Returning from Europe: Nice airport, France. July 7, 2024
It’s just before takeoff, we are all seated on the plane as it taxis down the runway. My time in Antibes France has been magical, full of wonders and frustrations and liberations and many, many eye opening reminders.
The world is far more wild and open than what the hard shell around me in my daily life would allow me to believe. There is such an agenda and control over how we feel and live in the communities and areas I have grown up and lived in. “You may say this, but not that” “you may love this not that” “you may look like this not that” “you may feel this not that” “you may create this not that” “you may believe this not that” “you may eat this not that” and it’s all performed in varying degrees of subtle and unsubtle aggression. As a child, as I’ve written before, it was religion (Christianity) that laid down many of these subjugations, the church and its community enforcing them, now as an adult it is the conservative and socially difficult area we live in, in America.
Reminders, reminders, reminders…
I must live with not only my death in mind but also with my spirit and the world in mind.
There is so much to see and experience, there is so much complexity and difference to people, people all over the world. Animals, landscapes, buildings, thoughts, informations, truths, loves.
Sitting in a tiny living space in a rough town in the US with a generalized view of its views, and a limited and skewed amount of information on its limited views and skewed information about me can feel like I “know” but I do not “know”. Much of what angers me is informed in some way or another by the chaff of television, social media, news and other such industries who profit off of attention and emotional engagement. If I am on their website, if their program is playing and I am upset…they are making money. How could I ever truly trust sources with such tactics?
This life of mine as I wrote about in “Badgers and Bravery” is constantly informed and guided by fear because the industry and control methods of the social-political/ religious norms that I’ve always been subject to are fear mongering. It keeps me clinging to what I think I know because I am too scared to look away and question. So many times, I don’t even realize it!
I operate under so much fear….I aim to use whatever magic and lessons I have picked up along my travels to operate against this fear. As an artist, as a queer and someone now with a lifelong medical concern, I must shed as much fear as possible if I am to live well at all.
If fear has grown around me like a hard shell, then…it is a good thing that I am a rat and have the teeth to nibble! Chewing away at it from the inside to let that light in, the two lights, the sun and moon. (I heard this rat tale and am alluding too it here)
I have been an animal of “no” an animal of “wait” all caution and hesitation. who knows what’s left, but there truly will be no one to “give” me peace, “give” me better or certainly “give” me easier…to my benefit. I can be offered convenience and numbing for many different prices and at times I may choose to take those, but I should be aware of those choices and not believe they are my only options, as fear often makes it seem.
This fear has often informed my creativity in the most direct ways, It is not an “ I am afraid to say this, so I choose to say something easier or more popular” it is quite frankly. “I have had many ideas throughout the days, but now here I am at my table with my watercolors, and I am in pain, frustrated and full of fear, so what I will produce here, is limited and not full, not in bloom”…the story is stunted.
As I mulled about Antibes and Edinburgh I began to think of my creative process, I give so little true time to the animals. They appear as flashes here and there. For much of my art and representation this is fine. A portrait. But there is more here than simply observing and illustrating. Or rather, there is more to be explained within the illustration. How do I embody the story? What is the story? It isn’t a story easy for my mind to tell, it’s not direct, linear or always of the same pacing theme or aesthetic. The story must move between these still images and images that walk a “tale” to its viewer. A badger wearing a ruff, painted in blue shadow and yellow light with symbols painted around him is a lovely thing, however, there are also moments that convey a more immediate narrative, things of the everyday, that must be translated in a way that clearly convey those things. If the animals themselves are not simply static images and symbology systems in my mind and they move about as visible, speaking and action taking beings, then that must also be shown. It must be shown that these animals are also “I” the self as it were, and that some moments, though they are taken from my direct physical living, are worth illustrating through this world as it walks the story, both mine and the animals in directions that can further open and make connections.
A lesson I am learning in these travels is that there is no “this” or “that” to a lot of things I assumed there was. The crystalline of black and white and “is” and “is not”….diminishes. It is better to put pen to paper and write many, many things about these animals and myself, better to put paintbrush and pencil to paper and canvas for as many attempts as I can and in as many directions as I can….because without walking many paths, I may never meet these other selves, these other animals…I may never spend days with them on a boat, or in their home, among the flowers of a garden or by the pools, in the deep dark forests or the pearly silent caves. Who knows what is out there in those paths if there is no attempt to walk them? Sitting from a frozen vantage point hoping to see what I can as it passes by is an act of fear.
If fear keeps me from walking my paths, then it is the greatest threat to both the animals, myself my creations and those who love and support me.
I may not have concrete yes or no answers, I may not have all the pieces of the puzzle, but I need to not assume, let go of that control and instead simply go looking.
I do not know “what” I want my work or life to be
And that’s ok
If I go after them both with joy and give joy.
I cannot sit stationary, overthinking and over planning from the armory of fear. Making countless selections against an enemy that will one day win….something that everything that draws breath or blooms or is created eventually will fall too. It will happen and I don’t know when, but I do know it will and that time is short for us all. So what to do with all those things I love? Sit with them and weep that I cannot hold them forever? Or embody them with great story and life and love, until one day I miss a step and fall into the arms of the veiled wolf.
I would like to choose that.
To go forward as storied animals, and not as one who simply fears the leaving of it all.
Many hours have passed since I first started writing this from Nice, we are now in Paris in a hotel room we were given, my husband gently snoors next to me in bed as I finish this writing. Soon I will wake him up for dinner downstairs using the meal vouchers we were given.
I do belive even a year ago, the situation of having all friends and family make it out of a foreign country, the first foreign country I’ve ever visited and then being told we could not leave…for two more days because there were no flights and ours had cancelled….would have set me on cycle of fear and panic that would have caused fights and tears and extreme upset. After the first few moments of adrenaline, we big everyone good bye, frustrated and tired found our way to the airline agents. Got our hotel and meal vouchers….and tomorow? We’re going to the Louvre. That is an active fight long sign against fear for me.
I hope that some animal, or plant, or art piece or journey may soon inspire you to fight your fear as best you can. My love to you, my words from behind yellow teeth.
Brotherrat: Stranded in Paris, July 7, 2024 hotel near Charles de Gaulle Airport 6:23 pm.
