self

last week was a weird week. a weird week rife with weird feelings and weird dreams and weird weird weird.

i filed away the drawings that have returned to me and that was weird. i left them out for a few days when i first brought them home, wrapped up in plastic sheets, gleaming, lying on their backs. a big oil painting and a fence in a frame are leaning against my bookcase. weird weird weird. to see this work again... some of which i haven't seen in the flesh in a year. weird to have it in my hands. and, that big distance of time sweeps something out of eyes and i can look at them as if i didn't make them... as if it isn't my work. and i can see how good and true they are. but it's a weird, slightly sick feeling to have them here: like i'm a bad mama who failed at finding them their new, perfect home. filing them away in one of the many huge portfolios here at home was a sad moment. i took my time about it, looked at each one, loved each one, slid them in with their sisters and clicked off the light.

weird.

but it's alright. i'm in one of those "transitional" phases and i need time with the work. time to sit with them and see them all rounded up together. see the line they draw. the lineage, the path. see the direction they point. it's no good to rush work out of the house. it really isn't. it's all anxiety and fear and perfectionism and that is definitely definitely definitely bad for an art practice. definitely. i've learned it the hard way.

the lesson isn't a fun one but it is bitterly, beautifully necessary: the value of patience and dedication and not getting in the horrible pattern of RUSH RUSH RUSH. the result is such a terrible loneliness. such a terrible wandering in the dark. such a terrible blinding wind. this time last year i sat in this exact same spot and wondered (in a very painful way) who the hell i am as an artist and as a person. i believed that these titles should be separate, individual, split. and now, a year later, i know there is no way to separate these things. like Popeye, "i am what i am and that's all that i am". and i've chosen to embrace that. i've chosen to let myself flourish and flounder and flail and fail if i need to. especially in the Beckett sense of the word:

FAIL BETTER.