anticipation

I move through my days with the feeling that something special is happening, and it is clearly the anticipation of the residency in Farrera that is causing the mood. I have seldom in my life done something so forward looking, on my own, in a blatant and direct attempt to explore myself and my self-expression without impediment. Far from feeling narcissistic, the sense is rather a combination of opportunity and curiosity and excitement. A chance to be free for a while of the demands and expectations of others. To have the time and space to focus on my own demands and expectations, to reflect on my life and what I am doing, to celebrate existence and all the wealth that it contains. To not need to play external social roles that take me away from the centering sense of who I am and how I express my self. To come home to myself over a length of time that allows me, I hope, to arrive at a new level of understanding of how I relate to the world around me. Not the social world, but the natural world, and the spiritual world (for lack of a better term). The latter two come first, and the social world follows their dictates, in my little hierarchy of life.

That said, I came up against the proverbial wall today (I knew it was coming, though I'd hoped against). I am experimenting more freely with the various media that I plan to take along, and I'm feeling more comfortable with them, but I ran into barriers today that are not the materials but rather my use of them. In other words, signing up for a residency and playing with new paints has not answered the question of what I want to say and how I want to say it.

Still, those larger questions are what I hope to address in Farrera, and the fact that the same issues are cropping up in mixed-media-on-paper just as they did in oil-&-cold-wax-on-board should not surprise me. I guess I had hoped for a miraculous little leap over those same old difficulties that would leave the road wide open and unencumbered when I get to Spain.