Abstract Reality

What if what I see isn't there?

I pour myself into colors, thick texture, unnamed forms lightly tempered by lines. 

I am not very interested in representing any particular reality. 

Instead I am lured by splashes of color, mysterious journeys to places in my head and heart that I have absolutely no idea how to get to. Or how I got there once I arrive. 

I sometimes wonder why I am painting such uncertainty.  

Am I wasting perfectly good paints and paper with no guarantee? 

That's about as easy to answer as Am I wasting love? 

All that risk and we still dive deep.

While I was painting today I had an urge to travel to Paris just so I could shop at the Sennlier Art Store. 

The clerks wear white coats and the old wood floors creak when you walk on them. 

You can gaze outside the large windows to the Seine across the street. 

I would absolutely travel 7 hours and a 40 minute Metro ride to pull out drawers of pastels and oil bars in every conceivable color and size. 

Walk up the spiral staircase and caress reams of paper. 

Close my eyes and inhale rapture.

Then sit at a cafe with my Sennlier bag and smile at passersby. 

In case you are wondering why I am writing in poetry and not prose. 

Constructing paragraphs feels too tedious. 

I want to do more with less. 

Which is strange because I love meandering through dense forests of words threading together sentences but something inside me stops short these days.

If I had to guess I would say I lost my threshold for enormity when my mom died. 

My sense of time has been altered. There just isn't as much of it.

I suppose I am still reeling from the fact you never see someone again.

I wonder how to hold onto her and let her go. 

Where does her essence reside? That much debated place I have no real opinion about?  

It is all so abstract. The only concrete thing is the wall I am up against. 

Ticking clocks. Blank paper waiting for me to commit.

Swells of color receding and rising like the ocean tides. 

Each painting is a prayer. I whisper to her make this right.

She would shake her head and tell me to do what I am meant to do.

Go to Paris and buy pastels. Or China Camp. Or Greece. 

Wherever. 

Whatever it takes.

Paint abstracts, old buildings, nudes, landscapes. 

As long as you are my daughter the artist.

Living Without You

You never told me how to live without you. Or how sadness lingers. 

I thought I would be so relieved the missing you wouldn't matter. 

No words came after the stroke. I tried be inside your head. 

We gazed into each other's eyes. 

Sometimes we surrendered to silence.

I kept telling myself you had already left me, it wasn't the whole you anymore so when you died I would have less to mourn. 

I am irritable these days. If you think I didn't suffer fools gladly before you should see me now. 

I stare out in space and try to make things matter. 

I see endings. Slippery slopes and edges. Screeching halts.  

I almost drove to your facility today so I could feel myself closer to you. 

I wanted to walk to your room and stop short of entering. In my mind I could see the faces of the nurses looking at me with concern so I decided against it. 

Instead I put the old basement window on my easel. I sobbed while applying color on glass, rubbing oil bar in my eyes. 

I have wanted to write about you with my foggy brain. I thought it would take longer. 

Maybe I should wait but today I nearly went to see you at your nursing home even though you died.

There are healthier responses I am sure but I don't seem too interested in them.

And I have no desire to "talk" to "someone".

Can you imagine that conversation? 

What if I told the truth?  How we were as mother and daughter?

How colors become vibrant and muted at the same time?

The truth looks different in the rearview mirror. 

All that aside - and there is a lot to put aside - I feel badly.

I became cold when the pain was too much. I sidestepped you, overlooked you. 

Not because I wanted to but the hurt was more than I could manage. 

I didn't like being angry but I was. 

I wanted to be more forgiving. More prone to higher ground.  

Your shortcomings as a mother made me think of mine and if my children would be able to forgive me. 

Honestly I could see why they might not.

After all, I wasn't terribly forthcoming with compassion until you had your stroke. 

By then it was too late for us to talk about it. And now talking feels very disposable and something I can do without. 

Try telling that to people who cannot see the lines I draw in the sand. 

I wonder if you would be happy to know nothing feels the same without you. 

That I often think of you as an electric and beautiful young woman, a mother with her three babies, an accomplished nurse, artist, friend to many, and beloved grandmother. 

In our last days together I want to believe you knew I saw you as someone other than my mother.

As I laid next to you our sadness faded and love swelled. 

Maybe I am spinning my own tales but you might have known you were leaving and wanted us to have that.

You were a mother until the end.

Making sure I had more of you to hold. 

So perhaps you did try to tell me how to live without you.