My Valentine

I suppose everyone who writes on a regular basis has to come to terms with the inevitable feeling that right now I have nothing to say. Actually I find the feeling quite liberating. At the same time, because I am such a know-it-all I suppose, I have this burning feeling that if I don’t say something, anything, I am going to scream. It is not about talking or about saying anything at all. It is about creating.

“A million things to say, and nothing to say” said my wife. Absolutely right!

The new schedule, work, research for school, the extra hours that J. needs for work makes time feel like a jumble of random facts colliding together. Every semester, for the last four years, we have had to reinvent our routine, come up with a new set of compromises to make it all come out. I think we both feel that creativity takes a hit in these periods, as we are forced to focus on what we think we have to do, and art and writing become relegated to the things we want to do. Creativity, thank god, isn’t so easily suppressed for those that know the burning urge to create.

For me creation is a very solitary act, while J. seems to move fluidly between making for herself, and making art with friends, an act that seems to invigorate and inspire the participants to greater depths of friendship even as it often yields the most delightful and spontaneous works of art.

As the urge to create rises up out of me I feel a kind of cocoon forming around my thoughts, a place where they can grow and transform. Sometimes it leaves me feeling very isolated, though this feeling disappears quickly as I invite J. to view the work in its various sages of completion. She is one of the few people that seem to naturally understand that an unfinished work is just that, unfinished, and won’t criticize what isn’t there. It is a rare gift.

“The angel was already in the marble,” said Michelangelo. “All I had to do was remove the bits around her.”

That feels right. Even though I can’t always see the finished product in my minds eye, I know that it is there, the pulsing chrysalis yearning to break free.

Talking to J. yesterday she recounted the craziness of the schedule, of trying to raise four kids, to make ends meet and find time enough to get the things we have to do done. Grateful, she told me of the support network of friends that she has that have given her time and food and a clarity that can only come from the gift of friendship. Grateful I thought about how our relationship has evolved over time, that it is flexible enough to handle the changes of schedule and the demands of life, and at the same time allows for growth and creativity.