I have no idea what that must be like, but I'm fancying that what I was a kind of equivalent. In any case I was experiencing the sensation of coming back. Coming back to myself.
I had been asked by Simon Draper to participate in weekend Habitat for Artists event being held in California by sending on some small 5"x 5" artworks, and oh, could I provide a statement and a short bio. I've had to provide these little texts before, many times, and they have never gotten any easier or more pleasant to conjure. But I've done it enough, I could simply cut and paste from a previous version. But I could not find any old statements or bios - well there were a couple but they were useless for this situation. I had to cook up something fresh. We're only talking about a couple of paragraphs, but they were some of the more painful paragraphs to come up with. So I did it. I engaged in this exercise that I hadn't had to do in....three years or so. And that's when it occurred to me that my situation, my head space for these last three years was so different from what it had been before, and different from where, I was now realizing, I would like to be.
Where had I been?
Florida.
In Florida with a full time job. A situation that was temporary by design. It's funny to the unconscious affects of a conscious decision or mindset can ripple out and alter the environment you experience. Florida was essentially fine, but I was biding my time, waiting to leave and that attitude influenced all things large and small.
But that time was served and I'm in a place I'm not already ready to leave. I have the intention that whatever I want to do, I'll do it here.
Where am I?
New Mexico. Albuquerque.
So after I rolled into town and got myself nominally moved in, I settled in to alter some older pieces into something new that would suit the purpose at hand. I had continued to tinker and push some things toward a kind of completion in Florida, but that pretty much stopped by late Summer when I had packed up most everything. I didn't really dig in all that much down there, but not being able to dig in at all is pretty difficult to navigate, so this little reintroduction to making something is welcome. Even the chance to be aggravated and annoyed by putting down on paper what I intend for this stuff I make is welcome.
So coming out of a coma is certainly an overstatement, but being in a new place, alone - at least for a couple of months and having nothing to do - having nothing that I need to do is at, the least, a new state of being. I'm just enjoying every breath.
Every non working moment in Florida was weighed down with the decision to be made: to nap or not. Although the choice was not entirely up to me - the conscious me, anyway. The decision had already been made by some superior force whose bidding I simply did. I relied on loud energetic music to forestall the naps, but they always came. I have a memory of a not long past Saturday in which I fit three separate, robust naps.
Present here in Albuquerque for nearly two weeks and I maybe taken one nap - and that was definitely move induced exhaustion that brought that on. I'm not knocking naps. I adore naps. Naps became an opiate. And here I thought emotional binge eating was my one uncontrollable weakness.
In any case, I'm here and entering a new phase. the fact that I am unemployed is only now sinking in, and the rush of unloading and unpacking is fading onto a new state of discovering how I'll spend my time. How will I define myself in this new space. Ok. That can't be "done." That will emerge, and I can shape how it will emerge.
