I'm tired, and I'm behind on everything, and I haven't done my taxes yet, and I have a show to get ready for, and I'm slow. I'm painting slowly and I'm being more cautious than I like to be, the way you navigate stairs when you have a hangover, the way you grab the bannister instead of running down, jumping down the last three steps. In the last few months I have developed a bunch of allergies which mean that I am more or less constantly breaking out in hives. I am planning classes. I am supporting a couple of dying people. I am lying awake at night worrying about my friends, worrying about my kids, worrying about the planet. I am afraid of the summer. I am afraid of the fires. My dog has developed epilepsy.
I am behind on laundry, the dog had a seizure and peed on the bed last night and I had to get up and strip the sheets and then couldn't get back to sleep. The bumper of my car is held on with baling twine. Details of the sexual assaults I have experienced come up at inopportune times. Anxiety comes and never quite goes. Bills roll in. I need to buy panels. I need to buy paint. I need to prime boards. I need to pack and ship. I go to the farmer's market and buy healthy food and cook it in a hurry and eat it in front of the tv and we're all on our phones. I should be reading. I should be writing. If I slip and break my wrist I'll be homeless in two months. I will never be able to retire. I will never be able to buy a house. I will never relax.
But also, the tree in front of our house is full of birds and every day all day is full of their singing. Hawks and crows are pulling small branches out of the trees behind the shop for their nests. My children are happy and healthy and they love me, and my dog, between seizures, is fine. The melting snow and the ice on the river, the spring wind and budding trees and the green coming up through the edges of everything say spring still has hope in it and you have hope in you too. I do, and I have more happiness than this moment in history can account for. It is what it is, all of it, it's just living. A few dozen feet from where I sit there's a building full of my work, finished, half finished, just started, all of it waiting for me, all of it patient, all of it full of the grace of this life.
