UnTame vs. the Domesticati

So I have made some progress on the my gracefully ravenous, inverted friend


and I have written the words "long-time" on a board because sometimes things just go on and on and on.

Long-Time is hyphenated because sometimes hyphens seem to speak of the names of potions or products, or of ambiguous nicknames. Long-time is painted over some already-painted over pomegranates that I painted back when pomegranates seemed like a good metaphor for wanting something really badly and in a complicated manner.



And: I have cut an unfinished painting into pieces which will eventually bear fragments of more words or birds. This now-chopped painting was originally started in 1997 as a portrait of an old friend. In the painting she was balancing on a muddy log... it was an afternoon in 1993 and she had just finished writing a poem-kinda-thing for a class that started with the words "Dear God, please make the light funny". Then in 2002 I sanded her down because she had never been quite right. In 2005 I started painting a finch over her, but the finch's pose was too mundane and never really got going. So down it goes into halves and quarters, to be further sanded and written upon.



However! Instead of working on any paintings today, I spent the afternoon moving my bed out of the corner where we've been lying awake nights suffering from humid heat, from a special kind of insomnia unique to fighters and cyclists and, most pressingly, from Badly Placed Bed Syndrome. Upon moving the bed I had to move the other furniture, and upon moving the other furniture I found unopened mail to myself at an address three apartments previous to this one, and lots of dirt. Spent 3 hours cleaning, trashing and re-arranging and now I notice:

As much as I claim to doubt the importance of spending my time and energy on art, I sure as hell don't feel good about spending time on anything that's NOT art. I feel a sensation verging on shame after passing two hours mopping a decade's worth of ambiguous buildup off of a white-painted bedroom floor, while others might argue that that’s a somewhat important thing to do, at least once every year or score.

My old muddy-log friend from the erstwhile painting has been living quite a different life than mine for years. Big house, adoring husband, VW New Beetle, lovely 10-month old baby. All things domestic, fleecey and family. Though we were best friends for most of our teenage years, we haven’t spoken in an unmopped decade and I only know her every coming and going because, of course, she’s got a blog. Yesterday I found out (from said blog, natch) that her impressive world is all upside down, her husband having blown it in the worst possible way. This makes me realize (in addition to feeling a lot of empathy and sorrow for her) that I am still, in painting and in life, celebrating the wild, the un-tame, as a kind of defense. That I am terrified of my own nest-feathering instincts and efforts, because part of me still doesn’t believe that long-term peace, a specific kind of success, is possible.

There is something competetive in my birds. Sometimes they fly because if anyone is going to fly they’re sure as hell not going to be left land-bound and last. Sometimes they’re so moving because they know if they settle they might want to stay. They know that for a long time they’ve asked for the strange light of an interesting, rather than safe, life.

Anyway; wondering what the words on these new boards should be. Something about the domestic vs. the migratory. About the occasional idea of giving up on making a “home” and just trying to move into Firehouse 13 to make work instead. About mopping and not-mopping, and for whom we do and don’t do it. Might just write “un-tame”. Or “land”.

Anyone?
Are you landed or aloft, and what is the vocabulary of it?

P.S.: Having written this, about domestic fear and light, I went into the bathroom to brush the taste of my own rambling out of my mouth and pulled the light chain. Several times: it wouldn't turn on. Thinking that I might actually have a lightbulb in the house with which to replace the dead one, I took the glass cover off of the light and found that, upon burning out, the bulb had exploded, leaving a jagged half-bulb hanging by one of the filaments onto the raw, broken base which is still left behind in my fixture. Having pulled the chain a number of times trying to turn it on, I can't remember if there's power flowing into the thing right now or not. Dangerbulb.

Oh, all this light. Funny like electrocution.