I know, I vanished again, and for how long this time? You’ll have to tell me. As those saintly few of you who’ve been keeping track of me know, was locked away preparing for the Worldcon artshow in Montreal. Here is the poster advertising my most recent project. Look below to my Valentine’s post and you’ll find the Tortured Heart, the artwork that won me a shiny blue ribbon in the art show mentioned above. Feeling dizzy? You have survived the initiation, welcome to the club. The show was small but the people were lovely. Those months of studio imprisonment left me feeling so lonesome, so burnt out and withered up and less than human, that I was so glad for all this, for the fellowship and kind words and everything. I’ll do another Worldcon post once the aftermath has settled somewhat, but I just wanted to bounce some love and thank everyone and give the whole wonderful ordeal my goodbyes and goodnights before I slunk off to bed.

Did I mention I had a rough Valentine's?

Again, its been months, and I haven’t been able to bring myself to put a word out.   Maybe its because things seemed too strange, too fragile, and I was waiting until I felt like it was within my possesion again, but when will it ever be.   I’ve been scared.  I’m swallowed up by secret worlds, by things that seem too silly and common to confess, but powerful things too big for me to even get my words around.  I’ve been lonely, and the harder I try to cure that, the lonelier I feel.   I keep looking for something.  I push them away so I have space enough to look for it.   Silly.  The irony kills me. 

Winter is too long.  I forget what its is to be outside.  I forget the love I feel when walking in the green kingdom.    Someplace out there, there is a garden that blooms for me.  There is a brook to nourish me, there is a sun to warm me.   Out there are uncounted tender, beautiful things, just like me, trying to survive, trying to become something.   I feel god’s warmth and lifeblood, see its light drawing shapes,  spinning mandalas of growth and shadow.   In the winter, I forget the deep contentment I know when I feel its breath upon me.   We’re apart now.  Winter is the long seperation from a lover.  The winter is too long, this hateful thing, this cold indifference.   

Just like those I wait for.   All these distances.   

Spring is coming, though, its inevitable.  I can feel the slow thaw.   The world will be coming to life again.  I’ve been hatching a menagerie of little creatures- Dream spawn, I call them; primordial, surreal little beasties.   I sell them as darling little pendants and charms when I find some one brave or mad enough to adopt one.   The rest remain in my collection.   Soon, I shall have a whole cabinet of curiosities which I shall invite you all to wonder over.   And this idea sets a glad little fire alight in my heart.

I have a lovely post about autumn waiting to be published, full of colors and special autumn feelings, but I suspect it will be winter by the time I get it posted.      I’m writing from the gallery now- my machine it home has been hoarding all my unwritten posts, but it refuses to share me with the world.   My connection is still barely working, and I despair, unwilling to battle with it any longer.   But I’m camped out alone in the gallery for the rest of the work week, so  I don’t have my notes with me, I’m not going to talk about the season, I’m not going to compose, I’m just going to give you what I’ve got at the moment.

I’ve been busy, urgently busy, with this ever-building list of missions that I MUST accomplish before my trip.   These demand all my free time and effort.     Everything needs to be perfect.   I need to feel masterful.   It wasn’t until yesterday, when looking down upon a menagerie of grinning skulls that I had just dedicated my day to, that I thought maybe I was being unreasonable.   Maybe I was masking my real mission.

I’ve been having Ideas and making them happen, immediately, relentlessly.   Because I need to know that desires can be made real. I need to know that I have this power.  That I can hold something formless in my heart and then bring it out and hold it in my hand.   I need to feel like dreams don’t melt in the light, but that they gestate as we hold on to them.   They stay inside of us until they are ready.

I will admit, and this has been a lonely, guarded secret of mine, that I spend a lot of my day looking into the mirror.     Its the first thing I do after dragging myself out of bed in the morning, and I feel like death in the morning; perhaps its my ritual of resurrection.   Before I bathe I’ll stand there naked and remind my body that it exists.   That I still know and love it.   That I’m still here.   Just like I was yesterday.    When R lived with me he would wake me up every morning, gently enough, and laugh at the state of me, so even before the blur had left my eyes, I’d been welcomed back into the world.   I’d curse him out but I loved that, and miss it.  Don’t mistake it for vanity, nor do I just myself and dig away at the flaws.  I just need to check in and see that things are all right, and I see it in my own eyes.   It’s reassuring.

I got a haircut yesterday, after much debating the need for it.   I loved it, and then not so much, when I took my cute new city hair out into the far lonesome country, and I just wanted something to keep the chill of my neck, something that fell heavy like a cowl, and I missed my old hair.    This cut is designed to open and soften my look,  to hide my troubled brow, to show my eyes and smile.     I wasn’t so comforable with that last night, when saying goodnight to the mirror.  I wanted to feel hard and distant.

I’ve been staying in one of the abandoned bedrooms of my grandma’s farmhouse, which is a short walk from the gallery but so far from the rest of the world.   Fortunately there’s lots of work here to keep me busy, but as soon as its all put away and the world is sleeping, that’s when it all sneaks up on me, and its just me, my bright eyes and the night.

But for now there is daylight, and work to be done, and I shall return to it for awhile.

Hrrm, what’s been going on… More of the same.

I’ve been trying to make some small profit off my art, and though I haven’t seen much success yet, I keep working at it.  People keep on asking after it and it hurts me a little bit every time I tell them the starving artist story, but they can laugh along with me and I think they understand.

