Every now and then I seem to go crazy—not certified lock-me-up crazy, but disturbing enough to make me worry that I will step off that edge.
Edgy is how it feels. When I am like that, I am not at home in this mind in this place in this life. I become unmoored, looking for a hook to throw a life-loop around to tow myself in.
The last couple of days have been like that. I got through one by sleeping most of the morning and taking a brisk hike with my friend Ginny in the hot afternoon.
Ginny is completely tethered to this earth. Walking uphill and downhill with her, sweating and talking, helped to get the poisons out. I felt better after I got home.
But this morning I was feeling jittery again, like it was time for me to get out of this life. Haven’t I been here long enough? And what am I supposed to do with the rest of it, anyway?
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I recently took on a commission to make a painting I don’t know how to make. It’s for a hotel in Knoxville, and the designer sent me photos to work from.
“I’m an abstract artist,” I told her. “I don’t do realistic paintings.”
“The owners love what you do,” she said. “Can you send us a sketch of what it might look like?”
“No,” I said. “I don’t do sketches before I paint.”
The designer said that was OK, and so I got the order to paint a 48” x 36” abstract painting that people are supposed to look at and say, “Oh yeah, there’s the hotel, the river, the garden, and blah, blah, blah.”
Is that why I’m feeling weird this week? Because I don’t know how to tackle this?
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Yesterday I couldn’t do any work at all on that painting. But the day before I pasted the photo of the hotel on my easel and began to paint. When I was done, I was amazed at how much the painting looked like the photo.
Even my daughter and granddaughter were amazed. They’d never seen me paint anything so realistic.
“I’m looking forward to seeing how this comes out,” said my daughter.
“So am I,” I said.
But the first day of painting was to lay the groundwork, rough in the building blocks that would help my final abstraction be recognizable as the hotel to viewers. In the next step I’d be painting over most of it.
This morning I needed to get to the real work. And even though I was feeling jittery, I knew I had to tackle that canvas first thing if I didn’t want to embrace a huge black hole of depression.
All I had to do was choose the first color and paint one brushstroke. How hard is that?
Even if it’s the wrong color put in the wrong place, it doesn’t matter. Once I start, the process takes over. My mind is engaged in that process. It is doing useful work.
My hands are doing useful work.
All of me is engaged in this work.
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When I am done for the morning, I clean my brushes and go have a lunch I deserve.
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Work has always been what saves me.
