using just my words

i try to take a walk every morning after i write. there is a loop i like to take around the north part of central park, which affords me a pleasant combination of people-watching and nature-observation that i find stimulating and inspiring.

today the wind kept gusting up in random bursts and shaking the leaves loose from the branches overhead. showers of yellow leaves drifted down in shafts of sunlight, like glittering golden coins, but moving more slowly,
like feathers
or molasses
or slow dancing.

it was like magic.

i realize that these are my favorite trees and i draw them often: trees with a few leaves...
perched on the precipice between fullness and hibernation,
introversion and extroversion
summer and winter.

poised in fall, like some glorious rite of passage, vibrant, proud, celebrated.

i didn't have that. responsibility and maturity rounded the corner on me at an early age and i'm just now starting to grieve it. the change. the loss of something. the birth of something else.

"how trite."
the critic in my mind scoffs at such suburban self-therapy speeches. but i don't know if comparison is the way to deal with suffering. although knowing that there are people with worse stories than mine could inspire a sense of gratitude in me, it doesn't change the fact that every human walking this earth suffers. and has hurt. baggage. regret. pain.

and everyone is free to choose how to live with that.

x,
sam

daily illustration

there was a huge storm that came through town last week and destroyed many of the trees in the northwest corner of central park, where i often take my afternoon walk.

i came upon a particularly large, freshly-cut tree stump and was compelled to count the rings. 83.
i stood there on the stump for a bit, thinking things over.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

my father died two years ago today.
it's really weird-feeling. hollow.

love,
sam

p.s. the daily drawings are still up on my flickr, where i had first dealt with my grieving.
also, you can view the above illustration larger by clicking on it and heading over to my flickr.

empty

if you open me up,
i'm afraid you'll find
i'm empty,
i'm empty inside

but where has it gone?
where could it hide?
i'm empty,
i'm empty inside

see, i lost my heart
the day he died
i'm empty,
i'm empty inside

so if you open me up,
i'm afraid you'll find
i'm empty,
i'm empty inside.

like raindrops

They came in that stillness, like they always do when you slow it down… they came like rain, a little at first, then more steady, splashing in big drops all around my body as I lay there like dead.

I remembered losing that little plastic shoe to my new Barbie and closing my eyes real tight and wishing for it to reappear and then opening them again to see it right in front of me on the driveway and knowing that it was a miracle.

I remembered, pulling the garden hose up the ladder to the top of the slide and running it all afternoon to make a water-slide. And later, getting in trouble for the giant mud pit that it made at the bottom.

I remembered hiding at the top of the swing-set during hide and seek, heart racing, not sure if my hiding spot was visible from the ground, but knowing that if it wasn’t, I was definitely going to win. And I remembered staying up there for much longer than I should have, enjoying my lonely victory.

i'm not here.

i float through my days, feet never touching the ground. i float down my street, across the town and in my apartment where the ceilings are high, i float way up to the top.
and i'm touching everything with rubber gloves so i don't leave a trace - because i'm not really here.

i'm in 1988 playing scrabble with my father. 1989: raking up leaves on that interminably long driveway and my father is shaking his head at me while i am screaming about caterpillars, which truly frighten me. i'm in the garage in 1997: sitting in the front seat of the jetta, which itself sits on blocks, as my father takes apart the struts and shocks and puts them back together again from memory, only to realize he forgot a piece, so takes them back apart and puts them back together again, a second time.

i'm in 2007: a few months before he died, cutting and laying stick-on linoleum tiles with him in the tanning salon while visiting from florida. i am coming up with a good solution for fitting the angled end pieces, and i think he is proud of me for it. we always bonded over problem-solving. that, and our dry sense of humor... mostly enhanced by my mother's theatrical tendencies (which i also inherited, much to my chagrin.) but we had the common sense and the sarcasm to ourselves.

it was hard for him to watch me grow up. it was hard for me to watch him grow old.

so i'm not really here. i'm floating. i'll be back soon, but i just can't tear myself away.

nyc walk

i stopped walking at that moment. thinking about my father and how i always think about him when i smoke - or was it the other way around?

it was impossibly hot and humid outside and something about the moment, sitting there in the semi-dark, seemed ripe to get it all on paper... this intangible feeling.

i missed him - always would - and would welcome any moment to remember him.

across the street the sounds of basketball and sneakers stopping short on polished wood drifting out of a second story window brings me full circle to john wooden and his life lessons in threes. my father loved threes too.

it all seems to matter.

new piece and musings

i finally finished a new piece yesterday evening and here it is! i had picked up a book of rilke poems about three weeks ago and immediately started tabbing pages that seemed to inspire a visual.

this one was forefront in my mind, so here's the piece. i posted the english translation from the book on flickr.

speaking of art, i am trying to start the 12-step creative recovery program called "the artist's way". i say "trying" because the course has daily writings and homework that are about an hour per day and i just haven't made space in my routine yet. (although i have started reading the actual book). it just kept coming up in conversation and i have been feeling a little restless lately, so i hoped it might help me deal with whatever stands between me and a healthy sense of creative contentment and rhythm.

lastly, as the temperatures bob up and down, the highs are getting higher and i can tell spring is trying to arrive. it's been so long since i've lived somewhere with seasons (kindergarten) and there's something so magical about watching buds appear tentatively on long, skeletal branches and seeing rain on the forecast instead of only snow.

sorry for the long break in communication. hope everyone is well!
sam