I help to run my mother’s small business, a gallery out in nowhere-land vermont, which is frequented mostly by extended familiy which covers half the population of Walden.  They often have jobs for me, but these jobs turn into favors, and some degree of (unintentional) emotional blackmail muddies up every deal, as this is my mother’s way of sabotaging any threat of professionalism.  This isn’t about the money, she reminds me.  But I don’t know what it’s about.

This is her dream, I want to help her see it through.  But I need.. I need to get out of here, away from this.  I shouldn’t be getting comfortable.  I shouldn’t be staying home to take care of her dogs and husband, I shouldn’t be playing housewife to everything she’s left behind while she chases her dream.

She accuses me of being selfish and arrogant.   Maybe I am. Maybe that’s what I need to be right now.   But who I am to ask for respect, I can’t afford this attitude, I can’t pay the rent, I don’t have a license, I’m not a ~real person.~  I can dress the part but I’m just a beast masquerading as something more.    A beast who stomps and sighs over selfish wants.

Discontent.  My aimless lashing out can do damage, I’ve learned, so I’ve been keeping to myself mostly, save for my most trusted and forgiving of friends, who get the brunt of it.   I try not to burden them but lean on their words when I’m alone.   Some are wiser because they’ve made less mistakes than I have, and some are wiser because they’ve made more.  I don’t need them to talk me down, I need them to help me see what is real and what is reasonable.  My ‘profession’ has conditioned a certain way of thinking that sometimes isn’t the handiest interface with the world.  I get very distracted by my immediate wants, ideas, visions, I grind away at my frustrations, I’m preyed upon by my anxieties, that misplaced sense of urgency which throbs through everything.

“Perseverative thought processes,” I heard her say. I’ve had those three words stuck in my head all week, and I guess thats ironic.

I try to keep busy, it keeps me out of trouble. I bait myself with small excitements to pass the time.  Small gasps of cartharis. I cleaned out my closet but no one wants my weird old clothes.  Its becoming harder to figure out what to wear: I find myself staring into the remains and seeing who I was, but not knowing who I am at the moment, or how to dress for where I’m heading.  Too much black, and I’m tired of it.  I want sunrise colors.  But I’m still not quite that brave.

I’m taking control of small things, one at a time.  I can get away to the city for awhile, even though I live like a gypsy once I’m out there.  I’ve got all this energy saved up and I hit the town with a vengence that can’t be matched by my tired-out city friends.

I was hoping a new outfit, new hair, and a new pair of shoes would be enough to reinvent me.  Dust off the sobwebs and clear my eyes.  It was a nice try, anyway.  I’m here in the same place looking slightly more fabulous, and it doesn’t do me a hell of a lot of good.

But I’m becoming braver.  I’m feeling a momentum building up inside of me, and I know that things are going to change.  That’s one thing I can count on.

I’ve been trying to set to work on my applications. For school acceptance, for grants, for scholarships- Anything that’s proof that I have some direction.

I need to -focus-. I need a plan, and it needs to be brilliant.
It’s been hard. I’ve been feeling foolish and heavy-hearted. Heavy, crushing down, and I’m so busy trying to squirm out from beneath it. Shrugging it off then stumbling over it.

I don’t think I’m being entirely honest. Maybe that’s what’s weighing on me.
I’ve got a lot to confess. I -always- feel like I’ve got a lot to confess. But I’m worried I’ll get it all wrong.

These aching truths are the place that art comes from. Art can be a confession or a lie and no one knows the difference. It can be all wrong and it can still make them smile, gifts and granted wishes.

But it’s not right, it’s not enough, its a mask, it’s not cutting to the heart of it.
But I need to get this out, and it needs to be ugly. It’s going to be an awful mess, my guts strewn about in some weird self-augury. It’s humiliating, its a wet and naked feeling, and so often its wrong, for shyness or hesitation. I need to keep digging until I get it out.

I go a distance, I get something down, I go back, I scold myself. I feel wrong and ashamed. It sounds too much like despair. That’s not right, that’s not me. They keep on saying its depression, but it’s not like that, its a fire, and I’m glowing with it sometimes, and sometimes its burning me up. It’s a good thing, its beautiful, its a powerful thing.

But I don’t feel like I can trust myself. I want to think there’s some instinct or intuition driving all of this, but after years of feeling lost, years of chasing it, it’s hard. I’m not home yet. I can’t be at home with this sense of urgency still hounding me. I get cornered by it, I break down crying and I don’t know why. I have theories but that’s all. I feel injustice, I get angry and don’t know if I’m right or wrong. Sometimes it is so clear, and then this guilty doubt sneaks up and stabs me in the gut.

It’s hard to find anyone I can trust to ask. Some want to prove their suspicions, others are too quick cosset me, and everyone has their oun motives and none of these have much to do with truth. I need an honest mirror. I need a map.

If there were some sort of pilgramage I could go on, I’d be gone. When I lived in the city, I would spend these hours wandering the streets, new and old, getting lost, feeling like I was hunting for something. Praying for grace to take hold of me.

I can find my grace in art: I can make things happen, sometimes effortlessly. I can kill in a stroke. I can fight forever.

Art can turn me into a machine. That’s why I wanted to go back to school, because they’ll work me raw and I’ll have some assignment to fill every sleepless hour. Something to account for the bruised eyes and cave dweller pallor, something to be a slave to. Something greater than myself. I’ll have less time for this self-indulgent nonsense. Less time to feel so human.