I love watching those videos where they capture the blossoming of a flower from seed to flower in fast forward. Waiting for a flower I planted is excruciatingly uninteresting to me. At the same time, I feel the zen, light, like I’m floating when I see the rain drops on the blossoms and the one bubble drop of water hitting the tip of the petal, bursting into a hundred whimsical droplets. My heart follows. I have little patience for watching things progress in a time that is not run by the constructs of my mind. Blossoming of flowers and progress in creation, the act of creativity is not one that can be nurtured in my reality. It comes or it doesn’t it often taunts. I crave and I long to be a creator, of any muse. Song, dance, painting, instruments, any skill that makes something out of nothing. I never had the patience to follow the steps, or to practice into perfection over time. It was always all in and all out. It is a restlessness of my mind that fails to heed my voice.

One day, I saw a picture of the prayer hands, an article about its origins in art. I can’t tell you that now for what was borrowed for the satiety of my mind at that particular moment in time, was duly returned to whence it came. What I do remember was picking up a pencil and just looking at a picture and going at it. I have never in my life been able to actually draw anything resembling anything. Of this I was very proud. I documented it for historic purposes.

I just saw the lines, I knew where my pencil should strike, I felt every bit of it, as fluent as I could scribe, my hand was drawing. I kept at it, I did not eat, I did not stop till I was somewhat satisfied. I could never pull away, then I hit the computer for all the tools I was going to need to complete this, smudger, blender, moldable eraser and a bunch of other things that I had never heard of before. No shower, no time, quick brushing of teeth, grabbed my keys and looted the art store. They thought I was an art student at the local art school. Nope, just trying to finish the prayer hands I started.

I would tire of the hands as my mind fixated on faces, and so it went, I looked at a picture and kept going with all my tools. First and second day down. The only reason I stopped was because of the meds I had to take that put me to sleep.
Third day I come back with a vengeance. I drew more, I got tired, but I survived on coffee and cigarettes. I just could not will myself to stop. I did nothing but draw that week. I was enrolled in university at the time, but I did not attend classes that week, not because I didn’t want to, but I just could not. It was like there was a heavy muck that sucked me into the floor at my house, my mind thought nothing else but the lines and veins and shades and proportions. I could not let go, it would not let me. I conveniently ‘forgot’ my meds because I wanted to stay up and work, the pills made my mind numb, I wouldn’t be able to create. It had a hold on me that wrung my skin into submission, my head buzzing and screaming and crying at the same time, I hadn’t slept in four days.

Then I suddenly couldn’t see the lines anymore, I shaded everything the same gray, the same dark gray. I couldn’t see the proportions anymore, I could hardly see anything anymore, a violent bout of bile would destroy the last of my creative attempts as I finally succumbed to my food and sleep and life deprivation. My creative stream as unassuming and gentle as it arrived had violently rushed into a rapid I would never ever encounter again. Drawing never came back like a number of other things that lived its spell on my path. However the ones that did stay, come in bouts I capture and exploit as much as I can for the uncertainty of its return. Living in the moment not by choice, but maximizing in my enjoyment of it is my way of life.

Thank you for reading.

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