At this morning's table, two poets and one painter. We reach for red grapes and sugar pastries, coffee and chai, and taste the easy overlap of conversation discussing the "process" in our art. Our sentences weave an overlap of excitement and acknowledgement that, when it's working, makes for a superb tangle, and heads nod in agreement.
One describes egg tempura. Another proposes poetry "not quite so bleak" to serve to her students. We place our soft palms on our chins like teacups on saucers and drink. A very fat robin takes to the top seat of lattice in the window out of doors in my most direct view. It isn't distracting; it's part of it all. The light, the tastes, the warm cup in my other hand.
We solicit images of just how our lives could have gone another way - and just how they still could—how we might have chosen more of a hermit's life, as artists only, forfeiting our daughters, seated in solitary zazen in our studios—painting the sky, for example, painting the sky slowly with very tiny brushstrokes with only ourselves as audience.
I reach for another bite of sweet bread.
We dissect just what recognition might really look like. And of what stirs our souls, what we grapple with, and what it feels like when someone we love tells us that they love our work, be it a meal, a mural, a film.
Another bite. Slow gulp. Lemon ginger echinacea with honey.
One paraphrases a line from the prayer of St. Francis of Assisi as we speak of listening, really listening to one another:
...grant that I may not so much seek...to be understood as to understand.
I balance the light on the end of my tongue.
Such a carver with words!
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