zenscription

Of late i've been out of sync with my life. Not that things aren't going well, but my visual processing bogs down with the volume of photos i take and i'm processing what i do about a week after i do it. Perhaps partly Helen isn't here - she's off in Florida helping her mom out (just in time for hurricane Fay no less) but Helen and i are doing great overall. There's just a sense that my 'doing' isn't matching my 'seeing' or that there's some kind of disconnect between making my art and making my life that leaves me not in my usual state of 'ease.'

I want to process my photos right away, but for a few immediate exceptions i need to go over in that time-consuming way the raw materials of my art, the photos, with sufficient detail to glean the final product from them. When helen and i take a family or group shot she has to insist that i use her camera because she knows it'll be probably a week before i get around to the download/finalizing business of dealing with the shot. She knows she'll want to send it to people and if she relies on me, well, the urgency and the beauty of that spontenaity is lost for her.

And i don't blame her at all. She's smart like that - she doesn't in the least bit make me feel like i'm falling short of any expectations for her. She will ask after a shot i've taken on my camera if she wants to send it somewhere, and that's understandable and - like nearly everything she does - it's done with love and grace.

I still can't shake the idea though that time is cracked for me though. Cracked because it makes me use more time than necessary to mend the rift between my art and my life. I want my art to be as spontaneous as life is, as graceful as helen's words are, as immediate as the period at the end of this sentence.

I have a natural schizoid-ness that i've dealt with all my life, a scattering of talent and dismay at the time it takes to collect the proper components, but this has become a larger rift, and it feels like it's starting to dry that way.

I've spent the last week trying to catch up on my photographs along with the natural distractions of being online, moderating, doing a bit of other (and exciting art of graffiti) art, even before helen left. And i'm still not - and may never be - caught up. I'm not upset about the rift, only feeling a settling of habits on myself, like i'm becoming Scraps, the Patchwork girl of Frank Baum's Oz. Quaint, but beautiful to the Scarecrow who lacks a brain.

That's not an analogy i meant to end on, but that's the nature of being a bit cracked.