My limbs were virtually immobile, arms and legs sticking straight out. I was bound in a stiff, puffy suit cartwheeling through the vastness of space and unable to stop, slow down or course correct. The chilling unearthly silence of an infinite void surrounded me, a black empty sea. My only points of reference, the twinkling white lights going in and out of my vision. I tumbled around and around to what would eventually, surely be my undoing.
“Ouch!” I cried as I was washing the breakfast dishes. The water I had been running in the sink had become unbearably hot and yanked me back from my daydream.
Outside my kitchen window the view opens up to a broad valley that climbs up the foothills of Mt. Spokane. On this day in late February the mountain is covered with the same pristine snow that lies on all I see … A perfect, clean white canvas simply begging to be embellished with some colorful dreams.
I often find myself mesmerized by this view and not surprised at all that on this particular morning I fancied myself hopelessly lost in space. That’s precisely how I feel.
I’m the kind of person who routinely wakes up grounded in the day ahead and ready to get to it. I rarely have to wonder what I will be doing. A sense of purpose and mission is so deeply rooted in me that on those infrequent occasions when I wake up feeling out of touch with myself I’m lost and confused. This feeling often leads to a dark despair not, I imagine, unlike tumbling through space, alone, into nothingness … A frightening amnesia and I don’t like it.
On these atypical days I tend to scrabble around looking for a way out of this personal vacancy. I’m like a thousand mice running through a maze for the cheese in the middle. I can’t sit still. I can’t relax or accomplish anything except getting more and more worked up.
Seeing the state I was in my husband, Dan said, “Have you thought about letting go of your resistance?” Of course I hadn’t. I’m up to my eyeballs in resistance, fighting this invisible enemy with all my might and only succeeding in digging a deeper hole just as black and lonely as floating around in space. Letting go of resistance? … OK, I’ll try. Yoda sneaks in and whispers, “There is no try, only do.” Sometimes I really don’t like that little green guy.
Only do. Let go. Sounds so easy. At least for me, it’s not.
The only thing I felt capable of was going for a walk … my go-to solution for almost everything. Somewhere, while trudging through powder snow that reached above the top of my high boots a bit of awareness crept into my frazzled mind … I’m in a vacuum. Nature abhors a vacuum, and apparently so do I.
A while back a dear friend commissioned me to create two paintings for him. He gave me a general idea of what he was interested in, where he’d like the paintings to hang, and provided me with 4 pieces of music to get me started. I was immediately taken with one, “Smooth,” by Santana. The connection was strong and the painting, “7 Inches from the Midday Sun,” almost jumped onto the canvas. The second painting, not at all.
Months went by and the energy didn’t show up. I kept listening to the 4 songs on repeat and nothing, no connection. I had this lovely large canvas all ready to go and no juice. It seemed that the harder I pushed the more the elusive muse moved away. Exhausted of the struggle I conceded. Perhaps I really only had one painting for him. Without consciously trying, I had let go.
Time passed and I found myself itching to paint. Gone was the pressure to make something happen within the guidelines of the commission. Instead, a simple, basic desire began to emerge and I thought, “Why am I waiting? I have a canvas. I have paint … so paint!”
It’s been my habit to find a piece of music that matches the energy I’m wanting to put on canvas. I was being drawn to a certain tone, something mournful. I knew I had landed on the right song when tears ran down my cheeks listening to Jackson Browne’s acoustic version of. “Sky Blue and Black.” The ‘juice’ I had been lacking while trying to make something happen was flowing effortlessly and I went to my studio.
Hours later open pots of blue, black, white, silver, and violet paint, rags, water bottles, brushes, forks, scrapers, plates littered the tables in my studio. I had black smears on my face from paint-covered hands. (It’s not my style to be tidy when immersed in creative work.) Exhausted, I went inside and cleaned up.
I’m in such a state while painting that I need to go back the day after to actually see what I did. I was pleased that what landed on the canvas is precisely what had been rumbling around in me. I photographed “The Dark Side of the Moon” and sent the image off to my friend, intending only to show him my latest work. To my great surprise he loved it, wanted it and said he was, “Really happy!”
Exhausting that creative energy led me to where all this started, staring off into the valley beyond my kitchen window daydreaming that I was tumbling around in the abyss of space … which led me to a walk in the woods.
There, in the presence of nature’s cathedral I began to piece together that I was indeed empty. The feeling as though I had been tumbling around in the vacuum of space was appropriate. The place inside of me that was, over months, holding a space for the ‘juice’ to flow onto the canvas was gone. That space had become a void, not unlike my cosmic daydream.
If it is true that nature does abhor a vacuum, why wouldn’t I? It only follows that the emptying of oneself leaves a hollow. Perhaps that’s the very same phenomenon as the depression often following the birth of a child … a living being is gone and leaves a lonely place inside a woman.
I’m delighted that “The Dark Side of the Moon” hit the mark I had not even been shooting for. All that transpired around this painting has me thinking about resistance … my opposition to the vacuum I felt, however appropriate, after emptying myself onto the canvas.
More subtlety perhaps, the dogged push to make something happen with that particular set of music. It could have become clear to me that I was barking up the wrong tree if I had not became ‘welded’ to the way something had to happen. I was resisting accepting what was right before me.
Sometimes it’s difficult for me to know when to push through barriers and when to step back. When that confusion moves in I need a change of perspective. It can be something as simple as an activity that reliably makes me feel better. For me it’s a walk in the woods, but I’m sure it could be other things for other people …
Maybe doing the thing that feeds the soul will allow the mind to relax even just enough to still anxiety and let a shaft of light shine through the darkness. Perhaps then a person could step away from battling whatever torment happens to be threatening them … Realize that something missing is gone, is no more, and make peace with the emptiness.
The Spill... 