas. The Paluxy River and the limestone cliffs are tantalizing reminders of the Hill Country. Every October, my mind goes south: Austin-ward. The few Autumns I spent in the city marked me forever. The heat, the light, the overgrown Austin yards, and long walks along the dusty streets, or hot coffee overlooking the pier from Mozart’s. There’s a special magic in central Texas.

My hands and my head are full of unfinished paintings. This year has me questioning all my life choices, and I feel off-balance, flat footed, somewhat impotent. It’s hard to commit to the act of oil painting, the labor and -labor- and bold intention of it. I’m surrounded by actions and decisions that forcefully deny accountability, dragged by the tide of the times toward some ruined shore. How much culpability does my participation bear down upon my head?

Ah, love, let us be true

To one another! for the world, which seems

To lie before us like a land of dreams,

So various, so beautiful, so new,

Hath really neither joy, nor love, nor light,

Nor certitude, nor peace, nor help for pain;

And we are here as on a darkling plain

Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight,

Where ignorant armies clash by night.

These roller coaster days parallel Texas’s October weather. Sometimes, my heart swells for my students, my commitment to the work, my desire to serve these kids who really do give me life and hope. Other days, the policies (and policy changes) and lack of consensus about anything, and the fatal indecision and its consequences, which push immutably forward… all of it makes my mind reel. I wake up most nights in a cold sweat. We have a lot to lose, and only in retrospect will we see the cost. We are too close, too close to these problems; we are too close to ourselves; and we care not enough about the life and liberty of our neighbors, valuing only our demands, our ceaseless and selfish “I.” “I.” “I.”

Those who feel the most justified do the most harm.

My kids provide daily reminders that the work matters. There’s much about all this cognitive dissonance that shatters the reasonable mind, but I keep spiraling back to the “essential.” Of course we are essential workers- teachers catch most instances of child abuse. We provide care and nurturing and growth that kids need. We are a service not just to our students, but to their families as well, by providing a safe place for their children while they work. And yes ::gesturing wildly:: Education Matters! Obviously, we are essential. But to receive that designation now, as a political chip- after years of under funding, when the structures of our educational system have been crumbling for decades, when we are over burdened already, and then to be treated as unfortunate casualties in this weird, fractious war? If we are essential, we need the resources to Do Our Jobs. If we are essential, we need the support to Do Our Jobs. If we are essential, should we not be given the same professional dignity as the nurses and doctors to whom we are constantly compared? Hmmm. Essential means valuable and necessary, not expendable. They keep using this word. I do not think it means what they think it means.

So I straddle these questions, while I continue to go to teach, I straddle these questions, and this fine line between work and life, career and profession, calling and -seriously- self preservation. I grapple daily with whether what I am doing is morally acceptable. And when I want to paint, when I really thirst to take this burning in my brain and make it better, I am just too tired.

Recently, I read All Quiet on the Western Front for the first time. I’m reading East of Eden now. I’m embarrassed that after the small taste of Steinbeck I had in high school, I’d never read more of his work… my immature mind did not at all appreciate his wisdom.

“An unbelieved truth can hurt a man much more than a lie. It takes great courage to back truth unacceptable to our times. There's a punishment for it, and it's usually crucifixion.”

We are not meant for this world, but we are called to do our best to make it better. Stay safe out there, friends.

Erosion

Uncertain times. I’ve begun working in a new medium (alcohol ink). The inks dry quickly and are difficult to control: artistic vision has to be comfortable coexisting with a certain amount of chaos to work with this stuff. Over time, and with practice, the chaos becomes… predictable. I can impart a measure of control because I know, generally, how the materials want to behave. I wonder if I gravitate towards this style because I am caught in such turbulent times. It is impossible to plan anything more than a couple of weeks out right now. Desire hangs suspended.

I’m reading On the Road. I am stuck at home.

My family and I escaped Dallas briefly to visit dear friends in Northern Colorado. What a balm to the spirit is fellowship and time spent with friends! And the mountains always soften the tension of concrete that builds behind my eyes when I’m stuck in the city. I live with longing for vast, un-peopled spaces. My daughter started reading My Side of the Mountain (one of my favorite books when I was a little younger than she is now), and it has been fun to listen to her questions and hear how she relates to the merits of habitable trees.

Slowly now the evening changes his garments

held for him by a rim of ancient trees;

you gaze: and the landscape divides and leaves you,

one sinking and one rising toward the sky.

And you are left, to none belonging wholly,

not so dark as a silent house, nor quite

so surely pledged unto eternity

as that which grows to star and climbs the night.

To you is left (unspeakably confused)

your life, gigantic, ripening, full of fears,

so that it, now hemmed in, now grasping all,

is changed in you by turns to stone and stars.

-Rilke, translated by FC MacIntyre

August approaches. With it, questions I’ve put on hold since March. What was February, some unreal dream? Where was I? Who was I, several months ago?

In February, I received my acceptance into a Masters of Visual Arts program at the University of Texas at Dallas. I had completed by application for Distinguished Teacher at my district, and was praying that the merit salary I hoped to earn this fall would offset the cost of tuition so that I could finally finally go back to school. I’ve learned so much since I scraped my way through graduation in 2007. I really, desperately, want to go back to school.

I’ve learned that education is still mainly for the wealthy. Most graduate programs in the arts require a full time commitment and preclude having a job. This institutional mindset infuriates me: working students shouldn’t be barred from higher learning simply because they have to balance work and school; likewise, the mindset of a working student brings a pragmatism, and an ethos of hard work and dedication, to a graduate program. With the insane cost of higher ed, the mind reels at how one could even afford to take time off to just… have the luxury of being a student.

I had, I thought, found a way to maintain employment in a job I love (and have worked so very hard to attain), and work towards my masters. My seniors and I had bonded over the application process and shared joy at our acceptances, trepidation at the work that awaited us in the fall.

Enter Covid.

August approaches. I need to make some decisions that I’ve put off due to uncertainty, yet things are even less certain now than they were in March. I am a teacher. Will I be returning to the classroom? I’ve been advised to update my will and carry disability this year. Teaching is already an emotionally rewarding/draining profession that requires so much investment. I am trying to be realistic about what the upcoming semester will mean for my mental health. Should I pay $3500/class to start a graduate degree when I have these new stressors? Can I justify the expense?

This public health crisis underscores the fragility of our social contracts. That’s a big, broad, general statement, but it bears mentioning because, if August approaches… so does November. There’s little consensus about anything in our country. What truths do we hold to be self evident, exactly? Do we hold to Truth at all?

I am a teacher. I have seen my countrymen disparage my profession for years. Now I am seeing my neighbors demand their tax dollars back. I watch as politicians devalue the lives of the kids I teach. I witness my own health and livelihood politicized.

Ironically, many of the problems we face today are the consequences of our cultural attitude towards education. We’ve earned this mess.

. . .

Stone, and stars share common elements. Perhaps the theme of this disjointed rambling is: that which may seem incongruous, opposed, unlikely- is not altogether separate at all. Living with flux is learning to breath on the precipice, and finding there a moment of balance. And if we are to salvage ourselves, we must learn to value one another. We must understand that the success of our nation depends upon our collective attitude towards these inalienable rights: that my neighbor’s rights and my own are equally valid, full stop. Polarization leads to radicalization, and that slope is steep and slippery.