Let it Go!
We missed a good chance to win some money from AFV this past
week. All it would have taken was a short clip of me decorating the Christmas cookies
I made for my grandkids.
I was placing the tiny white sugar balls on the cookies with
a pair of tweezers when the cuff of my shirt caught the lip of the jar. Had I put
the cap back on? Heck no!
What followed was a wave of tiny white balls rushing
to the edge of the table as I yelled S^*%! They moved faster than the Israelites
running through the parting of the Red Sea!
Trying to stop those balls were like trying to herd cats. My husband came tearing down the hall coming
to see what had torn such emotion from my lips, when I cautioned him to not
step into the dining room. One look of the floor told us both we had had a snow
storm of immense proportions. White balls were everywhere! Suddenly I started to laugh….the idiocy of
the situation was full in my face. How could I not laugh? I let it go.
I drew a parallel this morning as I was driving into town to
get the one package I sent off this year. The care I had taken with the cookies
was painstaking. The time was spent hoping to make my family and friend’s
holidays a bit brighter, one bloody ball at a time. Sometimes painting is like
that. You agonize over an edge, a stroke, a poorly drawn form, a seemingly
false color value in the wrong place. The problems with some paintings just do
not give you peace, even at night as you lay there thinking what on earth could
you have done to have made that painting better. The stroke by stroke replay
can leave you tossing. So when you view the painting in the morning you are
determined to fix it or kill it. The painting, that is. Because by then you
have deduced that the problem with your sleep pattern is not the too bright
moon, the too late dessert, that last cup of coffee, no. It is the obsessive
nature of a painter who demands from themselves that which their mind sees, but
that their hand is not yet capable of producing. We all paint masterpieces in
our minds.
What is the healthy direction then? What resolution is there
for this obsession? I have decided that
it is to do the same thing as I did with those fugitive white balls. Throw it/them
away. If I cannot improve it…..I can destroy it. Thereby keeping my sanity and
maybe finding a new way to work. By not placing a label of precious on the
thing, it has abdicated its power over me. I become the one with the power to
create, refine, change and if desired, to destroy. Let it go. See no work as
precious.
The cookies are done. Decorated with all their little
doodads intact. The frosting has hardened and set…
The cap is on the jar of white balls. Tightened down. Twice.
Merry Christmas and a Blessed Season to all.
