The Living Artist

I’ve been going through a bad time.

So many days confined to bed, frantically resting so as to have enough spoons to do the meager amount of parenting left to me. Despairing over my son’s behavioral issues, wondering if they stemmed from anxiety over my erratic ability to be there for him and knowing that I was not helping him in the way that I could if I was not in constant pain. Feeling so guilty for leaving my son to the care of others, struggling not to weep every time I tell him “No, I can’t play with you right now. Please don’t give me a hug. I can’t. I want to, so, so much, but I can’t.”

But then I read this amazing story from Goddess Leonie about struggling with post-natal depression. How even through the worst of it, she knew her daughter was meant to be hers, and how she could smile with utter sincerity through the tears when she met her daughter’s eyes.

And I started to wonder. Maybe, even with this pain and disability that was forced on me when my son was not even two, I’m still the right mother for him, and he the right child for me.

He is so affectionate and cuddly, and it breaks my heart when I can’t snuggle him endlessly as he craves, but that same affectionate nature gives him the empathy to happily bring me things when I need them, and ask if I want a blanket, and to spend an hour in bed with me one morning as our hands pretended to be a family of spiders playing hide-and-seek in haunted houses.

This wonderful, amazing child found a way to involve me in his play even with me flat on my back, unable to do more than move my hands.

Just as a couple of months ago he came up with the idea of “spider hugs” when my body hurt too much to take a full embrace from his bony, wiggly body – just his hand holding mine, but through the power of his imagination transformed into a full embrace with all the love in the world.

And armed with empathy and imagination, I can hope that he will grow up able to use his privilege to help and not to harm. That he will always know, supported with the experience of his childhood with a disabled mother, that bodies with different appearances and abilities from his are still valuable, that their lives are no less worth living, no less worthy of respect and care, than his own.

(Talk of fatalism and destiny usually makes my skin crawl. I believe wholeheartedly that we create our world moment by moment, pushing against the skin of the world to define our own spaces. But there is comfort in the idea that maybe some aspects underneath all this chaos and misery were meant to be. I can adjust my beliefs to better support me, while still allowing others to have their own.)

“Glimpsing Satori” by Heather Keith Freeman
5″x7″, acrylic on canvas board

Be here now.

Look around you. Look at what’s happening now.

Be here now.

Cast off what you wish was. Drop your worries about the future, your regrets about the past. Lost loves, adventures that never were, stories gone terribly wrong, they are not here, they are not now.

Be here, present, engaged, now.

What is happening now?

Where are your opportunities, now?

What is actually working, now?

Focus on these things.

Don’t worry about missed opportunities – there will always be more. But if an opportunity is already playing out, now, and you turn away, then you really have missed something irreplaceable.

Be.

Be here.

Be here now.

In lieu of a thoughtful, reasoned argument which I don’t have time to make right now, have this dilemma which I have been chewing over for some months now:

Is it better for an artist (of whatever flavor: writer, painter, film director, anything where you are creating something from which a narrative might be derived) to portray the world as it is or as they would like it to be? Can this duality be linked to other characteristics of a society such as its level of progressivism, class hierarchy, authoritarianism, etc.? Does an artist have a duty one way or another?

Winter has fallen on the Puget Sound with a resounding icy crackle.

Being a Midwestern-raised girl (Chicago and Pittsburgh), I can’t help but adore snow. The way it highlights the bare trees, projecting them into strange dimensions by the conflicting angles of the snow and sun. The shifting blowing chaotic patterns of snow on the road. The glittering of icicles as they begin to melt in the sun.

Winter is about stillness. Hibernation. And the morning after a fresh snow, the entire world seems frozen in one perfect, barren yet beautiful moment.

Art, particularly static visual art, is also about one perfect moment frozen in time. A moment, a feeling, or an idea – preserved for eternity.

And yet it is also true that that which does not change is dead. Growing, living, dynamic change is the truth of the universe. Why then do we cling to the moments of stillness and the frozen images?

The unchanging is frequently held to be an ideal in our society. The perfect idea of beauty, untouched by age. The ideal relationship, one true love enduring through time. The religion, governmental system, or philosophy which is sufficiently close to core truth should not need to adapt to the times – or so goes the meme.

This is, in my opinion, an unhealthy relationship to the unchanging. The dominant memes seem bent on convincing us that the unchanging ideals are attainable, when for us mutable mortals it can never be. This sets up a vicious cycle of struggle towards the unattainable resulting in continual failure. LIttle wonder so many of us are miserable.

And yet the seeking and holding dear of those unchanging moments and images goes deeper, I think, than the unfortunate tendencies of a consumerist society. These hold comfort for us, refreshment, reminders of why life is precious and what we fight for.

The unchanging serves not as an ideal, but as an anchor.

And on this icy morning, the chill in the air reminds me of my Midwestern roots, of turning inward to nourish the warmth within, and to treasure the stillness within which we reaffirm our attachment to those unchanging ideals which keep us strong.

Art is long and time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still like muffled drums are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

           -Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Psalm of Life