Thursday, March 26, 2009

Progress

As usual, the painting is growing and changing, and becoming somethign I could not have forseen. I'm enjoying this one immensely, despite the subject matter. It's not yet finished.

Also, keep in mind that my husband presently has both our good cameras with him in Amsterdam. I'm very aware the quality of the image is severely lacking.

Wednesday, March 25, 2009

Back to painting...

Even for a woman of 33, with 2 kids, a fabulous husband, and a relatively stable, ridiculously happy and satisfying home life (it took long enough to get here); even having already weathered the storm of divorce in my own life, watching the marriage of one's progenitors dissolve is nothing less than harrowing.

I've had an image in my head for a while which expresses, for me, a portion of the chaos of it, and I started painting it today. I think for this one, I will dabble in mixed-media for the first time, because there are some things I simply cannot do in acrylics. We'll see how it turns out. Here's a peak at Stage 1. I apologize in advance for the quality of the photo. My husband is out of the country, and he accidentally left with our good point-and-shoot digital AND the digital SLR. So I have to work with what I have.

Thursday, March 12, 2009

ends, means, in betweens

12 March 2009

There’s nothing wrong right here.
There’s just a nagging fear that this
really cannot be enough for us,
because it never was for him, for her,
for so many of their kind who never grew
any way but bitter and affronted,
then looked back and colored life dissatisfying--
one drab, unflattering color,
and justified their destinations in the end
by the miseries they endured, the pains
in between which forced them to choose.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

The dreadful intimacy of divorce

I am reminded often of how foreign the feelings which accompany divorce are to those who have not experienced it. Actually, I realize now and again that there are folks for whom those feelings are foreign in spite of the fact that they themselves have been through a divorce.

So a relatively new acquaintance learns that I don't have my children with me today, and the conversation very naturally, though very uncomfortably for me, veers to the fact that they are each with their respective Other Parent. And my family is evinced as blended, and my heart as broken, though I'm never quite sure if the person with whom I'm talking understands the depth of the wound.

Or someone who has known and been close with both me and my ex, either in the past or currently, admits curiosity about our circumstance. And the conversation ends up in the vein of asking about our time-sharing agreement, and what the person perceives as the pros and cons of it, or asking me what pros and cons I experience.

It's not offensive to me to talk about--it's my life and it's dreadfully intimate, but it's bound to come up. I carry it with me everywhere I go, whether by the conspicuous absence of my children, or by the fact that my daughter addresses me by my first name, and my son addresses my husband as Baba. But it hurts. My, how it hurts. And no, I don't consider my children's Other Parents to be built in baby-sitters. It's not a newlywed perk that my husband and I are without our kids every other weekend.

And it will never be over. This is reality not just for the foreseeable future, but forever. My children will always have two homes, and I will always be obliged to split their time with folks who are, at least at this point, relative strangers, and worse yet, people who hurt me, and whom I hurt, by the very fact of our respective existential realities.

I heard someone recently say that if they had to choose between the death of a parent and that parent walking out on their other parent, they would choose the walking out. That statement provoked profound ambivalence in me. Ten years ago, I might've said the same, but now it strikes me as short-sited. Granted, the person who said it had lost a parent--one he loved and missed dearly. I honestly don't know which I'd prefer. Death is final. Divorce is an ongoing wound, with ongoing perpetrators. Death is closure, and leaves room to grieve for the person we knewso well, for good or ill. Divorce leaves us wondering who they are, whether the years we spent with them were really a lie, and whether there was something we could have done differently--or better. Divorce is never truly over, and given my demonstrable need for closure, I tend to think I'd prefer to deal with something cut and dry, something honest that Time might could help to heal.

Thursday, March 05, 2009

affronted

5 March 2009

These affronts, at least, are mine,
somewhere half way between self- and other-
inflicted. Accepting culpability
doesn't close the wound, though
perhaps someday my bearing
of this burden will make lighter
for my children a cross they did not choose.

Monday, March 02, 2009

Blaming Barbie

I've spent a good many years blaming Barbie, Bratz and the like for most of the problems so many young girls (and grown women) seem to have with self-image. I just read an article posted by Ruth that shook the foundation of all those arguments, and made me take a long hard look at my growing up, and at my dinner conversation.

I can't say I hadn't thought about my tendency to blame culture, or about the importance of my own attitude toward my own body and my ideas about beauty in general. I also cannot say, however, that I had ever connect these concepts, and realized that while Barbie, Bratz, and all the images with which we and our daughters are inundated on a daily basis mean nothing next to the influence a mother and a father weild in the mind of a child. My comfort with my own body, and my husband's unconditional love for me, will speak volumes more to my daughter in the long run than a ridiculously proportioned doll.

That said, I'm still not a fan. Why Barbie could have been made with smaller breasts and a tiny bit larger waist, I'll never understand. Oh, and flat feet. Who wears heels everyday? Srsly.

George MacDonald

"Home is ever so far away in the palm of your hand, and how to get there it is of no use to tell you. But you will get there; you must get there; you have to get there. Everybody who is not at home, has to go home."

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