I Ramble On an On About Nothing

Don't expect this blog to be filled with intellectual content or sage analysis. I'm not in the mood for that. I want to just write and let my words take me where they will and that spot will not be anywhere great. Academia took the joy of writing succinct analysis out of me and left me with a rambling stream of consciousness. Of course, I have never been a classical logical thinker. I sometimes wish I had been, but my mind takes off into flights of fancy and meander from one place to another. I painted the same way, as I have mentioned. As an undergraduate, pursuing my BFA, I painted with wild abandon. My paintings and drawings were loose and sometimes unfinished and a bit unpolished. Then, when I trained under my artist mentor, he taught me to be very precise ...making things more real than real. This technique suited his mind and style perfectly but, over the next few years, I came to see that I was becoming a poor man's imitation of him. He was a great artist. I knew that and I still think that though he's been dead close to a decade and my apprenticeship ended in the early 80's. I have to relearn how to paint as myself rather than doing visual tricks to amaze. He had things to say with his work. I floundered as I looked for something to say with my work. Frankly, I was a somewhat cossetted young woman who had not experienced enough of life and pain to have much to say.

Once, the artist told me, that in order to really have something to say, I would have to go through a crisis that would challenge me; my sanity or my survival. Of course, that event eventually arrived and I did have things to say. The problem was this: I could no longer bring myself to paint. The very act of picking up a paintbrush caused my hand to shake and my muscles to tense. I have the painter's block of all time. I think, sometimes, of painting again, but cannot, despite my efforts, get past that terrible feeling when I pick up my brush and dip it into a bit of paint. I am reminded of too much. I am reminded of dreams dashes and mistakes made. I find myself no longer a middle aged woman but a young woman again ; one filled with terror.

You see, I missed the gogo yuppie 80's entirely. A few days before the 80's began, I began my apprenticeship and left my safe life at the university, my family and friends, my favorite joys of Austin, and settled in a tiny Texas town. I lived in an old Victorian house that had terrible vibes (later I would learn a tenant, before me, had committed suicide in my bedroom). I worked in a studio far out in the country and down a dirt road that hid the studio even further. I loved that studio. I loved the stucco walls and tin roof an wood stove. I loved the acreage that surrounded it.

While my friends and family were beginning their climb up the career ladder, marrying, and having children, I was, more of less, blissfully single, and spending my days in my old hippie clothes of ragged jeans, tee shirts, and big hoop earrings. My hair was allowed to flow down my back or worn in a braid of pigtails. I was not a part of the whole yuppie scene. What little I saw of yuppiedom was not in the least appealing. I didn't know what the hell I wanted, but I knew I did not want a marriage based on compromise of a house full of children, or, heaven help me, a climb up the corporate ladder. I was not a part of the culture of the 80s and I was living somewhere in the 70s as I painted an read, and fell in love with the woods.

The studio was surrounded by the most lush and beautiful plants and trees an flowers I had ever seen. I explored every morning and afternoon and picked blackberries, wild plums, passion fruit, peaches, wild garlic, and wild grapes. Every morning I filled an old coffee can with an array of wildflowers that were as beautiful as they were varied. I fell in love with nature. It was so quiet in the woods. No cars drove down the road and, except for the conversation my mentor and I had, I mainly listened to the sound of birds and insects. I watched birds with binoculars and learned their names. I saw baby deer walking within yards of the studio and, one time, we saw a wolf on running through the woods. It was a strange new life for me. I had been a small town girl who grew up in a very tight, very narrow, and very comfy world. My childhood and teenage years were populated by friends whose parents were doctors an lawyers and oilmen. I was among the fortunate; although I didn't know it then.

In my final year of high school, I had begun to question the smug righteousness of this small town. Influenced by a trip to New York City and a new best friend who had moved from Austin, and the reading I was doing, I became the closest thing to a hippie in our town. I'll never forget that summer of 1969 when I threw out the curlers that I had slept on every night for years, and donned old jeans that I found at Goodwill. I pushed my nice girl clothes to the back of the closet and opted to wear tee shirts and work shirts and huarache's. I was bursting to leave the small town behind and find my way to New York or LA or San Francisco or Austin. Austin seemed the easiest route for me since it was only 225 miles from home and I had friends going to UT already. So, I began making trips to Austin in that summer of 1969 to visit my friends and began to partake of all the vices and joys that the culture had to offer at the time. I was not a full-fledged hippie but I wasn't a weekend hippie either. I was, as usual, somewhere in between and hard to peg.

When I finally graduated high school in May of 1970, I grudgingly endured all the teas and parties hosted by my mother's friends and guiltily raked in the presents with glee. So, I wasn't a non-materialistic hippie. What would you expect from me? And, then, I was free. Or free in some sense to follow my path wherever it might go. Well, it didn't go very far. My parents, afraid to let their first child venture too far from home ( especially a child who showed signs of rebellion that would only worsen away from their watchful eyes) laid down the law. I was told that I had to attend the local community college ..."Harvard on the Hill" as we smirkingly called it. I was sullen but did enroll for classes and a new world began to open..even if it was at Harvard on the Hill. For one thing, I, who had always been something of a pacifist, and most definitely was against he war in Viet Nam, and had supported civil rights with my whole heart met the larger role. Yes, under the influence of my liberal father, I was a fortunate southern girl who was taught early that the fight for civil rights was a moral fight an I must be on the right side of that fight. But, the fact remained, that I went to a high school named after a southern civil war general and which had a rebel flag as it's mascot. We were, for all practical purposes segregated and I knew no blacks my own age. Our worlds were still split by the geography of the town. I live in the south part of town and African Americans lived in the north side of town and never the twain did they meet except in unequal terms. However, in college, there was no more segregation. I met young blacks who were kind enough to help me learn more about race and to heighten my sensibilities and to challenge my narrow existence. I was in a whole new world and I both thrive and was constantly challenged.

After a year of community college, I was allowed to go to the university and live in the dorm. That was one horrible year. I was shy and I was an oddball even then. I didn't make friends easily. I definitely was not a part of the sorority crowd but i was uncomfortable with the militant feminists. I had a few friends, not the least of which was my high school boyfriend who had grown his hair to Willie Nelson length and wore a long braid or pigtails. He was enthused about the prospects of moving to a commune and I was less than thrilled. I was a social cultural activist an he was a back to the land hippie. We couldn't find a middle range and eventually we broke up. At first, breaking up was heartbreaking. We had been together since I was 15, but, as I put together my first apartment and met new people, I came to the realization that my high school boyfriend had spent most of his time making me feel bad about myself and I realized that I was neither dumb nor ugly as he had often told me.

Coming into full womanhood in a liberal college town in the year 1971 and 1972 was a heady experience. Remember, AIDS was not the horror that haunts us now. The women, like myself, who had been pigeonholed as future school teachers and nurses, began to see that we had other choices. The road to happiness did not necessarily involve "marrying well" as soon as possible and begin a life replicating our mothers. It was heady....perhaps too heady for some and I include myself in that group. But, it was a fun time. We went to class and then rushed home to watch the news, we rallied against the war, we stayed up all night getting high talking about heaven knows what.

I had never been a drinker in high school and I had looked down on drinkers from my lofty hippy dippy perch as "juice freaks." However, I discovered the joys of music at the hippie bar and concert venue and began to drink beer and wine coolers as i listened to the best damn music in the world and laughed with my new friends.

This is a long story and I have much more to say. It's 4 am in Phoenix, Arizona, and I am tired. More of this crazy tale later.