Taking a break...

Ink stained fingers tap at keys connected to a universal idea.
The web glows at me, like a former flame from a tribal fire. We used to dance around such things, and now I bask in a cool ice-blue light from a new circle of fire. The 21st century hearth. No heat comes, but a little glows on my cheeks from the vodka and the internal rush of ideas...again, at 2 a.m. My nocturnal nature rises again to fuel the rush of color over the canvas. Melted wax perfumes the air with a slight smell of honey, and thoughts drift to the cycle of sun, rain, earth, flower, bee. I make art out of the earth, inspired by life on earth, and something that will most likely decompose into the soil again. But the process of creation gives me purpose, so that inevitably it is enough. Money would be nice too. But the starving artist rises and falls like every story about the starving artist. I am not cutting off my ear or getting syphillis just to get famous....sorry to disappoint you. I did make apple crisp tonight in a wild wave of euphoric domesticism. Full on apron and apple slicer...the kind women in the midwest use with a handle to crank 'em out, peeled and cored and ready for pies. I watched the skins streaming out of my apple loom, winding like the seagrass that lines the river bottoms in Michigan. I watched my hands with their blue veins standing up out of the skin, like an old woman. I wonder what these hands will do in twenty more years. Tonight in my humble place, in my starting over place, I still felt grateful for being. I am not going home to the grey house in the woods with it's cozy candlelight and familiar faces. But it is my little thanksgiving anyways. I have places to go, but I feel it is best to just be in my own kitchen, warm my own little home with smells of my childhood and womanhood. They are now one and the same. When you are thirteen you think of twenty six like an unfathomable place. Now I am here, thinking the same thoughts about being thirty six. I might make the same apple crisp in ten years and think about the recipe I got from Ms. Sappenfield in second grade. I might remember that I was shy and scared the first time I tasted this dessert. Now I make it and feel strong and lost and found and lonely and happy and new. So I tuck it away into casserole dishes and canvasses...I hide the wistfulness of being seven into the glass of vodka or the emphatic smile and optimism. But in these moments, I feel grateful to feel. To be present. Albeit neurotic and self involved. But the feeling and growing in life is what's pretty, not the outward appearance of having it all together. Some things I have together, and others fray at my fingertips. I search for the end only to find myself at the begining again. But how may people allow themselves this freshness, this inspiration, this time to not know everything? I guess we all need a lesson in being uncomfortable and yet finding some stillness to enjoy it. I realized tonight that I have a small stillness in a small ritual. So I am grateful. Now it is time to resume the batik. Goodnight, Steph