I had an eventful weekend.

My Friday was pretty emotionally intense, and wonderfully promising. It was also a sort of ‘pampering me’ day, as it turned out; I got a great haircut and style from a new stylist at a cool shop, and a little more ‘me time’ on the personal aesthetic front later in the day. I wish I could also say that those elements of my weekend nurtured and restored my soul, but that’s not what it was.

My Saturday was strange, moody and productive, sort of detached. I worked at this and that to ease my anxiety and my emotional fatigue; pruned the roses, baked some shortbread. It was a decent day – it had, in fact, all the elements of an actually good day, but I felt like I was ‘going through the motions’ most of the day, and the challenges offered by every day life and the ebb and flow of other people’s experiences and emotions pulled at my heart. Evening was good in spite of the effort the day itself required, and the day ended well, really well. So… ‘no complaints’?

Sunday was hard to call, initially… was it a good day? A bad day? A difficult day? I was moody, tense, anxious, and working my ass off to shrug it off and avoid negatively coloring the weekend for my partners; it was their anniversary. I could not allow myself to blow that, and I probably put a lot of extra pressure on myself over it that I could have done without. This ‘human being’ thing is a more difficult puzzle than it appears from the vantage point of youthful daydreams.  As it turned out, though, Sunday was… amazing.  I did a few chores and ran some errands in the morning, kissed my partners and headed out into the world, and… wow. The World was right there waiting for me.

I had a pretty powerful moment in the Portland Art Museum, which has quite a good modern art collection for a relatively small city museum. I added the museum to my agenda as an afterthought, actually, and arrived only a couple hours before they closed. None of that matters.  What matters is running into old friends, and what matters is this.  Right? Maybe that’s not obvious… It’s “Untitled”, 1987, Peter Schuyff.  Seeing it yesterday was an experience. I saw a lot of paintings, and sculpture, and glass work that I enjoyed a lot. “Untitled” really got me on a different level. I sat in front of it, just looking and feeling it – letting my body feel how I would position the canvas, set up the layout, work the piece to get those effects – and as I relaxed into the moment and felt that painting ‘become’ part of my thinking and understanding, it became more real and more whole and I saw more and more of it. I felt – taken beyond myself, somehow revealing an inner core ‘strength of being’ I have been unable to feel for a while. I understood what I saw, and I experienced a feeling of confidence and certainty and a secure sense of self that couldn’t be shaken by some moment of pain, however ancient, however evil. No harm could come to me through the strength I had revealed to myself, from within my own being. I am still pretty wowed. It was quite…  something, and I needed it. Like slaking a days old thirst in the heat of the desert with cold clear spring water, like the ‘a-ha!’ moment at the front of the classroom, like the last punctuation mark on a moment of literary wonder… that moment in time, with that painting, meant more to me than words can capture here. I hope to keep it, as safe and precious as a lover’s photo in a locket, and look at it often and feel my soul restored again and again. Art has power so far beyond mere words.

My elation lasted much of the evening, and lingered in my thoughts when I dropped off to sleep, satisfied with the day, and the weekend.  I was still smiling and thinking thoughts of Art and feeling inspired to paint, and more than just pain and woe, too… and the smile deepened and remained my companion throughout the morning, after spending a few minutes on Love, and coffee. The things that matter don’t have to be things other people find valuable or important, I guess I just have to know what they are, for myself, to keep them high on my list of priorities.  So far a good week.