Presence

Tonight is a night to paint in silence.

No series on in the background. No audio books or podcasts. No playlists to pull me through the time.

It’s time to just sit within the ambient sounds of the heater, the exhaust fan in the bathroom, and a ticking clock, as I paint a patchwork pattern in acrylics onto a canvas skirt for a 1/6 scale doll.

It’s not that I need to be alone with my thoughts. There’s no thoughts going through my head to spend time with…except some unspoken whisper that I will write about this later…it’s that I need to simply let my mind grow quiet for a while.

Color by color I create shapes on this small skirt.

It’s instinctual.

There’s no set plan save some lines I put down with pencil first. I simply choose a color, paint the lines of a few shapes, color them in, and then move onto the next color.

It’s an educated instinct, not a primal impulse sent through my cerebellum and basal ganglia. It comes from past intense study and focus.

I’ve worked with colors and shapes my whole life. I’ve created patchwork quilts with these hands. I’ve embroidered endless patterns. For years I’ve walked through fabric stores, surrounded by patterns and designs, running my fingers over cloth and checking drape.

So much in my life has changed in the last year. Some by the choices I’ve made, like moving back to America, and some by forces out of control, like the cancer that took my father.

I’ve taken chances and started down paths with vague ideas, and hopes, about the life they’d bring me to.

Vocation

Love

Friendship.

Home.

And in doing so knew that the destinations unclear. Unpromised.

So much effort and hope spent in many directions that I, like anyone, sometimes grows tired and must return to the quiet.

To meditatively do whatever it is that we have spent our life working on doing. To allow that knowledge and experience within us to flow outward. To let the rhythm and motions of who we are bring us back to center.

As the clock ticks on, the heater revs up once more, and the bathroom fan quietly pulls away the last droplets of a hot shower.