A Place of One's Own

Now is the season of relocation.  Kids are coming and going from summer jobs, into and out of dorms, into college and back home again: "out of the frying pan and into the fire" (yes saw a bit of The Hobbit over the weekend).  While all of this hub-bub is going on and I watch large piles of childhood debris walk through my house while I wear a winsome look, I am also gleefully plotting.

I have a space of my own, in the very near future.  No, not theirs, and it is not mine permanently, but for six months I will have a glorious empty space in which to work and it is not in my house!  I am enthusiastically clapping and jumping up and down (actually I am sitting and icing my sore leg, but that's life at 55).

For decades I have fudged letting my mind go.  I have not worked in a space in my mind nor in my person, where time has vanished.  I always have obligations in my house, and loving people who just have to tell me something; this is great, and not so very great. In order to really work, I have to leave all of that behind, way behind.  I have been working in a printmaking studio lately, a little bit, all by myself.  It has taken me an hour or so each time to get into the mindset where I no longer fidget, pace, tidy or check the time. I have to work out all my domestication and let the feral emerge; only then can I begin to work, to create, to enjoy and live in the process, it is only there that creativity functions.

When I move into my borrowed space, I will take an easel, paint, brushes, music, a chair and a coffee maker; then I will leave my "reality" and live.  I can hardly wait!  Oh boy, oh boy, oh boy!