We moved to Michigan in August, and we have a dozen boxes yet to unpack. Every now and then I make a half-hearted attempt to unpack some, but wind up getting distracted with whatever inane stuff is inside.

Recently, Kid #1 and I were sifting through a box of papers. Not just any papers, these were drawings, sketches, and paintings of mine from time past, some over fourteen years old! Yellowed, crumbling at the edges where acidic tape has eaten into the sides, these trivial works of art represent my growth as a person and an artist.
I've never given them much thought, in fact I have discarded dozens of my works throughout the years. Michael, however, will not allow me to pitch any more art. He feels it is worth much more than the trash bin. So it sits, aging, in an underbed storage bin. So when Kid #1 was leafing through the sheets, I busied myself with organizing screwdrivers.

"Mom!!" Kid yelled, "Who did this drawing? These butterflies?"
"Uh, me. Who else?"
She made a disbelieving tongue-clicking sound and waved the ancient paper in front of me,
"It's so beautiful!" She gushes, "This one butterfly looks like it has all fall colors."
I glance at the drawing in question. Sure enough, it is titled 'Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall'. Four butterflies in various stages of flight, each done in colors of the season- Spring is pastel and light, Winter has gray edges and brown and white accents. I can remember vividly the day that I sketched this, lovingly sharpening my Prismacolor pencils in order to fill in the details better.

That was so long ago that the memories feel like they aren't even mine. I haven't even touched a colored pencil in years, let alone brought beauty like this out of one. What killed that inside of me? What took the art out of my hands, my mind, my soul, and filled the void with angst and frustration?
I used to withdraw into my world of music and art to escape the sorrows of life with my father. I'd lock myself in my room, line up my pencils in a perfect color gradient, turn on the little nail polish-encrusted clock radio by my bed, and draw for hours. I would sketch circles, laying them out in perfect symmetry, disciplining my mind to divide each tiny section of the circle into shards of shape, color, and form. Then I'd fill in each little triangle, each tiny sliver of design, all around the circle. I destroyed most of these after staring at them for a few months, but some of them survived.
I sketched aliens faces, peering out from underbrush with glowing eyes. Butterflies, my sister's feet, desert wrens in our front yard, and more intricate circles took shape under my hand. The art wasn't stellar, but it was good.

So why did I stop? Life came and got it in the way, for one thing. My art took a new direction with my design career, and I learned to put structure to the shapes that I saw in my head. I lost the ability, slowly, to sketch, replacing it with the ability to sculpt. I lost the whirling circle patterns and replaced them with intricate Celtic knot wedding bands- things that our family could sell instead of just things that I could hang on the wall.
I lost the brilliant dance of color in my head, gave away the treasured (and expensive!) Prismacolor set to my little sister, and focused on churning out jewelry for our cases.

Then marriage came along, and with it an introduction to the wonderful world of computers. Kids followed soon after- way too soon after- and my art was lost completely in a world of spit-up and diapers and never-ending bills. I indulged occasionally in something artsy-craftsy: wreaths for my living room wall, flower arrangements to make the house look pretty, window treatments... but the art was always saved for the sculpting table. And even then- more often than not it was within constraints- is it saleable, is it functional, is it doable?
I learned to do a little bit of Photoshop work, and remembered my days of filling in color by hand.
Why, who had to struggle with compass, ruler, protractor, and pencil now? Not when you have mask, shape, copy, paste, transform, flip horizontal!
Why bother carefully outlining a shape with Vert Printemps (the French translations always sounded much more 'arty'), then carefully coloring it in, then going over it once more until the color hazed over, ready for a rubdown with the bottom of my tee-shirt? Not when you have paintbucket!

I buy colored pencils for my kids, but I never just sit still with them and color! There are always so many other things to do- dishes, laundry, bills, this bloody blog, the other bloody blog, yardwork, cooking, Civilization III, and more dishes.

Life has stolen my soul.

Art was my soul's song.

I had that butterfly drawing framed. It hangs in Kid #1's room now, perfect because she is dainty and fragile like a butterfly, and there is a butterfly meaning tied up in her middle name. The framers had to work around the missing patches and masking tape stains, because I never regarded my art enough to preserve it. The huge missing chunk out of the corner serves to remind me of the piece of my spirit that left when I gave away my colors.

I'm going to buy myself another set of colors, as soon as I have the money and I can get to a town that has supplies.

