maybe, maybe not

There's a list of things for me to be working on but I just can't manage to get my forehead out of my cradling hand long enough to do them. The whole bloody stupid weekend-art-show was a glorified headache and my skull is still sore. I feel that if I fail to gently hold it in one piece the whole mass will explode. I feel like there's too much blood trying to shove its way through miles and miles of capillaries - if only i could just drain some of it out.

I had a dream last night that the mice were back. Maybe they are? Maybe some new thing has come in to gnaw at my sanity and fray the carefully maintained edges? Maybe...

Maybe I'm not really an artist at all, but just a person with a lot of paint brushes. Even as I walked around looking at other artists' work this weekend i noticed how they seemed to have a cohesion and repetition from piece to piece that I don't. And where I do have themes it seemed to be held up to ridicule. "oh look, circles!". hm. Is there something definite that I should be saying? Is there some way I should be simpler than I am? Am i not sketching and pre-thinking enough? Am I not hitting folks over the head enough? Am I just not really very good? Is that why nothing sold? Besides the economy and the million things which can play into a fair like that... is my work just crap? I look around at the piles of framed paintings I've brought back home and have half a mind to smash the lot to bits. Destroy the evidence of this cruel joke I've been playing upon myself. Use that room as a bedroom and nix the idea of having a studio. maybe. I hide the hammer from myself, nonetheless.

I look into the mirror at body features nature designed to nurture life but which never have. And now they have the nerve to begin unhinging themselves from original locations and heading south. Maybe I'm not really a woman, just another body running around the planet & sucking up resources. I may as well not have a gender anymore.

They tell you, all those well meaning parents, ministers and sunday school teachers, that your life has a purpose. That you are meant to let your light and your talents shine. Maybe they're wrong. Maybe there really is not room enough for all the light and the talents? Maybe inspiration isn't enough? maybe some of us are just here to be junky under-layer of humanity which allow the few best to glisten in contrast to our muddy, muddled lives.

"That's just self-pity!" She yells at me. Maybe. I know whatever it is it's not going to change the fact that I am a person who needs to wear a bra and that I also tend to take my brushes and make marks on paper. But maybe any joy that stemmed from both has faded to black. maybe. maybe not.