Once again, I am packing. Once again I am required to look consciously at the things that make me, “me”. My art supplies. I was an artist at one time. In the 60’s I painted with oils, I bought oil paints, I painted with watercolors, I bought watercolor paints. I tried it again sometime during the 80’s while I was married to Lance, then again in the late 90’s alone at Hauser, I bought pastels. The oils are gone, worn out. My mother’s oil paints I think I once had, thrown out long ago in some cleaning, clearing frenzy, much like the one I am going through now. The water colors have gone the same route. Gone. The pastels are still here, waiting, waiting for that part of me that wants to paint, to draw, to be an artist. The part of me that loves color. Books, Drawing the Light From Within, Drawing with Pastels, Madalas of Light, all books now packed into boxes, waiting in a storage room somewhere, waiting for the me that is buried so deep down under the surface I can hardly find her. Mo has a water color painting that I did once in a frame, something that Deanna found somewhere. All parts and pieces of me, that once were important, and now I wonder where they went, wonder who I am, really. Where is the motivation to do that kind of thing, all thoughts going through my mind as I pack up the pastels and pencils into a box called “sue’s art supplies”.
Sometime today I will dip into the drawers in the guest room, will dip into the belly dancing costumes, the jewelry, the yards of amazing fabric. All for another me, the one that wanted to be a dancer, but was never agile enough, or flexible enough, or strong enough. So that me did African dance and Tribal belly dance, that me played the djembe. Parts of me again buried, with the djembe in the corner, the belly dance skirts packed up into another box somewhere in storage, and the jewelry soon to be packed up into another box for my daughter, for melody, the one that still wants to dance and costume and still has the energy for art.
Where am I in all this? It’s a question I keep asking as I do this process of clearing and cleaning and packing. It’s a repeated refrain, boring in its repetition, boring so I try not to talk about it out loud. So far, the only true part of me that is alive is this same part that wants to write about it, that wants to write to find it, to write to find “me”. So I go pack up some more, look some more at the things I have kept, and remember the things that I haven’t, and in the process, work it down to the essence, the essence of “me”. It still eludes me, but I believe it is coming. Aging, moving, retiring, shifting, all of it is a process designed to pare it all down to essence. “I am because I am” kind of essence. “I am because I think” and “I am because I write”. “I am because I talk on the phone?” to my kids, to the few friends that are still around, to the very few people in my life who have boiled down to the last essence of me, who are still here to care.
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