English: Cupcake; a painting by Wayne Thiebaud (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
“It’s a strange thing when we’re in the middle of a vortex. Outside a vortex, we watch and judge. Sometimes we don’t even see it or feel it. But the closer we get, the more we’re drawn into it. Its power begins pulling on us as we get closer and closer. Then we’re sucked into the middle of the experience with a chaotic rush of emotions until at the very center we find pure, absolute peace — although if we’re conscious, we know we’re in a vortex. We know… then suddenly, it’s time to leave.
“The energy weakens. We begin to get thrust out — pushed out — but its still necessary to pass through the whirling centrifugal force. Sometimes it spits us out. Sometimes we extricate ourselves.
“But it’s always… almost magnetic, push and pull. It’s vortex energy.” — Melody Beattie
“In order to paint, one has to go by the way one does not know. Art is like turning corners. One never knows what is around the corner until one has made the turn.” — Milton Avery
My notes on this page of a banana tree photo, written in black Sharpie, go like this: “YOU’RE NOT IN A HURRY, ARE YA?”; and, “You don’t think you’re succeeding while you’re doing it, but you are. Monkey Mind will always tell you NO”…
This tree series I am now working on is a vortex in and of itself. I stayed in the studio for hours upon hours last week, painting, drawing, coloring. Partly to just sheerly prove that I still have the power of the room. The ability to just doggedly sit here and work on my art.
And I am reading the liner notes in my huge birthday treat, “Wayne Thiebaud, A Retrospective”, part of which are written by Adam Gopnik. You don’t get no more up town than that. Pretty good for a farm boy who paints cakes. And I have a Wayne Thiebaud painting of a hot dog stand that was a New Yorker cover taped to my fridge. And I am copying Wayne Thiebaud words into my sketchbook while listening to Jimi Hendrix, Band of Gypsies.
Band of Gypsies is the second record I ever bought, Led Zeppelin I the first one. (Not counting the records I bought once upon a time when I was a perfect little straight girl — when my taste ran more to Johnny Cash at Folsom Prison and Whipped Cream by Herb Alpert.) I laugh at myself as I type this. I practically jumped for joy when I put the Hendrix on. What a miracle to have my old music with me here in Mexico. The only albums I am missing are Kathi McDonald from 1972, Mark Jordan from 1976, and Leo Sayer‘s Just A Boy, from 1971. Oh, and the Brewer and Shipley albums Rural Space and Shake Off the Demon. I would not mind coming across Rocky Burnett when I go home this summer, maybe in some mad remainder bin at Hastings.
The Hendrix drowns out the disco down the hill that blasts all over the neighborhood with its refrigerator-sized speakers, sometimes all night long. I hardly notice the noise any more. A person I was recommending my neighborhood to asked if it was quiet, I said yes. Then I gave that another think. “Mmmmm, maybe not so much. Not like a person who just comes down to Puerto Vallarta a couple of winter months would define quiet.
What a surprise to be in the slow lane pushing towards seventy and still having the heart for rock and roll and big green and pink paintings and learning new stuff. Still trying to get my mind around how to make my life and paintings match up with what’s in my head.
Today as I stood in line at the Oxxo chatting with a former neighbor, Miguel, IN SPANISH — ok, rudimentary Spanish, but still, we were talking and laughing and getting through to each other — I thought, this is what I always wanted. This is who I wanted to be.
I have lived in Mexico four and a half years now. It is long enough to forget to put “living in Mexico” on my gratitude list when I make it up each morning. Because Mexico is part of me. A fish doesn’t say, oh, ok, where’s the water? He is a fish. He is in the water.
What did the rock say to the mountain? I am part of you. To Mexico, to painting, to learning the new things that I need and want to learn, whatever they may show themselves to be, I say yes. A great good holy thank God I am here yes. I’m still here.
Think new thoughts. Make new karma.
Out of the Armchair 