It is still August, although it feels like Fall already. What a mild summer we've had. I thought after last summer, with so many too hot days and this winter with it's polar vortex and all the big storms we have now, that global warming meant more extreme weather. I thought that this summer would be really hot. I had also decided that the seasons seemed to be bumped up a month or so, each season starting later than usual. But summer really barely got going at all and now it seems it is ending too soon. So now, with one window cracked open, I feel cool air on my body, through my long sleeves and long pants. I miss you, summer. I really do. The thing that is true about our new weather is that it is unpredictable and unfamiliar. Our winter last year was so long and so cold. I really need to be too hot, to be tired of summer when Fall comes, to be too sweaty, sunburned and ready for jeans and a sweater. I am not even close. It feels like heart ache. A longing for someone that doesn't come around anymore. A little worried about how I will handle the days ahead. How will I get over the Summer that never came. I feel like I am so hungry and there will be no food for a long time.
I moved myself out to my front porch hammock where the cicadas are buzzing and the crickets are chirping, the sun is actually warm and there is only a slight breeze. The trees out here are still green. I shall stay outside until winter comes. Like a bear getting fat before winter comes. I will get as fat as I can on fresh air, sunlight, bird and bug song, and the color green. Don't go! Don't go, Summer! I need you! I would grab you by the pant legs and let you drag me down the street crying like the pathetic Summer loving woman I am. I would do it. I would beg you. Fuck Winter and his fleece. He's such a dork. It's you I want, Summer. At least until I am tired of you.
I'm so spoiled.
When September comes, it may still be warm. Let's hope so. My little boy, my wild and wiggly little boy who I have stayed home with for the first five years of his life, will be starting Kindergarten. Full day, from nine to three, five days a week, three blocks from our house. I think I spent a good portion of the last year or two panicking about what to do with myself when he does. I thought about finishing my Master's Degree that I had started so long ago, in Art Therapy. Then I decided I would just get a Master's in Social Work. This seemed like a practical path to take. I could go to school when Desmond goes to school and work towards getting a real grown-up job, a real career, like a real grown-up lady. I applied to the school I could afford and did not get in. My plan B was to take the year to paint. To be an artist for the year, a real one.
Here's the thing. Art is my jam. If you know me, you know that already. Art has always been my thing, since I was really little. My father is an artist and I suspect I got some fancy art gene from him. I could always draw really well and since I could do it well, I enjoyed doing it. It seemed to make people happy and excited. Adults and kids too. I always thought I'd grow up to be an artist. Because people told me I would. I took art classes whenever I had a chance too, any elective in school, any summer school thing I had to do, or summer camp. I went to a Cultural Arts High School, half day, my junior and senior years of high school. Took a bus every day after a morning of my public high school, a half hour drive, to a small BOCES run school. It saved me. In that way you need saving in high school. It was relief from the world that was made up of the kids I had grown up going to school with. The classes I struggled in. It was a light in my murky teenage world. A light that shone with pixie dust. Like dust particles in sunlight, you know it's just dust but it's so beautiful. Like a dusty light. And I loved it so. It was just right.
From there I applied to art schools for college. I got into all of them, received scholarships to each one. But the very best art school, the hardest to get into, the one that was a free ride, full scholarship to everyone who got in, was where I wanted to go. And I won't forget when I got called down to the office at school one afternoon for a phone call from my mom. I think I had let her open all my college mail. And I think she had opened it before she called, but she called and told me I got in. I was so happy. Then I had to sit on the bus for a half hour ride home and all the giddy, excited butterflies had settled by the time I got dropped off at my door. But we were thrilled, my mom and I. So that's where I went, Cooper Union, the college that teaches Art, Architecture, and Engineering. It used to be free for every student. Just this past year they started charging tuition and the students are taking the school to court, God bless em. I hope they win. The BOCES Cultural Arts Center in Syosset on Long Island is also closing. Budget cuts. I am so lucky I had the chance to go to both of these schools, they were two places and two times in my life I had the chance to dedicate hours and hours a day to making art. What a thing. What a feeling it was.
Then, you know, life doesn't do what you think it's going to do and everything went awry. That's okay, that's life, it does what it does and you do what you do and you do the best you can. I did not become an artist. But I never stopped being one either. I have not made a career for myself, in art or in anything else really. I have had, up until now, a beautiful life, a full, fun and busy life. It's also been hard some times but who's life isn't.
In a couple of weeks, something really cool is going to happen. When I walk Desmond the three blocks to school at nine in the morning, I will walk another three blocks, to an old white building. This building belongs to a church that used to have an elementary school, which has been closed for a few years. The building is a sort of gymnasium and auditorium. It has a wooden gym floor and basketball hoops and a stage at one end. They still have their Christmas patents there and the boy scouts plays basketball there on Tuesday nights. But that stage will be mine, that building will be mine, to paint in from September until June.
I will walk to that building and on the stage, there will be, six, four foot by six foot canvases. And they will be mine. And I will paint until three o'clock, when I will walk to pick up Desmond and walk us both home to rest and make dinner and talk about our successes and failures of our day.
I haven't had this kind of time or space to paint since college. It is nothing short of glorious, amazing, miraculous and thrilling to me. My hope is to finish at least, the six big paintings. To cover these big canvases that will be delivered to my house this week with some beautiful art, the best I can. And then to sell them. If it goes well, I hope to do it again.
I imagine it will be fantastic and hard too. Painting is not always easy, it is often a struggle but when it goes right, I think there are very few things more satisfying. Is there anything more satisfying? I don't know. Maybe a great fish taco. Maybe not, maybe it's my best and most satisfying thing.
And above all, after September first, if anyone asks me, "What do you do?" I will have a shit eating grin on my face and say, "I'm an artist." I'll try not to add, "Suck it" to that statement. I don't know why this endeavor feels like sticking out my tongue and waggling my fingers with my thumbs in my ears. I guess it feels like it's not practical or sensible. And I've been jealous of everyone else who seemed to be doing anything remotely like this and feeling like I wasn't allowed. All the voices in my head that have told me this is a bad idea, I am not a good "enough" artist, it's a waste of time and money. Shut it. I don't care, I'm doing it anyway, while I can. I feel like I am getting away with something. And after five years of devoting most all of my time to caring for someone else, I am taking time to do what I want. Exactly what I want. Not sort of what I want, but the one thing I want to do most.
Fall might not be so bad.
