This Finger-Painted Life

A day for finger-painting. My life is finger-painting. Messy, imprecise, a mix of colors, textures, splatters, lines. Nothing is exact - paint runs. Nothing is quite 'realistic' - fingers are tools more for ideas than details. And this paper isn't meant for the kind of image I want to create. You see, I like detail and realism - I like Durer's work, for example. That's what I want me to be like. But I'm not, and my art isn't, and my life certainly is not.

It feels, instead, that I am an awkward child, standing before an easel, only a few colours available. I imagined something beautiful, precise, detailed, but my fingers can't create that. All I can make is a mess, a simple, basic image full of mistakes and drips that doesn't look anything like my dreams.

This is what my living feels like, sometimes. Often. What my relating feels like. I'm not quite sure what I want, what my materials are capable of, how to translate what's in my head and heart onto the page.

So when I pause, wiping the paint on my pants because I've no spare rags, I am not satisfied with what I see. I want it to be better - more organized, more lovely, more balanced, more easily identified. This isn't what I wish I could do. Could be. And so I stop, critical, and questions pile in. A chunk of paint drops to the floor.

But then I look at my pots of paint - at what I do with my time, at who I'm investing myself in, at all the pieces of me - and I like those colours. I've specifically chosen them all. Looking at them, my fingers remember - I remember - what the paint feels like, and into the paint I dip my hands, and back onto the page.

Because I like this finger-painted life. It may not look pretty to anyone, I may get frustrated by my inability to make it look the way I imagined (or the way others say it should look), but I'm enjoying it, by golly!

I'd rather paint my own messy life now, you see, that give up, throw out my paints, and start over. So I'll keep going. (Say it again, me, I will keep going.) I don't know what it will look like in the end. My fingers may become stained with paint - and the floor, too. But I like these paints. I like using them. I like all these parts of my life - how they look individually, and how they mix in surprising ways. And so I remember this, and choose the remembering of the joys, and frustration fades again, and on I go - on I will go - painting my messy life.

And, somehow, it is beautiful to me.

leap day

yesterday
was the rarest day,
holding expectation and shaking
glory flakes
down
down

and i watched them as if for the first time, wonder-filled as they tipped branches and slowly transformed dead brown grass to white
white
white.

from inside i watched.
this day happens only once
every four years:
wonder.

the evening was mine.
i moved slowly.
i thought simple thoughts while stirring the pots.
my soul doth magnify.
blessed be He.
for You are with me.

dish soap bubbles collected in the sink.
my hands were clean.
hot peppermint brew warmed me.
it was my evening.

just me,
alone,
in my kitchen.