Portrait of the Artist

Writers are supposed to write, so that's what I find myself doing this Thursday evening. Despite the fact that it was a really long day. One of those days where at 8:00 this morning, I already wanted to go home and the market wasn't even going to open for another hour and a half!

This was the kind of day I knew I'd just have to grind out and keep going by any means necessary. Some people survive on black coffee and bitterness. I drink peppermint tea and reward myself for work with cute cat videos.

This post has been gestating with me for some time. I am not really sure how it's going to go, but I've been feeling the need to say these things. The more out on the limb I get though, the less need I seem to have for writing prompts and Google searches.

Of late, I've been compelled to be more truthful in my writing, in everything I guess. For so long I have to admit, I didn't like myself all that much. It made it much more easy for people to take advantage of me because I was so needy. I wrote about much more mundane things, I was judgmental as hell and I sort of used this blog as a way to vent my colossal spleen at the way life was. In truth, it was more about what I was, how I allowed things to be, choosing to be a victim and cherishing and nurturing all my hurts and scars.

I don't want that anymore. I don't do that anymore.  It seems though, the stronger and more independent I get, the more it seems that I alienate the very people that I want to be closest to. I don't know how to do small talk; I am a disaster at flattery and flirting and all of the social niceties that one is meant to so glibly toss around. I am starting to wonder if this condition is permanent. If I am incapable of changing and maybe most importantly, do I really want to? 

When I  starting taking improv lessons...acting lessons if you will, I was hoping that maybe that would lessen my torment and maybe through acting, I could become the kind of person one wants to have around. So imagine my profound surprise when after all of the work faded, the dust settled and I was the same person, albeit under better control. My friend at work, Diane said it most succinctly, "You really have no game do you?" when I came to her to ask why it seemed that I was so out of my depth with most people and in particular the opposite sex. Diane is famous for her extroverted personality and many of our clients don't consider leaving until they've seen her. She is the expert in all things relational, having before settling down, the distinction of dating several men all at the same time with none the wiser.

At my age, by my 40's, I was certain I would really have a handle on love, in both abstract and reality and that I would have finally sussed out relationships. In truth, the closest I am to understanding love is the framed Marc Chagall print (Sun and Mimosa) that hangs on my wall. In it, the lovers are encased in a bubble framed by an outsize flower arrangement out of which a blue bird tipsily tumbles from the top. It has always felt right to me. "Yep, that's the way love should feel", one encased with love in a bubble shut away from the world with an explosion of flowers conveying the deep romance felt between the subjects and a bluebird signifying happiness and fidelity.

In fact, seeing that print for the first time at a charity auction several years ago was akin to the heady feeling of attraction you first feel for an attractive person. Seeing the colors brought a rush of emotion that I hadn't hitherto experienced from a mere painting, surprising and delighting me and from that moment on, I simply craved it, needing to possess it, wanting to have it on my wall and be able to conjure up that feeling whenever I desired. I placed my bid and waited. The night passed without any announcement and I assumed I had been outbid. I can scarcely articulate the feeling I had when the phone rang the next morning and a voice apologized for not letting me know that I had been the winning bidder the night before.

I often think to myself, 'if I can have that sort of emotion within me regarding a mere painting, why should it be so hard to translate that to a human being'?  I am still uncertain of the answer, uncertain as to why it works with such ease for some, more than once in many cases, and I am still searching for my one "Chagall Moment".

Or even a "Picasso Moment" which would probably require even more soul searching than I find myself capable of.

I would probably even settle for someone just saying, "You are somewhat weird and quirky but I find that fascinating so let's talk some more..."

For now, I'll content myself with the vibrant beauty and breathtaking emotion that calls to me from the Chagall print, assuring me that surely love is alive and well in some corner of the world.

Siblings

Uncle Bob would have been 73 today.

Funnily enough, I discovered coincidentally today is also National Sibling Day.

My uncle left behind a sister and a brother. I haven't experienced it, but the loss of a sibling must be a different sort of grief. My uncle was not just my uncle, he was someone's brother.

I'm never sure what the design is or why it sometimes happens, but last night, before I discovered that we even had a National Sibling Day, I was thinking of my siblings and feeling the miles that stretch between us both literally and sometimes figuratively.

Thinking in an abstract way of what their loss would mean to me. I don't mean this in a macabre way, but the loss of a close family member sometimes draws everything together in a finite, more urgent sense of meaning. You just begin to think differently.

