When a curtain that is a door moves with the trade winds blowing through the windows, I think it is a small person hurrying from one place of hiding to the next. I live among ghosts. People come and go, paddles and hands in the water and out again. A shadow in the sun, here they were.

Oh, the things I consider. I make a list:

hell and high water, and I choose neither; unless the water is pretty
dogs
the strength of character and tough feet
big dipper
frangipani caterpillars
Einstein's Dreams, always, by Alan Lightman; especially the chapter about houses on stilts on mountains
that odd feeling after climbing up high and resting, and looking out, over, below; and wanting to jump because flight seems incredibly possible
likewise, the need to keep swimming once one has left shore
likewise, paddling into the wind into open sea, and never wanting to look back to land
self made cancer

I remember both of my children
(and I wonder if I did the same
when I was small)
trying to grasp the water that poured from the faucet in their bath,
their little hands closing
making fists
over and over.

They failed, and I am certain I did, too.

I bet you, also.

Life gets in the way sometimes, and so the charcoal pencils get left behind. Most recently, all the pencils are wrapped up in boxes labeled with the names of their stuff inside and sent away to some foreign room or left prisoner in the dark of a space that was trying to finally breathe again.

I must be doing some things correctly, I said to a hiding sun disappearing behind magic mountain islands.

Painting walls makes people smile, and so I find myself on St. John, USVI, making walls smile with swimmy things. I win today, as I am in a beautiful place and I am making things.

Sugar ants have found their way into the keys of my laptop. My children and I introduce sand to the sheets on the bed that we are sharing. We see fish through the water, and then we are fish in the water.

I lighten the load. Keeping nothing, as usual, I walk away from everything to gain more. My bags returning will be less heavy than when we started.

Painting walls for others is an incredibly different process than seeking a goal with charcoal, than finding an answer or finding the right explanation through oil paint. Painting walls is fast and silly, and in the end I find myself enjoying the hurried work of it. The puzzle of color and shape and form is always there, no matter the content.
 

Almost a week has passed since the return from Switzerland, and already the visit seems twenty years behind me. I have not yet unpacked the drawings from their airplane home; the box looks like it fell off a baggage cart and was run over on the tarmac by numerous vehicles. Perhaps tomorrow I will find the time to release them from their rolled up misery.

The drawings are not what is important regarding my residency in Trelex, but instead the practice of making them. The wishes that came home with me have a great deal to do with the maintenance of making, and the recovery of purpose.

If my work is about keeping, then it is also about the effort of keeping making.

Restlessness can be a tangible anger.
I would choose to throw myself down mountains, over many other options, to keep that animal quiet.

work
husband, children.

  

people, house.

little house

with big plans

 

They come, pretending the rain is not here. The rain hits the roof, and when you close the door, that is the sound you listen to.

I am a bird and these are my feathers

(they come to the windows now).

I am a small person. 

morning

From yesterday.

later nighttime

six crows, all done, still on the board. More importantly, Little Owl calls out, 11:02 pm, twice. Wish working to do.

nighttime

A few things I consider:

     the fortune, from a fortune cookie, and why it is taped to the refrigerator
     a secret written on a scrap of paper and hidden in a rock wall
     pennies, sunk and making copper bottoms of our fountain pools
     dandelions
     stars
     while stopping at rest stops or truck stops, how much money I have given to the
                  scales which provide your true weight accompanied with a fortune
     Euler
     crossed fingers
     the difference between plans and wishes
     the difference between wishes and dreams
     whether the difference is something worth considering
     curses
     escape velocity
     snowflakes
     the emotions of broken umbrellas, or how dead umbrellas affect us
     the ESA's Rosetta project
     stars again
     my little pine cone song, and therefore, little pine cones.

     
     
     

    







I ask Min to throw the wishes out the window. She is busy, and I interrupt her day. I see her smiling when she throws, so maybe my asking is not so much an intrusion; I can only hope. I do not ask her if she likes to throw wishes out the window.

They fall. I throw them over my daughter, also. She spreads her arms wide and stands smiling. I see she likes the feeling of these light things, hiding secrets from her, falling near her. She calls it magical. She asks me to throw them again and again and again.

Sunday, she was in the playhouse with me while I threw the wish objects on the shelves. She immediately ran to a pile of them and touched them all, trying to understand what they were hiding. She stomped on the ones on the ground. Surprised at her destruction, I asked why. She said, quite honestly and plainly, that there is something inside, and she needs to find out what.

I walk under the full moon. I see Min looking for the moon, too. The clouds want to hide it from us, but we have seen it already. The big house gathers us. I feel like a wish discarded, and then taken back, again and again and again.

Six Crows: A Fable, by children's author Leo Lionni (1910-1999), is the basis of the drawing six crows. It is a story in which the settlement of an argument is reached through compromise. A farmer is irritated by six noisy crows who steal from his wheat farm, and so he builds a scarecrow. In retaliation, the crows build a frightening kite bird to scare the farmer. The farmer builds an even more harrowing scarecrow, and the birds reciprocate with an even bigger, more horrible kite. The two parties suffer; the crows go hungry as the farmer hides in his house, shutters locked, neglecting his fields.

With the intervention of the wise owl, eventually the crows and the farmer reach an understanding gained through civil discourse, casting aside their violent or aggressive tactics.

six crows, in progress

 afternoon

morning

I cannot keep, I told her. She had asked. and so I answered. She asked me to talk about keeping.

The answer took days. I could not find the words to answer at the time of the question. I sat on the floor, dumb.

Finally, I can answer. I cannot keep. I cannot keep anything. I cannot keep the time from passing, and so everything within that broad realm slips through my fingers. Like water. I can keep something just as I can keep water cupped in my hands; the water eventually just slips through my fingers. I cannot keep my children small and wide eyed and new and the things that make a three year old different than a twelve year old. I cannot keep home. I find bits and pieces, and then home morphs, twists, moves. I get taken away, or the actual structure breaks. I cannot find a home that fits. I cannot keep from growing older, just like my children. My eyesight worsens, my time disappears.

I cannot keep. Objects can be kept, but for how long? These things are separate; they house themselves. They don't care. Clothes rot, glass breaks. Stability of the object is just temporary comfort. That goes away, too.

I asked her, can you keep anything?

She was quiet for a small time, and then said, I guess I can just keep my breath.

I said,

No, you cannot.

You cannot keep your breath. That is why you take another, and another, and another. You cannot keep your own breath. You cannot keep anything.

I try, I said. I try, because that is how we live. I try to keep, because that is what we do. I cannot keep, and so I make pictures.

I gather treasure, sew it up, hold on to the energy as long as I can. I am happy it is not mine. Simultaneously, a profound longing exists because it is not mine to control or ingest. It is not mine to manipulate or maintain. Although balance cannot be attained, it is perpetually sought. Rocks falling, thoughts escaping, ideas vanishing, houses waiting, all become parts of a language describing the inability to keep a breath.

nighttime

 

midday
 

Min Kim and I coax the birds to come to our windows. No luck yet. I think our seeds are too big. The better bag of seed was 6 Fr, and the bag I bought was only 2. Guess I should have been a bigtimer.

morning

The stationmaster's house, coming along:

This drawing is doing its good job. I am learning from my sketch what my objects need to be.