trying to recapture something

I think I'm starting to get better. I feel a little more normal. I wish I could itch the inside of my throat. Unfortunately I have a huge gag reflex.

I painted a little sparrow today. She hit the front window yesterday... I spent two hours at least. It's an amazing feeling to challenge yourself. Keeping this watercolor sketch book is working myself in a way I never have. It's really gratifying. It kind of amazes me to look back on my past and see how afraid I was of color, so afraid I wouldn't touch it. I'm not afraid anymore, but I guess in part because I have tools and training now I didn't have then.

I had a dream about Ambika last night, I just remembered it. But just vaguely. She was resting on a chair in this vast building full of open rooms and corridors and I was standing over her talking to some other people. They were saying it was okay, that she was safe, she could wander everywhere in the building because the space belonged to her- but I was still afraid. My Ambika dreams are my gauge for how safe I feel with the most vulnerable parts of myself, the childlike parts. I'm hoping one day I have a dream where she can go anywhere and I'm not afraid. This is an improvement, but not all the way there...

Sigh, my original plan for christmas was to paint for people, watercolor from life... But christmas is a few days away and that never happened. I spent more money than I should have, but I feel okay about it...

I can't lie on my stomach and type, doesn't quite work, damn.

I'll try... I read a speech Bill Waterson gave to a graduating class today. It had a powerful effect on me. I wish I could memorize it and carry his words with me always, a reminder of what's important and to be me at all times. Something about it that would have shocked me in the past was a frankness about life, life after college, that made it rich and sad and real. Satisfying, his words were full, wonderful. It's good to be out of step with the world, very good. Some times I need a reminder because I so easily let the pace, perceptions, beliefs, and prejudices of the world legitimize or discredit my own choices and life. I forget so often and get caught up. Grrr at myself. Is that everything? Have I plumbed my expressable feelings? Something about it was so powerful for me, even just little things in it, like painting michelangelo's god and adam from the sistine chapel on his dorm ceiling, reminiscing on how he put more effort into that than any of his school work because it came from him, "I must obey the inexcruitable exhortations of my soul". That isn't right but I don't think I could easily look up the strip it came from. I was also really impacted by when he talked about being challenged to keep his strip fresh and learning by entering the mind of a six-year old boy everyday.

I was a little girl when Bill Waterson was writing and drawing Calvin and Hobbes. I loved the strip, for very different reasons from why I love and respect it now, as an adult. I didn't realize how much of the comic I didn't understand, I didn't care that it was full of words and concepts I couldn't comprehend, I didn't recognize the philosophic inquiries or the sadness that often permeated the lives of the characters and daily plots. I was a little kid who thought the comic was attractive and fun. Integrity is a powerful and rare thing. That was something else that he brought out in his speech. The recognition that if he commercialized Calvin and Hobbes that he would lose them, lose their identity and voice.

I'm going to bed.