Portrait in Linen

Spent the day blocking out virtually all responsibilities, taking the guilt to the gut, suckin’ it up. Weekend work’s cut out for me anyway: Monday’s Miner Day, so the house will have to be in perfect order.

Nothing is ever in perfect order, and that’s something I can generally stomach–except in the episodic moments of despair, which at the time feel real and terminal.

But I’m also aware those valleys are a ruse, shot blanks, horrifying hallucinations, a red devil on my shoulder whispering acid accusations in my ear about all the ways I’m marred beyond recovery. I hear it, pretty constantly, but I’ve learned to ignore it. Most of the time.

—

Drawing is like a drug. In the moments before the pencil strikes the page, it feels like I’ve got Draino running through my veins. Like gnawing on a leather strap might make me feel better. Or pounding chalk into powder. Tense and bulging and staticky and unsorted.

But then I draw the first arc, light and hesitant. It’s a smooth, slight, graceful sweep that has no certain destination just yet, but as it snakes its way this way and that across the page, it seems to draw out the confusion, as if it were drawing out my blood.

Relief…that’s what I feel through the whole process.

And maybe the more disfigured and distorted the subject is, the more aligned and symmetrical I feel.

If I’m not drawing, I’m trying to bleed these things out in other ways–writing, speaking/studying Hawaiian, training, making lists, or cleaning something. “Sedating the beast.”

A part of me is startled and anxious about what ends up on the page, what things may be revealed about me there, things I can’t see because my subconscious has got them safely tucked away under its tongue. But, the subconscious holds onto those things for a reason–because I’m not strong (read: put-together) enough to tolerate the truth. I’m fine with that. Those things are obviously way too terrible to deal with in the here and now, and if the only way to vent them is to let them possess my drawings, so be it.

I think therein lies the self-self reconciliation. Grotesque is okay–once extracted.

Elated…. Satisfied. Inspired. For once, the day has felt adorned and verdant.

Nothing altogether special about this particular Wednesday, except perhaps I chose to approach it as if it were a blank canvas, confident I possessed all that was required to make it a modest work of art.

A handful of optimism dismissed the rain and haze–didn’t faze me in the least, even if it was the perfect weather for cuddling up in the bed for a cozy afternoon nap. I thought for sure Festival International de Louisiane would rain out, but downtown began to kick and hum just as karate class began.

Tonight’s training was a small personal success. Two weeks since I last dressed out, so I genuinely expected to stumble along, unable to control spasmatic arms and legs, drained by the sheer effort it would take to correct all the little things–foot placement, hip alignment, and so many other fundamentals of execution.

But muscle memory served. I think the little things took care of themselves, and I was finally able to concentrate on finer details, like deepening the stance, preserving fluidity, infusing a little power where needed. I felt a little more coordinated. Maybe it showed.

“Really great job out there….”
“You looked really good tonight….”
“You did great…I noticed….”

Seems kinda silly how far a little praise goes. I feel like I can get out there again next time, do what I did tonight, and build some more.

So grows a sapling. There when the seeds were planted, saw the first tender shoot curl up from the soil; the young tree unfurls in the wild.

—

And after all was said and done, I came home with heavy currents of color, music, and texture. Thus, “clavicle study 1″ and a poem.

Karate class will feel like the very first day all over again. Opportunity to train has eluded me, so I made an executive decision to leave Rocky to hold down the fort so I can go alone. Tough when it’s Just-Me-At-Home Week(s).

At some kind of equilibrium, “Challenge” feels like a wide open road.  But from under a large stone, it’s fighting my way up against the dirt and the weight…so, so far away from achievement.

I am not a strong woman.  I don’t think I ever have been.  Fear has seemed to be the center of the universe, a dark motivation that drives more powerfully than shame.  But shame is fear’s child, and it never fails to come toddling along behind, in the form of nervous quivering or incomprehensible rambling, or tears that insist on slipping out of my eyes.

I hate to create self-fulfilling prophecy, but what I expect is to break myself trying, to fabricate a formidable kind of courage, to force myself to the edge of me, and then at the moment of truth, implode upon impact.  I can say with all honesty, I am not a fighter.

I don’t think Dad ever intended to plant phobias in my head.  He had the opposite intention, forcing me to face the things he felt I could overcome.  Maybe it was putting the cart before the horse–throwing her into the water so she couldn’t help but just swim if she wanted to survive.  But he threw me flailing to the barreling waves, and all I really wanted was to draw them.

So why dive into them now?  To prove something to myself?  To prove something to him?  To prove something to anyone who ever had high expectations of me?

I honestly don’t know.  Maybe it’s not to prove something, but to find out if what he saw in me was something more than an apple.

It’s an odd sort of anxiety, standing next to the other Beginners–tough older men, strong younger ones, each with their own reason for showing up at the dojo every week.  Their purposes are probably perfectly beautiful in their simplicity, and I stand there with my veins all tangled and twisted up like rusty old wire, innumerable images and faces and voices and words and dates and places and sensations of the past transposed over the clear, vivid present.  The ghost of me in the watercolor portrait of me, both straining for substance and tangibility.

So much for the doctor’s appointment.  Wrong clinic.  The one I need is Neurology. The word “neurology” sounds so ominous.

I know what I need to do, but I’m terrified of flat-lining.  Not in a physical sort of way, but inspirationally.  It’s already monumentally difficult to harness what creative auroras I do have.  Typically, they’re lashing about so wildly beyond reach, I have to still myself and focus everything into grasping the very tail-end of it all between my fingertips, and then set about the tedious task of gathering the little strands and weaving them into something beautiful.

What a torturous thing it is to love the tempest, but find oneself completely incapable of enduring it.  Blown apart by my own little sparks and flames.

But going to see the nurse practitioner is the responsible thing to do.  If I don’t, I bring suffering to everyone around me, and confusion to the people who would otherwise endear me.

Which raises another question: Would I buy affection?

It might feel a lot like bartering for love, to trade in my head (with all its quirks and mechanical flaws) for stability of disposition.  The acceptance I get in return would be given on condition (pun: good condition).  That doesn’t seem genuine at all.

But all of that seems like accessory worry.  The main thing is, I’m drowning and I know it.  Survival instinct is to reach out.

In any case, it’ll probably be a good week or more before they can fit me in.  No problem.  I’ll just go back to what I was doing before the ship began breaking apart, and maybe there will come some warmth that is deep and unseasonal.