Part of the clearing process has been about synthesizing the many parts of myself that I've lived over the years I've been in my apartment. And letting go of others.
It felt significant though, that a major milestone of an opportunity arose as I began to let go of the weight of some of my artistic history (and significantly, many of the supplies wound up going through a contact to an artists' collective at Rockaway Beach--significant because my art is so influenced by marine and aquatic life.)
I shed bag after bag of things I didn't need, and suddenly had somewhere to wear the new costume I bought on a whim, not having any idea where I would wear it at the moment of purchase. Suddenly, after creating closet space for dance costumes, I was offered the opportunity to dance my first solo full set (which consists of a fast song, a rhumba (slow), a drum solo, and a fast song. I was so honored to be asked. Frankly, in February, when was asked about my ultimate goal as a dancer, I said, I'd like to be on the flyer! And I'd like to dance a full set somewhere. I really didn't expect that goal to be fulfilled before year's end. I guess I have to clear more room for bigger dreams.
Clearing my apartment, my copilot in my decluttering vision suggested that I give up the monolithic wall of books that occupies a lot of space and psychic and visual weight in my apartment. I've been working on that, having donated hundreds of books, and it's hardly a dent. It has been hard in some categories, because books were learning tools, tools in developing a voracious appetite for all things visual and poetic.
But I want room for art, dance, entertainment and most importantly, breathing space in my home. Even breathing space in my ideas, ideas wrought partially from the spaces and density of the world of ideas I've found in those many volumes that I own. I've been scared without the physical density of the books, that I will cease to think think with perspicacity, with breadth, with depth, with feeling. I fear I will cease to be a painter.
But if, as I wrote here, I want to be an open, breathing artist, my home needs to be fluid and open, too.
I am currently back in Virginia. I've been to a beautiful, forested swamp to kayak, the beach for sun and swimming and shell gathering, the pool, made basement studio paintings, read an engaging book, and to a tiny island with a population of 450 people. Unfettered, I don't feel any loss or miss the heaviness of home. I want to bring the experience of this week home, packing it as a souvenir, along with the paintings that I think express this lightness and flow and and memory.
