I keep wondering if it's because I'm worried about the state they will arrive in (being they've never traveled that far)? Have I provided the right materials to display them? Will they be hung correctly? Will they will make it back to me safe and sound in October?
And what if it's not any of the above? What if it's because I am entering a new phase of my artistic life, which is my life essentially? Starting this July, I will be participating in two separate gallery exhibits, in addition to unveiling a second piece for my upcoming novel "Humboldt's Riches" at ATELIER 1022. I have left the safety of my own studio and have ventured out into the world. I have no idea what reaction to expect. There is as much responsibility in success as there is in failure...will I look back on this summer and see it as the monumental shift in direction as if feels to me now? Is this the start of something or just a wave, a swell as occurs from time to time only to see things die down again?
"I
pulled the covers over me, but my skin prickled from the inescapable chill that
comes from lying alone. I could not
gather myself tight enough to feel solid and whole. My stomach still seared from the coffee and
now the astringent gin. All the fluid in
my insides rocked with the forward motion of the past week. I lay inert, and yet my body was on a train,
on a ferry, in a subterranean car, traveling without moving.
"I
now feel most intimately that the process of traversing distance is an erosion
of the spirit. The thrill of change that
accompanies the onset of a journey is a deception, the fearful attachment to
outcome which makes adrenaline kick in a way not entirely un-pleasurable
propelling the lie. For a moment one
feels positively alive. One is duped
into committing to the chaos. One
inhales the fumes, joins in rigid attack stances near sliding compartment
doors. One holds on feverishly as stuttering
wheels grind to a halt. One is
titillatingly taunted by visions of missed connections, rerouted trains. One presses on.
But
after hours of vigilance and wide-eyed awake-ness, one adopts patience. Or as it ought to be known, the
self-congratulatory brother of fatigue.
Patience then gives way to indifference, and in time one becomes a
heretic to the creed of goals and ends and satin-ribboned resolutions. One stops caring about the names of foreign
cities, stops seeking out their hearts from window seats. Eventually one realizes they are all
disfigured, all the same sketch of blasted glass and ruins and fire-retardant
weeds, anonymous to the fickle gazes that graze them. One drifts among them, a shipwrecked figure
on Gericault’s raft, gaunt and delirious, running one’s arm through the air
outside without hope or aim." (p. 36-38)
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