Art Tips for a Struggling Artist
I’d been dreaming, or I thought it was a dream when I awoke under the overpass with boxes flying toward me. Again. I’d been in this exact place before, some call it déjà vu. I just call it my reality — think Groundhog Day on steroids — as I never know quite when it will hit. My life plays on an unending loop like a stuck record, though permutations and deviations keep me always poised to act.
Under the El overpass in my car, I was headed to my office job I no longer wanted or needed. Not that I’m independently wealthy, but I make enough from my side hustle to keep me in cheese sandwiches as Margaret Atwood says. I write little pieces for a how-to arts magazine (yes, there is such a thing) published for a small elite audience who pay dearly for their copy, as it cannot be found online. For a substantial fee, the wannabe artists — be they performance artists or any other media — get the inside scoop they think no one else can find. They pay for their private gurus. Each copy of each edition is printed solely per subscription. The artist receives something tailor-made for her or him.
It arrives in their snail mail one day a month, never twice on the same day. It arrives exactly when they need that little nudge, that little spur in their backside to give them incentive to get on with their particular artist’s journey.
My day job waited. One last day, for I was determined to resign by day’s end. Yet here I was under the overpass with boxes flying. Accident up ahead. I ducked instinctively, simultaneously slamming on the brakes. That’s when my latest inspiration, an old blue ceramic bowl, came zooming toward the front seat from its safe place in the rear. I caught a glimpse in the rearview mirror along with the crystal blue eyes of my passenger, my confused mother. Ah, this was one of those daydreams where I’d brought my dead mother along. She is not in the repeating loop most days, but every now and then she shows up. She’s always as bewildered by her arrival as I am.
Her reflexes were quick. She caught the bowl before it crashed into my skull (Thank goodness for motherly protective instincts in this loop — this was new). But her fingers fumbled to catch hold and the bowl crashed on the stainless steel coffee mug in the cup holder. Cracked, not broken. Unusable for much but sitting on a shelf, not unlike me.
Mother’s eyes grew wide, blinked. She was dressed, not in the hospital gown I’d last seen her wearing when alive, but in a chic suit circa a 1950s Doris Day film. Mother was young too in this iteration — maybe the age she’d been before she married my father and bore me. This was another first. A random thought: if she wasn’t my mother yet, where had the protective instinct come from? The loop was really loopy this morning.
“Who are you?” she asked. “Watch out!” she yelled before I could answer. I swiveled in the direction she pointed.
A box flew in through the passenger window. It was as if time had stopped or sped up, either way, again my mother had saved me a painful blow to my head. I deflected the cardboard box, a small one, and it fell onto the empty passenger seat. Not for the first time did I wonder why no one other than my mother chose to accompany me on these wild forays into my subconscious — even though I’m completely conscious on the journey. As I said, it’s my reality, and it’s not drug induced. I’ve been checked — mental illness is not a factor either. No excuses, and I can’t ever escape my reality, merely need to live it.
“Weave through on the shoulder and we’ll get to Fourth Street.” Again Mother pointed with a long, graceful finger. “We’ll avoid the crash site and get back on the freeway at the next entrance.”
I followed her directions and as we moved past the debris and crumpled cars, I noticed no one seemed particularly injured. A man stood beside his blue 1955 Chevy shaking his head. Join the club, buddy, I thought.
Once we crawled past him, I did a double-take. He looked vaguely familiar, but I could not place the face.
“Should we help him?” Mother asked.
“I really need to get to work,” I answered, but then got a closer gander at the man. Impossible, and yet here he was — someone I hadn’t seen since I was eight. He’d been killed in a car crash shortly after midnight on Friday the 13th under a full moon. My father.
“Please stop,” she said.
The story flooded back — how Mother had met him by chance on her way to her dream job as a legal secretary — here I’d always inserted Della Street, a là Perry Mason in my mind, though my mother was blonde. There had been a pile up on the new highway and she’d asked the taxi driver to stop when she saw a man.
It was my chance to get out of my loopy life. I’d never contemplated suicide as an option before, but I had a choice here. If I didn’t stop, my parents would never meet, but if I did stop, they would meet, go out on ten dates, and marry six weeks later in a stereotypical whirlwind romance. My mother would quit her dream job, and they would go on to have three children.
And all it would take would be for me to press the accelerator. I contemplated how it would happen, would I simply disappear? Or would there be pain as my body fought to remain in this world my mind was constantly trying to escape?
I braked.
While my soon-to-be mother went to my soon-to-be father, I watched, then looked down at the bowl. Cracked for sure, beyond repair, but perhaps not completely useless.
The box on the passenger seat piqued my interest. I grasped it and tore open the box though I should have returned it to the delivery company’s truck driver. Inside, a copy of “Art Tips for the Struggling Artist.” I’d never seen a published copy as it was presented to the subscriber and I wasn’t a subscriber.
Then I scanned the articles, wondering if any of mine had appeared in this issue. No such luck, but on Table of Contents: “Never Start a Story with a Dream,” “Self Acceptance for Artists,” “Finding Inspiration in Your Past,” “A Cracked Bowl is Art.” I returned to the cover. An artist’s rendition of a car crash under the El, complete with flying boxes.
Yes, definitely one of the more loopy loops. Immediately, the scene around me shifted and I parked outside my office. Time to quit.
