In and Out

I would like to get out of my head, please.

Pete and Orion are in the den, playing Haven. I’m too tired to do anything more so I sit on the sofa to watch. Well, I try. It’s a flying and shooting segment, nicely done. Okay so you follow the green indicator and shoot when it’s red and evade shots fired at you by other flying things. It looks cool enough, but I can’t concentrate. I can see us sitting here, from outside. I try harder to just watch the pretty flying and shooting. But my head won’t let me. It’s like a trading floor in here; mother, artist, rebel, child, lover, teacher, tasks that must be done, things that should have been done, things that shouldn’t have and conversations replaying themselves. The constant hammering on the new concept for Lost and Found, the very large unfinished sculpture in the studio and all the little ones waiting to be packed and mailed out and worse, the unmade ones each believing they are ‘the one’, all screaming for attention. There are the story lines and all the bits that start to make connections and codes with new solutions. I consider swimming but I’m too tired. I try to concentrate on the ceiling fan but I’m too far in. And no, if you’re wondering, this is how it can be when I don’t do drugs. It’s worst when I’m too tired to run away from it, to go and do something. The shouting on the floor gets louder and above all the overseer bellows that none of this matters. The spirit whispers that all of it matters and the door is broken down by a wedge of images marching in like soldiers to burn the place down and somewhere an alarm is going off. It is very dark in here. I’ll be carried away soon, howling and tearing at my hair except for that thin white thread of sanity, quiet voice of reason, that finds its way in, like smoke. It always has, so far.
I get up and go to the bathroom and wash my face and breathe, slowly, deeply, one, two three, leaning on the sink. I’m such an ass, I think.
When I get back into the den I tell Pete I want to watch the Samurai Jack episode with the black and white scene. I pick up sleepy Orion and hold him. The music starts, I’m taken in again by the aesthetics of this series we consider to be a masterpiece of animation.
Jack is lost in the light, his nemesis lost in the shadows. They are each visible only within the space of the other. Orion begins to snore softly.

I’m out of my head now. Thank you, Mother Earth, Genndy Tartakovsky and the Still, Small Voice that, when I was a little girl, I thought belonged to someone else.


Today is Thursday. I’m going back to the studio. Thanks for reading, thanks for your comments. Photos are coming.