What this artist and her fingers are thinking about today . . .

I don’t really have anything to say this morning . . . This artist isn’t thinking about anything at all! This artist is a protoplasmic blob, but let’s see what my fingers have to say. Crazy? Not at all. My conscious mind still feels asleep and thoughts sound like an old vinyl 45 record set on 33 . . . s l o w . . . So, why am I attempting writing this morning? It’s my practice.

I really meant it when I mentioned that I would see what my fingers had to say. My ‘fingers’ represent the physical manifestation of the intersection between years and years of rising early and putting thoughts & experiences, feelings & dreams into words on a page--the embodied practice of rising and writing. After all these years, decades even . . . they, my fingers, have a life of their own. Half somnolent I pick up my mac, open up to the next blank page, and begin to type. All that I am is focused in my fingertips, the conduit between me and the machine. After all these years, they start without me and sometime near the end of my first cup of tea I’m fully awake. Almost there now . . .

I started writing in the morning when my kids were small. I had an excessively exuberant first born with enough energy to power our neighborhood transformer. He broke me into parenting from the very moment of his explosive birth. Wham! New world order in my life. Sometimes I look back and wonder, “What was I thinking?” I didn’t really like kids all that much. I never babysat--there were other ways to earn money for the important things growing up like cigarettes, magazines, and movies . . . and here I was, producing a litter. I can wonder about that now, when I was in the trenches with my troupe there wasn’t any time. Hence, the writing . . .

Since I hadn’t really thought through this whole thing about motherhood I had some major surprises. Number one--they took all my time. Bam! Babies take all your time--Motherhood 101. If there were pre-requisites for this course, I missed them. Between nursing, bathing, nursing, dressing, nursing, playing, nursing, diapering, nursing, cooking, nursing, rocking, nursing . . . you get the picture, right? One prophetic morning while, you guessed it--NURSING, I was rocking my infant son. I had those lovely hormones floating through me, the ones you get as a major perk when when you spend a good many hours of your day in this ancient act for species survival. These hormones mimic nirvana, or at least a good high . . . “Oh, is the world coming to an end . . . OK . . . Are there any more cookies?” In this state of contented bliss I had the great idea of waking before my little bundle exploded into the day, and taking a little slice of time for me. Of course this meant rising at 5 or 5:30 . . . But, in that rocking chair under the hormone spell and all snugged in warm as toast with a sleeping baby, it sounded like a perfect plan.

This plan of rising early, hatched while in hormonal hypnosis that began as a survival for the integrity of self, became a practice that now, decades later, is as natural to me as closing my eyes when I’m tired. Somewhere in all these years some magical transformation has taken place. While I can’t point to when, I can point to what . . . What initially issued from my cortex alone, began to emerge from being. This is the shorthand explanation of why my fingertips can start, ‘without me.’

It sounds illogical, and so what? Lots of things are illogical, just pick up a newspaper on any given day and there’s tons of proof that we don’t exactly function like a coherent, congruent species while the rest of life on the planet looks on in great confusion. In the community where I live a 21 year old recently shot another 20 something 3 times in the chest because the victim wouldn’t get in the trunk of his car at gunpoint. The shooter rationalized his actions saying that he was a hillbilly and they get away with all kinds of things we in the city don’t . . . Wow. Clearly, we’ve got a way to go before we catch up and evolve into our cerebral cortex. Conscious human beings? We’ve got the equipment, now using it is another story, but I digress . . .

My fingertips are like mini-brains that have evolved alongside a practice of rising in the morning and writing. I initially wrote by hand. This was laborious for me. I’m a big motor skill gal, not a fine motor skill detail type. This is probably obvious for anyone who has seen my paintings. And, when I at long last I relaunch my website, they’ll be available to see! IT is NOT my strong suit! Back to painting . . . I use my whole body to paint, meaning that I hover around my canvas like a hunter, a large cat circling her prey. I splash, pour, scrape and growl until it’s complete. There is nothing tidy about my process. Handwriting for me is something that moved like molasses on the back porch in the middle of winter, and furthermore requires the tidy & tiny, and that . . . “Ain’t me babe, no, no, no, it ain’t me babe.”

When I got a mac laptop my whole world changed. I could understand this intuitive machine. I could move around--very important for a huntress, and it was FAST! Lightening fast. At long last my fingers could keep up with my thoughts! This was my new nirvana and suddenly I was thankful for that geeky looking tall and skinny typing teacher I had in high school who was more demanding than god. I learned to type like the wind and now I was soaring. My fingers, my wings, my thoughts the current beneath me.

The introduction of a mechanical counterpart that actually worked for me was key in unleashing a river running through me. The whole rising early, writing process took on a new up-leveling, became a kind of alchemical magic in my life . . . It has been like finding the missing piece that you didn’t even really know wasn’t there until you find it. It was like the first time you meet someone you will love with all your heart . . . It was like coming home when you didn’t even realize you had been homeless.

I have this theory that we can become all we are here to become through any doorway. A little like “All roads lead to, not Rome, but home.” Some roads we choose, other’s choose us and some are just dumb luck of the draw. Does it really matter what it is, as much as what we do with what is? Clearly, I wasn’t prepared for motherhood and I gave it all I had. I did a lot well and some things not so well, but always, always loved them. . . always, always believed in them. Now we get together as friends who have shared a wacky journey. I admire them, care for them and can’t imagine how I could have gotten such an all-encompassing life education without them. When they have heart break, so do I . . . When they have joy I share in that as well. We’re a family. We’re not a poster family for doing it conventionally, we’re just a family doing the best we can. I could never have known while rocking that first little baby for the first time, all that I would have an opportunity to participate in down that road.

I’ll never know who I would have been had I taken another path, and I guess that’s not important. I made the choices I made, and have the feeling that somehow out of all the myriad possibilities life offers, I am on course. Somehow my inner compass has navigated me through this journey, and what’s ahead? Who knows, and maybe it doesn’t matter. Maybe all that really matters is that we stay present in this moment, fully be right where we are with the assurance that right where we are IS the road home.

This is what this artist, and her fingers, are thinking about today . . .