I have no great scholarly mind, no quick and cutting wit, or beauty that would lead the best of men along an errant path. There is no wealth that showers me with luxuries, or life free of any pain. This is no grand proclamation, no self-depreciation. It is a statement of a fact. For the most part I am an ordinary woman, and yet I have lead at times a most extraordinary life.
I am an artist.
In my studio chiffon curtains literally dance with the wind, framing a bay window that looks beyond the sporadic movements of a small town street to a church steeple and a mountain range beyond. All around me are objects, antiquities and precious memories, important to no one but myself, enhancing the sumptuous world that I live and create in. For thirty-one years I’ve had a lover, companion, best friend who shares this world with me. I sit here in my solitude and reflect…this is a life that most women would covet…
and it is mine.
And yet what brought me here? What ambition born with the reality that no one is responsible for my destiny but me has lead me to the life that I lead now?
I love an orderly life. That is innate to who I am. And yet I overflow with passion that cannot always marry itself to that restriction. In my life there have always been what I referred to as my “demons”, whom I have willingly let pursue me, knowing that they force me to contemplate and compromise myself. These demons dance with me, they laugh at life and its reality, they mock the everyday integrities, and they do not hesitate to defy. Because of them I go into my studio, giving myself permission to confront the passions that haunt me, releasing them in my “art”.
Yet because of my aspirations, my disciplines, and focuses, I take the product of these zealous journeys out of my studio and into the real world of marketing, compromise and management, a world my spirits avoid. It is not always a glad expedition, yet I want so desperately to have what most women only covet that I will play the games that need to be played for the sake of the continuation of this life…
A cat sits at my feet. A picture of my children, grown and on their own, faces me on my desk. I’m getting ready for a one-woman show. My work surrounds me. I am where I should be at this moment.
The reality of this pretty picture, the fact that the cat is dying, my son is going blind and I am in no way ready for the show will not stop me from longing always for this existence and what it has afforded me as I’ve struggled to balance life. There is always a truth to who we are, even at our best…and ever at its’ worst I am an ordinary woman who has led an extraordinary life.
Monica
