The Artist’s Gift

Last week, with the Walter Anderson Museum Gala approaching, I returned to the wire to create an offering for the Gala auction. My fingers were stiff and reluctant – unaccustomed to the unruly stuff after such a long break. It was difficult to still my dancer’s body long enough to wrest some form from resistant matter. Yet my hands did remember and connected with some mental image of my artist father. His trade mark hat came first and, of course, the nose. Broad shoulders and large hands followed and immediately suggested some kind of offering. The theme of the Gala was Fleurs de Vie, so flowers hovered invisibly for future manifesting. Due to various other obligations, my father’s upper torso hung suspended by a long umbilicus above my wire-working basket for several days.  He seemed unperturbed by the wait, and when I returned, his further formation happened with ease. The stand was quickly done and the figure attached. Yet it was the flowers and the paintbrush, sprouting and blooming from the artist’s fingers, that made the gift complete. My father’s gift – and my own.

Solitary Bloomer

It is the way it is: This flower blooms alone. No matter that not far from where she stands and opens to the light, the others gather in congested clumps and boast that more is better.  Not for her… She loves the air around her slender form; her petals breathe, her stem bends easily between the heaven and earth.  If there is pathos in her solo dance (now and then a teardrop trembles on her cheek at dawn), then this is part of who she is. She wakes alone, and in the startled moment just before she greets the sun, she can forget the glory of her chosen dance.

Shoes And Wildflowers

I continue to go to ballroom class once a week – to put the proper shoes on my reluctant feet – feet long-accustomed to winging their way quite free of constraint. Poor feet… And poor dear body confined to repetitive gestures issued from without. I don’t understand my present acceptance of this alien format. It has always meant so much to me to be true to myself. And the truth always comes from within. Doesn’t it? Is it sometimes helpful to limit oneself? Can growth take place within while the outer self participates in perplexing occupations? Will I know when it’s time to unbuckle the shoes and flee the ballroom for the fields where wildflowers bloom?

After writing that last I jumped up from my chair and left the house in search of wildflowers. I found a generous congregation of the flowers I loved as a child. I thought of their nectar as provision for fairies and felt fey enough myself to pluck a few blossoms and sample the infinitessimal drop of sweetness at each center. I guess I still feel fey enough, for I couldn’t resist the plucking or the tasteing. Lovely to be released from questions and be the me I have always been, at home in the fields where wildflowers bloom – no matter what shoes I wear.