linnéa

By way of explanation:

(This entry is ultimately about being an artist. I dug it up from my journal and dusted it off for 'you'... whoever you may be. Perhaps all artists ask themselves who or what they are and why in the world they feel compelled to persist; perhaps my thoughts on the topic are in no way original. Even so, it seems worthwhile to issue a kind of testimonial, an epistle of open-eyed encouragement, frank but hopeful.
Here goes.)

This is the first day of a new year and it is raining. Seedpods drape from wet branches like hands dripping from their fingertips, and the rain falls straight down. No wind, just the nod of leaves splashed.

My head aches; the absorbent light and almost silent rain are better than Tylenol. Seen over the rim of a tea mug, the world seems kinder, and eventually the knot in my skull will relax like the drenched tulips have, bending low and graceful to the earth under the incessant blessing of rain.

I too begin to feel that way, under the gentle shock of one by one all over blessing, greening the soul, wetting the heart and loosening roots still clenched against winter. What a sweet and complex tang there is to the rain, how it searches its way to the furthest crevasse, molecule by deliberate molecule. And I have stood under it a long time.

Last night we celebrated: pushed tables together, snapped Polaroids off-center, occupied an entire row in the movie theater, sang in harmony in public places and afterward gathered in the St. Elizabeth Cathedral where my friend Elizabeth (the as-yet to be beautified, 26 year old, saint) had arranged candles and set a table for sushi. We stayed up till my birth-hour and my newest year of life began. All those faces seated around the white tablecloth were friends, gifts of this newest year: Donna, Cat, Julie, Elizabeth, Rebecca and even Sandie. In the vast sanctuary our voices doubled themselves in echo, we wore layers against the chill of a reluctant spring. Panels of stained glass swept up to the dim ceiling, where majestic arches lost themselves in the dark. Cracked cherubim nestled in corners, peering down at our merry circle of candlelight. Breaths of night air blew from small gaps in the stained glass: from the leaden seam of St. Elizabeth’s midnight robe, and the right toe of St. Mary’s jeweled slipper. We drank wine from water glasses, wearing our hats.

Our water-which-was-wine warmed us, and soon we were dancing round the table, shouting; I suspect the cherubs wanted to join in.


For now I live in Cincinnati and it will not be permanent.
Here I wake early and turn my key in the grumpy lock of the cathedral's back door; twice my height, it still swings extravagantly open though my touch is always light and sleepy. Stepping in, the light does not change. Sanctuaries are always soft with limnal shades of uncertain day, pre-dawn, or the resonate glow of dusk. The antechambers always seem somehow expectant, but I pass through their smallest door and walk a long tunnel whose floor sighs before turning the corner to my studio. Cool it always is, and quiet. My room was almost too large, windows are wide and look at the courtyard where rowdy grass and stately maples kept indifferent company.

Living in this slump-shouldered neighborhood, crowned - unexpectedly - with spires of a stately cathedral, has been a kind and disquieting experience. Vineyard Central is not what you think. It is not a church, but a cluster of large hearted, carefully lived lives, pocketed in the center of Cincinnati Ohio. This is a steady community, not especially spectacular but one that has been built gradually and well. All of its members live within blocks of each other's doorstep, almost all within sight of St. Elizabeth's double bell towers.

Now an intrepid seedling grows where the bells once swung. Skateboarders frequent the flagstone stoop. Inside, spectacular panels of stained glass swing their dappled lights across a sanctuary stripped of pews and peopled mostly by statuary. I work in the back, in a former Sunday-school classroom. I live with friends, sleeping in a small white room, higher then wide, and only five blocks away.

Sitting in front of an unfinished drawing, I pause, and get to thinking of all the places I have been, things I have seen. There are spells of charmed stillness in every life, some last longer then others; there are even moments of dead calm. I am familiar with this elasticity of wind and direction, sometimes adrift. But I have roamed far already; the sole of my foot has felt many continents. I know this. Even so, anxiety tugs and tempts me to dive into the vague suspicions of unrealized hopes. Restlessness is not easily lost and I realize that though life has been abundant, in many ways I am without. I am without so many of the obvious indications of success dictated by our culture and times. I am without many possessions, without reliable income, without emergency hedge funds, without decent insurance or a concrete game plan; and I am also without a husband. I do not qualify as an upwardly mobile, model citizen of my capitalistic nation; or even the church, who views my gender as though lost if she never finds a wedding chapel along the way. I am without; outside the secure norm; fatally different. This thing that I am, this 'artist's life' has been and continues to be erroneously romanticized, and, too late, I discover its blunt realities. In short, I feel vaguely misled.

Even so, I fundamentally comprehend that it is irrational to expect normalcy from my life when just about all of my day-to-day desires contradict it. Mercifully, though gradually, I have come to understand what it is that actually DO manage to make; it is a product that has no known value, its manufacture is difficult and its recipe is everyday changing. It is elusive but indispensable, there are no true experts in its manufacture, and most who manage to are reluctant to name it. I, too, am sheepish in announcing this perplexing thing that I sometimes produce; it just sounds so hopelessly sincere to say it. But pressed to the point I will whisperingly admit: "I aim for transcendence."

That, embarrassing though it may be, is exactly what artists do; make beautiful, startling things that are typical, extraordinary magic. We pry our fingers into the belly of heaven and spill a little of the celestial onto the ordinary. Doing this, some of us find ourselves shouting the truth when no one else will, learning the prophet's strange language, or crowning the overlooked with lingering attention. We see heaven shining through the cracks and its brightness can drive us mad ... or drive us to paint, write, and compose...


Unfortunately there is no health plan or pay role for that. No one underwrites the perpetual appreciator whose heart physically aches when the sun tangles itself in Prague’s spires, trapped by telephone wire and laundry lines, nor is there compensation for the one who sits hours in a grove of hunchbacked trees as ripe pears summersault down the streets of the sepia city below, spread like a panoramic postcard.

And so, I would like to make peace, write a charter and end this inner war, this crossfire of contradicting expectation. It is no longer enough to simply be different, to be exceptional for its own sake. These qualities exact a price and I almost helplessly paid it a long time ago, back when I couldn't possibly know any better. I suspect that is how most destinies are shaped: at one half blind moment making what feels as though it were a weightless decision and only miles later, turning to pinpoint it in the distance, faint and shimmering with all that intervening experience. Perhaps this is the only way to make any progress at all: helplessly, gripping the Hand of God like a child in the land of Giants, or, in simple words... in the Land of Day In and Out.

Turning back to my drawing, the bravest and only thing to do ... is make another mark.