Seeing Clearly: Saturday morning

Saturday, March 29, 2008

Saturday morning

I am sitting in my beloved leather chair that I was (practically) given by my friend Carolyn. It is a beautiful carmel color and sleek/teak in design. It is old and vintage and I just love it. I have a couch that matches. As I look around my living room I see a print from Nathan, paintings from both kids, even a painting done with Annie one day when we were in the studio. The end product of this painting is a little chaotic-wild swirls of color, foggy areas, some tired neutrals among the brilliant corals, but what I treasure most about it is the memory of the process of creating it.

As I recall it (and of course, memory is a reconstruction, so don't hold me to this, Anna), I was making tentative inroads on to this canvas with a small little easel brush, carefully applying some color with great trepidation and doubt, conscious of my accomplished artist daughter's eye on me and feeling terrified and unsure. Suddenly, there she was beside me with a huge brush, scooping blobs of paint from my palette (and in the process destroying the careful order of the colors) and saying, "like this, Mom!---just, well just paint! " and she obliterated my careful attempts in a few passionate strokes.

After I got over my horror, I joined in, and I felt like I had taken off my bra and kicked off my shoes....oh, can painting really feel like this?

I have my new eye now, and in some sense, that is the end of my Melanoma story. I am back to work, looking pretty symmetrical, energy level good, fridge cleaned out (you have no idea), forgotten articles of clothing and books mailed back to visitors, promises to stay in touch to and from the people who appeared during all of this...and yet, I want to say, NO, it is not over. I don't want to go back to making those tentative brushstrokes every day in an attempt to create some picture of my life. I want to continue to smear great blobs of color all over my life, and I want to do it with all of you, laughing all of the way, not giving a damn about what it looks like in the end. I hope that you all will help me do that. Please save me from my fear and my isolation. Don't let me fall back to that. Grab that brush!

The picture is by my ex-husband's little boy, Benny. They were over last night for dinner. Benny and I share an interest in Pudge Rodriguez and art. I wish I could draw more like him. I watched him do this-his concentration, the confidence of his strokes, the movement of his arm, the confident choices of color. I thought, I am an art teacher!!! THANK GOD!!

3 comments:

roy said...: Hi Claudia,
I'm married to one of your classmates so I heard of your difficulties through an email from Rochelle. I don't know if you would remember me but we dated (?) for a short time back in the late sixties. It seems that things are "looking" up for you now that you are cancer free and have your prosthetic eye. Reading some of your blog you seem very upbeat as you make your visual adjustment. It's interesting how we all seem to take our fragile good health for granted. Hopefully this is just a minor speed bump in a long healthy and productive life.

Your friend from the distant past,
Roy from Woodbury; March 29, 2008 at 5:54 PM
annie hagar said...: you know, that's exactly how the beautiful orchid sumi-e painting (posted below) came about. first, you did a careful study. then you manipulated goiters into orchids with a few swoops of your sumi pen.; March 30, 2008 at 5:18 PM
Claudia Hayes Hagar said...: Hi, Anna,
Thanks for that insight! That is just how it happened-isn't art making the most wonderful, terrible, simple and difficult thing there is?:)
love,
Mam; March 30, 2008 at 8:03 PM

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The Journey

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice--
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do--
determined to save
the only life you could save.

© Mary Oliver.

a poem from TRAVELING MERCIES by Annie Lamott

Listen
with the night falling we are saying thank you
we are stopping on the bridge to bow from the railings
we are running out of the glass rooms
with our mouths full of food to look at the sky
and say thank you
we are standing by the water looking out
in different directions

back from a series of hospitals back from a mugging
after funerals we are saying thank you
after the news of the dead
whether or not we knew them we are saying thank you
in a culture up to its chin in shame
living in the stench it has chosen we are saying thank you

over telephones we are saying thank you
in doorways and in the backs of cars and in elevators
remembering wars and the police at the back door
and the beatings on stairs we are saying thank you
in the banks that use us we are saying thank you
with the crooks in office with the rich and fashionable
unchanged we go on saying thank you thank you

with the animals dying around us
our lost feeling we are saying thank you
with the forests falling faster than the minutes
of our lives we are saying thank you
with the words going out like cells of a brain
with the cities growing over us like the earth
we are saying thank you faster and faster
with nobody listening we are saying thank you
we are saying thank you and waving
dark though it is

--w.s. merwin

from Kabir, Indian mystic poet

Friend, hope for the truth while you are alive.

Jump into experience while you are alive!...

What you call "salvation" belongs to the time before death.

If you don't break your ropes while you are alive,

do you think ghosts will do it after?

The idea that the soul will join with the ecstatic

just because the body is rotten--

that is all fantasy.

What is found now is found then.

If you find nothing now, you will simply end up with

an empty apartment in the City of Death.

If you make love with the divine now, in the next life you will have the face of satisfied desire.

Night Letter to theReader by Billy Collins

Night Letter to the Reader

I get up from the tangled bed and go outside,

a bird leaving the nest,

a snail taking a holiday from its shell,

but only to stand on the lawn,

an ordinary insomniac

amid the growth systems of garden and woods.

If I were younger, I might be thinking

about something I heard at a party,

about an unusual car,

or the press of Saturday night,

but as it is, I am simply conscious,

an animal in pajamas,

sensing only the pale humidity

of the night and the slight zephyrs

that stir the tops of the trees.

The dog has followed me out

and stands a little ahead,

her nose lifted as if she were inhaling

the tall white flowers,

visible tonight in the darkened garden,

and there was something else I wanted to tell you,

something about the warm orange light

in the windows of the house,

but now I am wondering if you were even listening

and why I bother to tell you these things

that will never make a difference,

flecks of ash, tiny chips of ice.

but this is what I want to do--

tell you that up in the woods

a few night birds were calling,

the grass was cold and wet on my bare feet,

and that at one point, the moon,

looking like the top of Shakespeare's

famous forehead,

appeared, quite unexpectedly,

illuminating a band of moving clouds.

This poem does what all good art does-it makes my heart fill as I recognize myself in it, and I say, "yes! that is exactly it!" and I realize once again that I need to tell you so many things. I feel inspired. Alive.

There are not enough hours.

a note from Kevin Griffin, author and spritual leader from Shambhala