Lessons in Letting Go, Non-Fiction

It’s Monday, and today is my Sunday, meaning--I’m taking a day off, a day to rest. Yesterday I literally dropped onto a couch with a beer, pizza, and chocolate ice cream and watched a couple of movies. It had been a long hard week. By yesterday evening I had nothing left to be anything other than a carb ingesting, movie watching couch blob. I had met my goal, the deed was done, and I was spent. I had packed up and moved everything out of my studio other than the paintings on the walls--they can stay up for the moment. All my supplies, easels, bricks, bird sculptures, papers, office stuff, tables, chairs, lights, tools, plants, and so on, and on, and on . . . are now crammed into the garage and any space that made sense for it in the house.

About a month ago I got the news that changes were in the air for the large lovely loft space in which I have had my studio for the past 5 years. A week ago I received the final word . . . the changes required re-allocation of space and I needed be out by the first of the new year. I looked at the calendar and decided I didn’t want to wait and be packing up in-between the Solstice, Christmas and the New Year. I’d never want to leave, and a week or so wasn’t going to alter that reality. So, I pushed hard in the last week and with the threat of snow yesterday, pushed harder still, and this morning--I’m done moving everything but the paintings . . .

How do I feel about it? I don’t feel much of anything right at the moment except fatigue. Although no studio space is perfect, this came close. I have enjoyed several years of painting, and hanging my work on the walls of this marvelous old warehouse with big timbers and extraordinarily high ceilings. I’ve had years of working there and sharing this space with others. Now this chapter is over and it doesn’t seem ironic at all that it’s coming at the end of this year . . . Only one more thing falling out of my hands, one more change in an incredibly long list of changes that have come to pass in the past 12 months.

This year has been like a book in my life titled, Lessons in Letting Go, non-fiction, a major work of great magnitude. The cover is an explosive crack on the ice that shattered my wrist, and the back cover is a giant-sized gong announcing the end of my connection to my studio/gallery space . . . the end of an era. All the chapters in between are stories of the friends, the work, partnerships, dreams, opportunities, and pets that have gone away . . . variations on a theme. All year long the same story of releasing that which I held close--over and over, same story in differing tones and shades of color.

At the end of this year I stand like a scarecrow in a field in late autumn. The field has yielded and the harvesters have come, and after them, the gleaners. Now the winds are howling, dry grasses are rustling and scavengers are eagerly gathering up whatever seeds they can find. Mice and rats below, birds from above pecking at what little sustenance is left. A scraggly crow is perched on my shoulder and even the straw inside my shirt is letting loose into the cold, bracing winds heralding the season of dormancy. Winter is setting in.

I know that deep in the heart of winter lie the seeds of new growth. I know all the seasons have purpose, and work together in harmony for a high-functioning eco-system. I know all these things and am confident that at some point in the days to come I will enter spring and new shoots will sprout from the dormant, hard, unyielding earth. I know all this, and at this very moment I am hanging limp on my frame, black button eyes staring into the back cover of my very real book now closed. Circling my straw-stuffed head the wind is bringing the resounding gong reverberating through the air, flipping the pages of my book . . . The finalities of so many things I held dear. The year began with a break and it’s ending it with one as well. 2010 lies waiting on the shelf, completely unknown and blank.

Letting go . . . What this artist has been learning in 2009 . . .