Friday, September 5, 2008

Figuring It All Out....


My 3 year old grandson is visiting me for a while,
something I have fervently prayed to have happen since he was born. He lives in Florida and I am in New England, so we've been together very little, aside from our weekly phone calls.


This time with him is so very precious and I find myself trying to crystallize each moment, each funny thing he says, each lower-lip pout, into perfect memories I can access later, when he goes back home; when I am missing him so terribly.


I wonder if when he is older he will recall this time with his Mierme and his Father's family.



It is a curious thing, how we long for our most cherished dreams to be realized, and miraculously when they are, we may find there are aspects we had not counted on or factored into our poignant prayers. The heart hopes for happy things, rarely considering the downside.


For me, it is sacrificing my drug, painting, for the heart-rending love of being with this dear child, flesh of my flesh. He needs so much, this little one, and I am deliriously happy to provide it; but I find myself struggling with having any time to paint or write, acitivities which are soul-nourishing for me, as necessary on a daily basis as food and oxygen.


He is so frenetically busy !! He scampers about, finding one potentially hazardous thing after another to get into. I had forgotten how lightning-quick a toddler can be !


In a nanosecond's time, he found and opened up my sacred Tibetan Monk's prayer wheel, with it's yards of fragile paper prayers written in tiniest Sanskrit, wound up in meticulous tight spirals around it's spindle. My heart froze as I quietly told him to put it down, desperate to keep this artifact safe from curious little clumsy fingers...it had survived almost 50 years, and it's presence in my home is a spiritual anchor for me.


Thankfully, it survived Nicholas's investigation, but only barely. :)


I've had to fence off my studio because of the baby-dangerous items in easy reach there ( there is no door). The protective fence not only keeps Nicholas out, but makes it even harder for me to get in, one more layer of difficulty to accessing my work.


I suppose one could say Nicholas is helping me define just how important painting is to me, in addition to gifting my Grandmother's heart with myriad priceless memories.


I've given him crayons and paper to play with, which occupy him about as long as a fly lighting on a surface, then he moves on to the next wonderful mystery to look into. I gave him markers and construction paper, with pretty much the same result. He is a a true Techie Baby, completely besotted with anything eletronic. He has not one but three age-appropriate computers, which he plays with sporadically when not doing search-and-destroy in my small apartment.
He is tenacious in his curiosity about anything new, and at age 3, pretty much everything IS new.


On Monday while he napped, I hurried in my studio, desperate to try and tear off a small work. The painting you see here was the product, done largely with knife. I found it satisfying to do the work; acutely aware I had a time limit, a point at which my beautiful little Prince would awaken and demand all of Mierme's attention once more. It obliged me to work loose and fast.


I am pleased with the bright colors, the depth of texture and the almost gestural shapes. It seems to me to be a happy work.


I can thank Nicholas for that.


Since he is in the act of re-programming my TV remote control ( not in a good way) as I write, I need to get to the point.


Our dreams, our goals may have their origins in ethereal realms. When we manifest them into reality, into the harsh world of everyday life busy-ness, the shape of our wishes often transmute into a different form than that we hoped for. Doesn't mean there aren't wonderful reality-based benefits to realizing our dreams, or that the experience is any less blissful, just that it is important to temper our hopes with a modicum of pragmatism sometimes....to balance the shift between wishing and wishes actually being.


I think most people experience this phenomenon in the area of romantic relationships, hoping for Love to arrive on their horizon, transforming their life in some mystical way we can erroneously assume Love will do. When that bugger Reality sets in, and toothpaste lids are left off and dirty socks are strewn everywhere, the shine can wear off fairly quickly...and one begins to doubt whether it was really Love at all.


The danger here is that in asking the Universe for our most dearly held wishes to become manifest, we can lose sight of the reality, that all dreams have price-tags, and rightfully so...spiritual and life-costs we will be obliged to pay when our longing emerges from it's chrysalis into our living room.


There are always benefits, unseen at first, to balancing goals with reality....Nicholas has reminded me of that important lesson, in the most precious of ways.

This little 11"x14" work in the upper right corner is the product of my learning from my grandson. I'm doing something I usually eschew, posting this work on Ebay. If you'd like to bid on it, click here.....
"We have forgotten the age-old fact that God speaks chiefly through dreams and visions"
(Carl C. Jung)
"The final goal of human effort is man's self-transformation".
(Lewis Mumford)
Thanks for stopping by....more soon !
Warmly: Susi