SOMETIMES I JUST DON’T KNOW

Dec 2007

Sometimes I just don't know.

 

And this is one of those days; I walk around the studio and into the gallery, looking at all the work, and I just don’t know.  What am I doing and why am I doing it?

There is no firm ground on which to stand.  Just when I think I have found the place, it shifts beneath my feet throwing me off balance.  My head tells me...this is the way it is, this is the journey, and the destination is secondary.  I know this, and yet.  There is always an “and yet”; the heart simply cannot keep up with the head, or is it the other way around, with the heart being one or two steps ahead?

I have completed 2 new paintings, and neither reflects any enthusiasm.  Another is in progress, and I am excited about the prospects, and yet...the nagging question...why am I doing this. 

Often, writing about something will lead me to an understanding, if not an answer.  But I don’t know if that will be the case this morning.  I hope so.  I really want to find that that center, that place where everything comes together.

I cannot stop thinking about David, my parents, Cathy, and all of the gentle people I knew, and all that I never knew.  Some have gone before their time and others in their time, and thinking about them makes me sad.  I thought I wanted to be happy today, to paint freely with loud music bouncing around the studio.  But perhaps I really want to be sad; maybe this is one of those days when we feel the need to quietly wrap ourselves in a soft blanket of melancholy and remember the ones we loved and lost.  This doesn’t seem like such a bad idea, perhaps we have to do this periodically to keep our balance in life.

I Think I will listen to harry Chapin, Jerry Orbach, Luciano Pavarotti, Johnny Cash, and John Denver, celebrating their lives, even as I mourn for David, my parents, and Cathy.

Sometimes you just don’t know where writing in a journal will lead you.

(From my book, The Simple Life.)