February 2, 2024

I've been having a lot of thoughts about who I am, what I want to say in my journey as a human and an artist...it took many years for me to acknowledge that I am an artist. I have had to tell myself that alot in the recent past.

I never thought of myself as an artist, since I didn't really produce anything material.  I had written poetry, and in graduate school I finally discovered my writing voice, the voice that could actually write something well and had something to say.  

When I read someone who has a clear writer's voice and a story to tell, my soul reaches out to the perimeters of Story looking for mine...my mouth opens and closes around words, ideas, and pictures that remain locked in my head.

I started producing things, potholders and quilts, but I finally realized I loved painting too, and that I had been using fabric as my palette all along.  

But it was never enough, the poetry and the quilting.  I could feel it in my bones that I should be using a paintbrush as well words or needle and thread.  I could see the brush strokes in the Impressionist/Expressionist artist's vision, and I felt and saw myself falling into the pictures and feeling the brushstrokes happening in my hands.

At the same time, almost like birthing twins, my internal monologue cried out to be set down on paper, so to speak, but I gag on my words, not knowing where to start or how to go on.  

But it occurs to me that the infrastructure I need may lie on the path to Memoir, for several reasons.

Its open-ended chronology is as good a place to begin as anywhere along the story line.

A title just popped in my head...Portrait of the Artist as an Old Woman. We'll see.

I am beginning to see three paths unfolding in front of me.  I am hoping that starting down one path will lead me to all the others. 

As a writer, I read other people's work, and I try to see their lives through their eyes and go into their minds to see how they formulated that first thought, picture, or stitch, so I could follow and make my path.

Now I need to write them down, having thought of a fourth one.

Writing, quilting, painting, weaving. Those are my paths, where I’ve been trodding along blindly for so many years. 

And now the5th path, which is really the first path, awakening. From childhood on, through my dreams.

My first awakening dream was when I woke up to see the ghosts from the old show Topper, the woman ghost in a filmy white gown reaching out, slapping me on the face and saying "Wake Up!"

My second awakening dream was of me, walking along the street with my family, and then floating up and away from them, above the rooftops, an "Aunt Jemima" figure smiling and waving at me as I floated past her into the sky.

The meaning of these dreams manifested in my life later on, when my path took me through cultural breakthroughs toward understanding my place in the world, as my life eventually evolved into interracial marriage, birthing and raising my children, eventually becoming a single mother after cultural differences dissolved my marriage. 

I was to learn from my late ex-husband about how racism was all around us and in us. His wisdom helped me understand and accept reality and the gift of a grounding in anti-racism that I hope is my legacy to my children and grandchildren.

February 11, 2024   

    Morning Prayer

                                                    Sunday Morning, 

                                                    reading sacred text (Kerouac)

                                                    lighting candles (every day) 

                                                                Peace -- Everywhere in the World.