“Isn’t it a wunnerfula……”

I hum while I struggle with sentences that fight back, words that made sense then but don’t now, and everything that seemed fine months ago rattling emptily now on the screen in front of me. Sometimes my head fills with silence and a grey fog. All that falls out of my fingers then is a big blank nothing. But it’s all worth it.

I often remember my grandmother telling me that she had thought that art was more important than convention. Let the dishes and the laundry go, she indicated. Do your art. That’s all you will have. Don’t waste your talent. She had learned this lesson the hard way.

So for many years I followed her words. Art was all. The kids were clean only because they played in the bathtub, and the dishes never got done. The only thing that saved my second marriage was getting a housekeeper. I’d still have one if I were rich enough, actually. Laundry never got done either. Who cared. If he latest piece made it into the gallery on time, that was all that mattered. Commissions were finished on time, new work was designed and sent out, and even the horrid layout and paste up jobs got done and on time. But the dust balls played bocce in the sunlight by the back door, and the bacterium did the rumba in last weeks soapy water.

Now I try for balance. The dishes are clean, the dust balls can be seen only occasionally out of the corner of my eye, and laundry was always done yesterday. I miss drawing, but I don’t miss the politics and games of the art world. I delight in pushing recalcitrant words here and there on the clean white space in front of me while ignoring my rejection slips.

I was a gifted artist. Very gifted when dealing with large spaces and brilliant colors. I never got rejection slips and sold all that I painted. I’m not a natural writer, but I often forget that I wasn’t naturally a powerful painter when I started all this. I parlayed a little talent, lots of education and training into a genuine ability to deal with space, both positive and negative, and masses of color. Now I have to do the same thing with the written word.

It’s a very exciting trip.