SO MUCH FOR A DOT

Woke up this morning with an image from my dreamscape...I saw a white rotary telephone and in the middle of it there was a red circle...a button to push for emergencies. It all had something to do with my mother and in that sweet place of right brain thinking, I began to let other images color the landscape. A conversation I had with my sister over her MRI yesterday where she said..."There was a surgeon but all I remember about her was her red blouse and her ruby necklace" Then my friend Jill approaching me at the Locals Challenge cocktail party to tell me about a large male cardinal she spotted in her dwarf cherry tree yesterday. I thought of the Japanese flag...a white field with a red circle on it...and our family ritual meal for celebration being sushi. That brought back a conversation in the chairlift with a young man who shared a secret...that in the kitchen at a local sushi place, the kitchen staff likes to cook steaks and hamburgers for themselves one night a week. Then I remembered a poem I wrote about a red spot on a field of snow and the portending...a sad moment for a small animal whose vital fluids left the mark but a triumphant moment for a hungry raptor who seized the opportunity and the moment to feed his strength and to take his meal. That brought back a story from another friend about her dog going missing for less than 3 minutes and coming back covered in fresh red blood. My little brain is perking with the snippetts of images and conversations, weaving some kind of meaning into what might otherwise seem like unrelated subjects. Suddenly, there is a focal point for all kinds of associations.

The fresh snow is falling fast and furiously. It is a quiet blanket that lays a mantle of silence over everything. And in the extra white extra silent atmosphere, an angry redness beats against my right ear as I busy myself doing the things that I've told myself are more important than creative expression...like cleaning, fireplace sweeping, food preparation...anything but creative play when creative play is all I seem to want. There's a red dot on that white field too. And any white field of my life has an army of naysayers hanging around and telling me to wait...wait till the house is clean, wait till the food is cooked..ssshhhh...don't speak up. Oh no...don't mess up. I can hear my 2nd grade teacher with her pointy red polished fingernails pointing straight at me and her witches voice yelling DEAD DUCK. How did Tidiness become the Queen of my life? How did that iron clasp of shuffling around incedental nothings become the important center of my life? No wonder there is a feeling of emptiness in my heart . I've become so adept at avoiding the error of my ways...ie expressing myself honestly and creatively...that I have warded off all the love and pleasure and juice to focus my energies on sweeping ashes, making beds, doing laundry and creating food. In my effort to follow directions for the tyrant witch of my second grade art class, I have censored my deepest uniqueness...put my hands over my ears and pretended to not hear the urges of story coming across the radio waves. And whats really pathetic about all this is that I've been wrestling with it all my life. The effort becomes boring and ineffective. My poor little inner bird chick wants satisfaction. She is tired of going through the motions of freeing up the inner artist and then not giving her a time and place to play.

Sooo...the white blanket of snow...a long awaited storm day and an openness to receiving some help from the universe...I ran outside with my spray paint and made a big red splotch on the white snow to see if there was something there...something trying to speak to me...something I try to close my ears to...and what did I get? I got the open white moment and the opportunity to make my mark. My heart beats a red blotch...a period...a dot...a life lost for a life gained. A red splat is vital...a new beginning...a sun rising...new life in the midst of cold white nothingness...a trail. I placed that red splat at the base of the family totem pole and now it is a prayer...a prayer for the healing power of red to step forward from the backround of white...to take the risk and put itself out there...to say yes to life and to love and Fuck you, to Miss Pelletier. That red spot is a calling...it is a new beginning. So Lisa...take that red dot and turn it into a line. Go ahead. I dare you.