Then, I'm going to pull out the protractor, compass, ruler, pencils, eraser, and paper.
I'm going to draw a huge circle, and it is going to give me my breath back.
I'm going to measure out the center and mark off graduated spaces: one inch, three-quarters of an inch, five eighths... and as I mark these off the years will fall off my shoulders and I'll sit up straight.
I'll begin laying out lines- at hard angles and soft- and my jaw will unclench and maybe the eternal headache will go away.
I'll trace the important lines in marker and erase the dividing lines, and my gray hairs will not show quite so much.
I'll color in the shapes- yellow, spring green, peridot green, leaf green, green, teal, turquoise, blue, violet. I'll use so many gradient colors in between that the rainbow will start to roll off my desk, and I'll stoop to pick them up and maybe find that old nail polish-encrusted clock radio. If I'm lucky enough, it will still be tuned to the oldies station and I'll switch it on and listen to Chantilly Lace and wish that I could have lived in that era. I'll color hard in between the lines, remembering always Mrs. Vandreese telling us to use 'singing colors'... color so hard that the wax in the pencil makes a haze over the top of the green pencil.
Then I'll stoop down and rub, ever so gently, the haze with the bottom of my tee-shirt. The wax will squeak a tiny bit, leave a thin trace on my shirt that will never wash off, but will reveal a vivid, thick layer of color. Color that was put there with a human hand, color that you can dig at with your fingernail.

And when I'm done, I'm going to hang it up on the wall. With proper hardware, soul intact. And then...

I'm going to draw another one.

Labels: art, butterfly, circle, color, compassion, design, drawing, life, motherhood, pencils, Prismacolor, protractor, sad, sculpt, soul, spirit, stolen, work

There is something horrible in our world today. It has been bothering me lately, niggling at the back of my mind, wanting explanation.

Today, I (somewhat) sorted it out. I was dealing with a rather difficult pair of customers, and I tend to sum people up as I'm listening to them. The only word that I could hear in my mind was:

"Arrogant!"

.... which they were. The man had the audacity to think that I would repair, for free, a watch that he had purchased elsewhere, the woman demanded the use of one of our tools that was sitting out of her reach, and together they accounted for my worst customer experience of this week.

I drove home behind a pick-up truck labeling me as an obscenity if I didn't appreciate that particular driver's mode of traveling.

After work, I watched a short newsclip in which an unnamed eyebrowless presidential candidate shot off his mouth about something or other, all the while wearing this grin that made my teeth set on edge.

Later that evening I indulged in my usual guilty pleasure of reading all of the help columns, such as Dear Abby, Annie's Mailbox, and Dear Margo. Something about reading the sob stories of others makes my own pathetic life seem not quite so wretched. One story after another marches across my weary vision, stories of broken marriages, ungrateful children, and unrepentant family members. Not one person is taking blame for an ugly situation, they all want to pin it on others and make them pay for their suffering.

We are living in an age of arrogance. Pride- not the good kind- mocks us from the covers of magazines, brazenly struts across our television and computer screens, and taunts us from every media outlet imaginable. We have come so far from humility that generations of children do not even know what humility is.

People in this day abuse power and laugh over it, steal other peoples' jobs, spouses, and assets and feel no shame, and admit not a single shortcoming or character flaw. To be selfish is good, to be arrogant is normal. How have we allowed society to degrade this way?

I know that arrogance is nothing new. Many evils throughout history have been perpetrated solely from sheer pride. But I really feel that it is becoming epidemic. No one puts misbehaved children in their place anymore, and the children grow up into rebellious monsters. No one takes responsibility for screw-ups anymore, and the liability lawsuit industry costs industrialized nations billions of dollars a year. People allow themselves to have a roving eye- I personally have heard women say that they deserve to cheat on a loving spouse- and the divorce rates soar.

What has happened to us? Is it the shift from religion to humanism? Humanism is a self-centric philosophy, whereas religion tends to be theistic, centering on one or more beings, or others. Humanism is actually, in my opinion, the religion of self, of mankind. How can one project compassion- genuinely- onto another when all one has at heart is the good of himself? Maybe this is not a good theory, for I find arrogance to be almost more prevalent among religious people than anyone else lately. But look at our churches now- rather than preach contrition and absolution, we preach self-esteem and affirmation. We are a people fat on the empty praise of our culture, drunk on the insignificant contributions we have made to our little selfish worlds.

Arrogance strips us of true compassion, blinds us to the faults within ourselves, and sears our consciences. Arrogance is as much in the soul of the unrepentant criminal as it is in the smiling politician on your television.

I don't have a solution to offer. The only thing that I can do is try to remember to be humble, to raise my girls free of the 'princess' mindset, and to do as much good for others as I can in this short life. The only thing that I can hope to impact the world through is this measly blog posting. And I say this to you- as much for me as for anyone- check yourselves for pride today. Search your heart and try to weed out any thought that puts you above another human being. Learn to serve, learn to be quiet, learn to not mock. Find meekness, find humility.

I'll be right there beside you, and maybe together we'll learn how to make the world a little bit better of a place.

Labels: arrogance, compassion, culture, divorce, fault, hope, humanism, moral decay, pride, society