Missing The Current

Wishful thinking and an unwillingness to cave into the weight of the situation I guess.  “I’ll be a brave worrier” I told myself. “We’ll show the world.” And maybe we will. For now, I feel like the world is showing me.  I have not been in the studio for months it seems, and a piece of me is desperate and sad.  Maybe for my own dreams that seem to be shelved again, or maybe for hers.  We’re trying to buck the system. Not my first run around the rodeo, but it’s Aidan’s, and I’m tired of the dust.

This process involves a lot of research, trial, and error, and eventually a mastering of sorts I hope. Much like painting.

“What do you want?” Tom asked me after hours of discussion about the state of things.  “I want…I want…I want…I want Aidan to be OK. Then, I want a stable environment where I know a simple existence (with health insurance) is sustainable and I want to paint.  I want to pour myself into this same dream of discovery and exploration that I have wanted my entire life.  It seems so simple, yet I am 46 years old and I still struggle with each passing day to make it happen. Sometimes that saddens me, and sometimes it flat out pisses me off.

As a human being brought up in a middle-class environment I feel like this should be attainable with good behavior.  Then I compare it to the wildlife that lives outside my window searching for food and shelter every day, or God forbid the mother that hears her child’s affliction is not structural but chemical and incurable, and I think “you spoiled tart, get over yourself.”  That lasts a short time. Then I yearn again for this untouchable place where no external elements can dictate, whether I deserve the right to be there or not.  It is a place that flows with, within, and without struggle. Any impediment turns to a sensuous bend that was meant to be. One thought flows into the next with ease of spirit that makes me fly, and sometimes cry. It is a place of passion and understanding of the beauty that far too few ever recognize and I wish I could live there most of the time. I paint because it is as close to that current as I have ever come without drowning, and I want to swim there forever.  Tomorrow I am hoping to do the backstroke, the sidestroke, and the breast stroke because if I don’t get some water in my ears I might go deaf, and within that silence, I will forever decay.