EXCERPT FROM SARA’S JOURNALNovember 14, 1998
Cameyrac et St. Sulpice
I miss my studio. It took a month to find that apartment and it suited
our needs perfectly for two years. My mother observed that I had taken the best room. In
celebration of Virginia Woolf I had, and it was. The floor sloped to a trench where the
radiator sunk into it. The windows rippled with their massiveness and senility. The sills
were furry with a dust pelt, providing a haphazard anchor for my flicks and splatters.
Nothing in the apartment was sharp. The moldings, doorframes and corners were stratified
with cracked lead and enamel icing that rounded and softened the structure with each new
tenant’s application. They will carbon date my presence in that room with the
evidence of glue, latex primer, and oil scuffs encrusted with the hair of an Airedale.
I miss my books which are now boxed and collecting must in the dank,
uninsulated studio at my childhood home in British Columbia. The building perches at the
edge of certain drowning on the eroding bank of the Nicomeckel River.
I miss the consolation of the impartial days in my studio. Its
serendipity holds my attention with its offerings. Paintings drift into one another with
beginnings and endings, and the continuous fulfillment of snowflake-sized creative tasks
builds the armature for a joy-devoted life. The Art-storm looms and I ingest its
particles.
The start, complete, start, complete circle is punctuated with
spirit-kissing moments. Achievements are rewarded with a dog-snuggle or visit with
friends. The rituals of our days in Vancouver arouse a lonely sigh. I am looking at a
calendar of infinite days. It has occurred to me that in having no return date, I feel a
little homesick. I think it is the uncertainty of the duration, and what is going to
happen here. With no plan, unending possibilities, and no time limit, one has nothing to
focus on but the present. This is the true nature of a free and creative life! It is
scary! We are not living for something in the future. We are not waiting for a moment when
we will have more time, more freedom, more money or more curiosity. There is here, here is
now, and I understand why it is a frightening prospect to drop everything and live here.
But in the studio, there is always something else. A yearning. The
studio taunts me with needs for new stimuli. This itch summons the journey-tonic. The
journey then cries out for my books and the entire Montessori. Now that I am living in my
France painting, the task at hand is to absorb the invigorating tonic and collect material
for the armature. This vantagepoint reveals a dream horizon and my field of vision swells.
Happiness is bolted in the hinge of its exploration.
