in summary

In high school, I made art to justify my existence. ...Which, if you know my highschool, is funny.

The people I went to highschool with joked that artists had no souls. I was asked regularly how any of it was 'practical' and what it 'contributed to society'. In general, art was viewed as a superfluous function of the upper class bending to society's expectations of a nice, pretty, and presentable exterior. Often, artists seemed to be viewed as poor people who had little else to offer the world and so made things which were tolerated, patronized (in every sense and meaning of the word), and occasionally appreciated. I will never know if these were the products of poor communication or the precise intentions of those around me...or an evil mixture in between.

I knew of course that none of this was true. And I knew with the knowing that does not need to be defended or strengthened because the roots are deep and strong. It was a knowing that merely grew out of the soil I had. That is a very good thing too because if that knowing had broken, I surely would have drowned a long time ago. That knowing was my anchor, my life preserver, heck my whole vessel!

And it justified the breaths I took, the eating and sleeping I needed, and the relationships I made. It gave pain a purpose, and joy too.

--I don't say any of this to be melodramatic. Rather, I want to explain and, in my explanation, to understand for myself this journey so that I may know where it is I am going.--

It was the backdrop of my mental energy and the safeguard of my emotional stability which allowed me access to spirituality and honesty.

Then I moved to Portland. I reasoned that my art supplies could not fit into a dorm room and that I would leave them behind. I created a few good things that year discovering quickly that I still had this need to make stuff, though it was not so much out of this need to justify my existence. Rather,  I think it came from this need to grow and to sort through the old ideas to see which ones I would take with me.

But I found so many photographers in Portland that I could find no more meaning in it. It was an empty medium because I found myself having to justify my existence as an artist. That was my tree with the deep roots that anchored me through all those years of feeling like a non-person. Suddenly the bar had been raised and it was not enough to be a person. My art was my evidence that I was a person. To have to defend that my art was art was unconscionable. Rather than summon any form of bravery, I quickly surrendered the ground on which I stood. My camera began to stay home more and more. In Montana, my camera bag was put on with my belt and shoes everyday. There had been so many things to see that I was sure I could bring a new perspective to. In Portland, glass eyes abounded looking every where and every way. I could not see the forest for the trees.

I kept on painting though. It was slow going but I took on harder projects. I stretched a bit and grew. I wrote when the painting was sour. Then I moved into a house with seven women and I was never alone, never not watched, and never allowed to just exist without a defense. It felt as though I had to justify my entrance into the house I lived in. I paid taxes in stress and in a total creative block. When my only successful attempt at pushing through the darkness was accidentally knocked over and broken (being glass), I hit a wall. I was officially too busy existing to think about if I should or not much less what it meant for me to exist. More machine than woman, I tried to keep up and in keeping up I lost any kind of anchor. Even writing itself became a chore that I imposed upon myself to remember who I wanted to be when I finally surfaced from whatever cavern I had fallen into. I lived this way for a year.

But I did not surface after that. My resources were dry. My intuition was tied in a knot around my creativity. My mind's eye hardly had the strength to open. So many of the muscles I relied on to buoy me in my earlier years had atrophied and could not yet be trusted with the full weight of my needs.

And so here I am at the end of a long stretch of surviving, coming out of survival, transitioning, and attempting to stabilize. Four years of giving up the way I justify my own existence later and I have a lot of questions to ask myself. I think it will feel like deep sea diving and gardening at the same time. There are some roots which need to be nourished and driven down deep so that I have something to tie this creaky vessel of mine to.