Last night I sat wordlessly looking at a photo of my sister and her new-born son. The memories crowded in, flashbacks of her. Erin. Fearless, tomboy, scarily coordinated in a way I could never dream of being. Oozing self-confidence and a pragmatism that has never ceased to amaze me. We couldn't be more different. To think of Erin is to see a flash of pink and purple, perpetually in motion, as if life were a race that you feared lagging behind. The scabs on your arms and knees, the broken arm when you were 7, and the gap-toothed urchin grin (before your braces) your ribbons at the finish line. When I think of you, it is us racing to get our roller skates on so we could be sure of being on the floor when 'Mr. Roboto' was played, it is you deliberately licking all of the tomato sauce off your Spaghettio Meatballs so you wouldn't have to share, it's the time when I was tired of your trantrums so I shoved you into an elevator in the County Courthouse downtown and listened to you screaming up 12 floors, it's me driving like a mad woman hell for leather to your bedside when you were in labor with my niece and you telling me before I could say a word, 'don't worry, I've got drugs I can't feel a thing' because you knew I'd be worrying, it's the two of us weeping together at Grandpa's grave, and it's the photo of you and I when we were little where I've got my arm around you protectively because back then you'd let me.

This one's for you Erin...


It's for my brother, David. We've had our differences and while we aren't miles apart literally, figuratively our lives could not be more different. Still, when I think of you, I see a grey Subaru sportscar and I can still smell the mingled odors of cologne, mexican food, and stale cigarette smoke, you in your Chi-Chi's uniform and me in my Chick-Fil-A visor, barrelling down the road to our jobs with the radio all the way up, U2's 'Achtung Baby' vibrating the windows. It's when you lied and told me the Beverly Cleary book I'd unearthed by your bed was a library book and I wasn't allowed to read it. I yelled at you telling you how mean you were, only one week later to find that book wrapped in a package on the dining room table for my birthday. On another birthday, you used your Albertson's courtesy clerk salary to buy me the Julian Lennon cassette that I still have (it's the only one I kept), sitting up late at midnight watching MTV with you when I was supposed to be in bed and you didn't rat me out, the time when I had a panic attack on the way to the airport at nearly 11 p.m. and you left your home and comfortable bed and followed me all the way there and back in your car so I wouldn't be alone.

This one's for you David...


It's for my brother Doug. You were always so much older than me and as such, a mystery. We've been miles apart in geography and years. To think of you, is to think of the Summer of 1982, where you taught me the song 'You get a line and I'll get a pole honey', it's you insisting that hot water made ice cubes freeze faster, watching you in your white jeans and red polo shirt helping kids at the Little 500 Go-Cart Track-your first summer job... you were so cool, unflappable. I used to like to try and see if I could make you mad, because it seemed inconceivable that anybody could be that low-key, that slow to anger. I remember you liked Ataris, soccer and model airplanes. But some of the best memories I have are of you as an adult seeing the way you treat your wife, how in love you still are even after these 20 years, it gives me renewed faith in relationships. To see how you've become such a devout man of God, how strongly you hold your beliefs, but mostly it's your enigmatic character and economy of speech that are the things I think most of when I look back.

This one's for you Doug...


And for Laura. You were kind of a bonus, a treat, because we didn't meet and become sisters until you were 6. To think of you then, is actually to see your daughter now. She's your mini-me.  Like her, you were always so shy and petite. I remember being much amused when we first met because you'd named your gerbil, Jill. Actually, I probably had more fun with you than any of the others because I was so much older (and had a car). My best memories of you are when you made me face my fears of roller coasters at Disney, dared me and we went on all of them but one in a day, eating churros in Epcot with a maraiachi band in the distance that wouldn't go away, you dragging me to all the Pauly Shore movies, us laughing at our rented copy of Dumb and Dumber until we literally fell off the bed! Picking you up from school on every other Friday stopping and ruining our dinner by having a snack at McDonalds on the way home, Saturday nights at Fun World, etc. Mostly though when I see you, the word grace is what immediately comes to mind, it's in everything you do, the way you raise your kids, the kindness that you exhibit to everyone you meet, the effortless way you seem to deflect life's slings and arrows. I'm so glad that God brought you into my life.

This one's for you Laura...

It's sad that so often we wait until funerals to tell people what we think of them, it isn't until death parts us that we realize how dear our brothers and sisters' and our memories of them really are.

So I thought I'd tell you today...that I think of you, that I cherish the memories, how thankful I am that you're part of my life.