Waking

January 2014

“What makes it so beautiful? …All these years I’ve had it, and it still surprises me.  I go for weeks without looking at it and then, suddenly, it jumps out at me as if to say don’t forget”.

“Art does that”, Jericho says.  “It keeps us awake”.

After the excitement of the New Year, there is the return to work and even an attempt at resolutions, which for me are rapidly swamped by a backlog of tasks and the challenge of keeping children on holidays happily distracted.  I ignore the memory of a Christmas voice saying ‘don’t forget’ and apply my faculties to more productive tasks, jobs and chores.  There are always many of those.

It seems each day I slip into a trance-like state from the moment I get up, put on the coffee and the first load of laundry, check my emails (as I have coffee) and flag those to return to after readying the children for the day.  I begin the day, after day, after day ‘don’t forget’ interrupting my thinking when I’m unexpectedly startled by beauty.  If I’m brave, I hold still.

I wake up and out of mugginess that obscures my vision for a day fresh with the promise of hope realised.  I shake off obligation.  I seek out the beauty made by others… what we call art… and the beauty simply made.  I awake! 

Waking, I work with less haze and less fear.  If it’s not done, it’s ok.  The world will keep turning and I will let go of duty: of pressure.  I move as I work, paying attention to details that matter and people who matter: the work of their lives the art that arrests my soul and whispers ‘don’t forget’.

Image: Amanda Humphries, oil on canvas, 2010

Reference: Drusilla Modjeska (2012) The Mountain p.259-260