Today is hot and windy. Perfect weather for working in the almost sweatshop of a warehouse. Or a road trip. Your choice. Mine has already been made with not just a few regrets. Alas, we live in a world where it is just not 'responsible' to go road tripping merely because the weather demands it. A world in which 'responsible' is one of the highest goals.

To make myself feel better, I went and visited my garden. It's a wild and neglected garden but the sunflowers. Oh the sunflowers! They are now taller than me with stalks thicker than my wrists and leaves larger than my face. I like to sit next to them and listen to their leaves rustle in this wind. I didn't bring my camera or else you would also get to see them. Today, you must use your imagination.

Something funny has happened as I have begun planting plants everywhere...inside my house, in my yard, and in this garden plot near a friends house. My roots are growing with their roots. Like my strawberries, I am sending out runners and connecting with new people from new places. Like so many of my plants, I am having to prune back the things that I send energy into so I do not wear myself out. It is hard to make those decisions though. It hurts. You cut limbs and boughs that you hoped would bear fruit and provide shelter when it was your turn to need it. There is grief in that. I have been a long time in grieving those things. I have been alternately sad and angry...and they never really mention any other stages of grief after that. I hear acceptance comes eventually. I am looking forward to that one.

Roots are funny. I did not choose to put them here...they just started. As I loved and tried my best not to be selfish, I grew. And in growing, I got roots. Weird. Some of those roots were connected to people who left and it was sad to let go. It is hard to start over. It is hard to decide to keep loving new things and letting those roots find new soil. But I have seen that a plant only ever gets as big as its roots. A person is only as kind and good as the amount of love they choose to release into all of the relationships they find. At some point I realized that all of the pruning and transplanting and watering was only worthwhile to endure if I grew from it, turned it into love, and kept letting myself put out roots and runners again and again and again. At some point, I think I decided I want to be a sunflower. That sounds kind of cheesy, but  at least it gives the pain a purpose.

 

Eve

I really miss bread today, for the phantom yet ubiquitous record. I want some with butter and honey seeping into it. There really is not a replacement. I am getting better though and recovering from my divorce with gluten, but that is not really relevant for today. Eve most definitely is.

This is Eve. On my comforter. She has been my constant companion and accountability for about three months now. Apparently, I can measure my life in art projects as I have been reduced to doing them at a ridiculously slow pace...especially given the simplicity surrounding her.

But the simplicity was important and needed to develop as it willed, carefully. So here she is. I still need to lacquer her or coat her with acrylic gel medium, that is for another pay check though. I think it is time to share her.

Eve is for my innumerable strong women who are living with circumstances and battles that they did not choose for themselves. For those who are fighting apathy and anger on the inside while fighting injustice and chaos from without. Not to mention lies on both sides. I have had the privilege of knowing more than my share, of leaning on them and holding them...and learning to see the world through their priceless eyes.

Eve is a woman cut out of the cardboard with the top layer still attached and twisting out and away from her in a swirl of petals. The petals make me think of my mom actually, in hindsight. She loves flowers and always says it is because Eve was made in the garden. The sunflower is special. Not only is it among my favorite flowers and one that has been a motif in my life for years now, but that particular one arrived to me over 600 miles in a package with cookies and other things from my sister. I love that she would do that and that she knows that it makes sense to me.

The flowers are also beauty--deep, real, and fleeting. And though a woman will outlive many flowers, are we much different? But more than that, is the idea represented in the question written along the side: Am I just another Eve? This is the question that I wrote on a sticky note and left on my bedroom wall until it became a painting.

I think it is an important question, obviously. But seriously, I know so many women wondering if there is a point to trying. Or if they are just another Eve preset for destruction. If she could not come through on one decision before corruption, why does anyone else hope to? There is so much shame and so much trying to be strong and taking on guilt that is not theirs to hold. Like we are trying to pay for a mistake that was never ours and we are taking responsibility because someone needs to and it is not out of our way. Not always, obviously, but often enough to be observed. Oh, there is so much more that could be said on that, but I will save it rather than risk beating a dead horse.

And so finally, the phrase that follows me and drags me back and down to wrestle with it again and again...and when it is not doing that, it quietly mocks me from its place on Eve in my room. We must love and lose or else lose more.

We have to keep on trying. We love unreasonable things. We love after being hurt and expect a different result. We get hurt. We do it again. We may learn and do it differently, but it never really loses the risk and danger that are inherent. We trust. We open ourselves up because it will be worth it when it is real and when it lasts. Because, when we shut ourselves away for the sake of safety or fear or strength, we lose our most valuable and beautiful component. We make ourselves hard and fortified and we lose access to our own hearts. We become a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy in regards to our fear that we will never escape Eve's mistake.

Hold on. Give me just one additional thought which I cannot take credit for:

To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.

C.S. Lewis

There. That's Eve. And yeah, this is not really only for women...there are a lot of thoughts here that are without borders and confines. Yet, it is my women who hang heavily on my heart when I think about this for any length of time, and that is my artist's privilege and responsibility at work. Thank you.