One of my goals for 2015 is to spend more time writing. Therefore I started the 52 Weeks Project, a project in which I post one short piece I have recently written every Wednesday in 2015. The above photo was taken at the Georgia O’Keefe Museum in Santa Fe, NM.
Sometimes, all of the time, I avoid writing. I think, “I have nothing to say.” I get up and make myself a cup of tea; I offer to help my husband hang the light fixture. Eventually, I sit back down and wonder if anything will ever come of a woman sitting at her kitchen table typing away at her keyboard.
Of course it will.
I think of the times as a teenager when I would stumble home late, chew on a snack while standing in the refrigerator light, wander upstairs into my dark bedroom and type away for hours in the glow of my computer. At 16 the words came tumbling out of me, bent and bruised and confused. They were my best friends. Where people fell short, the writing never faltered. It was always there, begging to be written; it was always necessary to my existence, this thing that gave comfort and nourishment to my soul.
Sometimes I would paint, borrowing supplies and brushes from my mother’s old stash. It was never a question of whether or not I could create something from acrylic or oil, but simply a matter of doing it. Like a child who plays or dances or draws just because she can, I made things with my hands without comparing, without wondering what would come of the final product.
Tonight I painted. Chunky white acrylic spread from my brush on to the canvas and I smeared my finger into the paint, blending. Light blue & grey, a dab of ochre.
Sometimes I wonder if anything will ever come of a woman smearing her hands on canvas.
Of course it will.
