The Hours.

"At this moment there are infinite possibilities, whole hours ahead. Her mind hums. This morning she may penetrate the obfuscation, the clogged pipes, to reach the gold. She can feel it inside her, and all but indescribably second self, or rather a parallel, purer self. If she were religious, she would call it the soul. It is more than the sum of her intellect and her emotions, more than the sum of her experiences, though it runs like veins of brilliant metal through all three. It is an inner faculty that recognizes the animating mysteries of the world because it is made of the same substance, and when she is very fortunate she is able to write directly through that faculty. Writing in that state is the most profound satisfaction she knows, but her access to it comes and goes without warning. She may pick up her pen and follow it with her hand as it moves across the paper; she may pick up her pen and find that she's merely herself, a woman in a housecoat holding a pen, afraid and uncertain, only mildly competent, with no idea about where to begin or what to write". 

That is an excerpt from "The Hours", the novel by Michael Cunningham. I've read it once before and I'm reading it again, this time picking up on what I missed the last time. I love reading books more than once. They will always mean something to me, and always something different and new each time I read it. There are always elements that slip under our radar until maybe the third or fourth time we read it, and we wonder how we didn't see it all along.

Back in February I talked about how I struggle to be consistent with my drawing, and how I happen upon a good sketch as though it were something I'd forgotten I'd lost but am delighted to find again. This paragraph from "The Hours" is an exact description of that experience. The first time I read the book, I wasn't in an artistic state of mind and I moved over this paragraph without a backward glance. But reading it again a few days ago, I was immediately struck by it.

Last night in class, I had one of those fleeting moments. At first there was resistance. I was drawing but I could feel myself pushing in an unnatural direction that makes a sound in my head like nails on a chalkboard. Then without warning the resistance dissolved. It felt like when you restlessly move about in bed and then suddenly you roll into the most comforting, enveloping position and fall peacefully off to sleep. The first thing I thought was "there you go". I managed to get one good sketch, a few poems, and part of some song lyrics out of it. The sketch is by no means brilliant. It's not genius or mind blowing. It's done on binder paper with some half hearted class notes off to the side. But these small moments of success are comforting to me. There's a distinct sense of despair when you know there are images and words inside of you that you're unable to do justice to at your own will. Being able to release even one picture, or one poem, leaves you feeling a little bit lighter. Even if it's just for the day.

-LG