A success never realized, a brilliance never polished, a passion never peaked; are these the motivations for a ghost?
Early last week, I wrote a post about a ghost (and now I write like Dr. Seuss). The ghost was the host of tired woman's roast; for none have left me to ponder my woes. My son thinks I'm crazy, my colleagues fear lazy, my daughter immune, my friend's son quite hazy. Many long nights have I much tossed and turned, to think of the reason they so dryly spurn, belief in my senses; they laugh rear my stern.
Seriously, I do not believe in ghosts, but my experience last week was palpable. I realize that the conversations of others implant ideas which are then more easily realized, but, I have never been influenced in that direction.
I have spent the last few days wondering not only, what did I feel and why, but also why did I write about it so rapidly? I wrote because what I felt was real and because I did not want to wriggle out of facing the sensation; no back-pedaling in the light of day nonsense.
I went to the studio the next day and went into the other rooms, adjacent to my studio, to tell the ghost that it need not worry, that the rooms were to be a place to honor and remember history, therefore it would become the perfect place for a ghost to reside in peace; that was weird. Speaking to myself is not an uncommon thing for me to do, it helps me think ideas through because it engages more than one sense, and more than one area of the brain; talking to the air, that was weird.
It was the air, of course. In considering why, all of a sudden, I should feel something ghostly, it did not take too long to determine, that the ghost I was sensing, was myself. I have been in the building since I was five years old; fifty years. Parts of me are certainly ghosts in that structure. In the archives are old white Victorian dresses worn for graduation, not unlike the dress I wore to my own graduation; my daughter also wore it, to hers. The dress is still in my closet upstairs. It has ghostly memories of a tragically awkward girl in a costume remarkably unlike her, in every possible way. I even wore it to a charity cotillion to honor a debutante; absurd. A flying rhinoceros would be more logical, and likely more attractive.
It was in that place that I learned art as well. Last year, I spent time with a teacher I had not seen in over thirty years, she was important to me at a terrible time of my life. It was wonderful to see her; she is as special as I had remembered her to be. Next week I am having dinner with the teacher who taught me to paint and to etch. The history of the place and of myself is intertwined.
As I re-enter the world of art, I must ask: "Am I up to the task? Am I just a ghost of myself?" It is a terrible question and one I must answer in the next couple of months. As I paint, day after day and eventually face the etching press on which I learned my trade, I must find out: Did I kill the skill or does it love me still?
The work I did this week, have silenced any ghosts in my mind. I am alive and can get to the place I once knew with my work; we are in stride and I am so calm and happy to be in the presence of the muse, whom I feared had become a wraith. There are no ghosts in my studio, nor anywhere else in my life.
