Morning Pages — 1

Somehow, I’ve become divorced from my inner artist.

This process wasn’t intentional — it’s the culmination of a full life. I’m corporate these days, a mother, a wife, and the various tasks involved with all of these things tend to consume the other parts of a person, the other parts that make you whole. I work like an American, meaning if I work 7 to 7 and keep checking email into the late hours of the evening, I feel settled enough to wake up and do the same thing again and again. The last three years have been a whirlwind of activity — engagement, fellowships, marriage, pregnancy, launch one, baby, freelancing, deaths, drama, launch two, reconciliation, toddlerhood, launch three. I hadn’t really felt like myself since…well. Paris, 2012. Perhaps that was why I put all this in motion, accepted an invitation to a conference in Europe, built a week long vacation around it, and actually stuck with my promise to do nothing.

Maybe something inside of me knew I needed to return to truly reflect.

The last time I stood in Paris, I was a different person — single, free(lancing). I spent three glorious weeks indulging myself. First, in Paris, relying on my rusty high school level french to navigate the 3rd, listening to Generations Radio, just walking the streets. I didn’t do anything but be. Later, I joined up with the art and yoga retreat I had signed up for, spent a few scheduled days in Paris that I don’t remember, and spent a week in Provence that is still with me in vivid detail: every red wildflower that died in my hands, the scent of lavender, the sun drenched countryside, the walk up the mountain that almost killed me, the trout almondine I ate overlooking the cliffs in Gourdon, the creek behind the crumbling french estate where we wrote, the silent breakfasts, the trees, the earth, the loud, rural, quiet, the day trips to the Antibes, the riot of colors in the market, the olive oil you could drink like a shot.

The warmth of the sun.

I had been an artist for years then, but it was the first time I felt it in my bones — divorced from the need to make a living, pleasure reading Murakami’s 1Q84 and Julia Child’s My Life in France, just spending my time with an art journal and some quiet.

I was an artist.

But somehow, over the years, I went farther and farther from that reality. I put myself in worlds of code and product, of money and management, and I don’t really write anymore. I don’t go to gallery openings. I don’t read the new thing, I don’t watch the new thing, I haven’t watched a movie with subtitles in a few years. All inconceivable to the old me, the one who mapped out film festivals and spent almost all of her meager earnings on art. The one who saved and scrimped for an entire year to afford those glorious three weeks in France. The one who knew how far she came, and the one who remembered that her life was hers to shape.

(Somehow, I’ve gone from the person who enthusiastically attends film festivals to absorb the artistic genius of others to a person who is invited to speak at them, can only go for three hours, and spends the whole time networking. WTF?)

And so, a return is necessary. But how? We cannot go backwards in life, only forward. My life is different. To wit: I’m not writing this in a special writing room, burning some bougiee parfumee I picked up in Paris while thinking deeply about the meaning of life. My child woke me up at 6 AM because he’s still on UK time and we played video games in spite of my best intentions to write my morning pages before I did anything to pollute my dreaming mind. He’s currently sitting next to me, watching a children’s video with the volume too loud, eating Cheese-its because I haven’t made him breakfast while the dog farts in front of me.

When they show the lives of writers, these parts are never there. I just watched Nora Ephron’s movie, and I don’t see this messiness anywhere. I’m sure, somewhere, it’s there. I just can’t see it yet.

I haven’t had a room of my own in a while, and it doesn’t look like one is coming any time soon. So I guess the only solution is to steal some time back.

And maybe, steal a little of my old self out of the past in the process.