Only the pale white light of midwinter slips faintly through the balconies. I drip a few drops of fennel essence on the salt lamp and listen to the silence of this house. My body grows light as a feather. Facebook reminds me that seven years ago today I was baking bread with heritage grains.
In February, geraniums have sparse leaves, and this reminds me of Massimo and his brilliant, reckless way of writing. Defiant, yet gentle, understated, never disruptive — just planting a doubt, a divergent and poetic vision. Simple, confined to pure observation, yet a hundred times more interesting than what everyone else sees. I always told him to write. Everything always tells me that I am here for this: a midwife of talents, the kind that lets you give birth in water, under the shade of courage, with little pain. Pain is useless to those who see beyond.
I’ve been reflecting on the need to leave empty spaces in one’s day. Spaces filled with nothing. Not actual meditation — that doesn’t work for me. Force me to do something and I feel instantly claustrophobic, even if I force myself. Better a fixed gaze out the window, sinking into an armchair, eyes lost in the void, drifting into real boredom, with no stimuli at all. It matters, because otherwise the energy that brings you what you need, what you long for — where does it enter? Every passage is blocked.
Since early January, I’ve begun a new work, on a piece of cotton sheet not too thin. Large cotton flowers, set on the left side of a square field. I took inspiration from an artist named Lilit Sarkisian, who draws flowers everywhere — in this case across the walls of a house. You can see one of her works in the image below.
I also looked at many real photos of cotton flowers. Sadly, I’ve never seen them in person. I added a dry leaf and a few closed buds to my design. This gives the piece that downward weight a graphic cannot do without. And it helps me with my own need to root myself, to keep my feet on the ground when I must.
Not that I wish to give up my innate ability to drift away in an instant. Anywhere, with anyone. But with time I’ve learned there are a few steady points that help us artists materialize what circles in our heads and beats in our stomachs. And one of these — a true turning point for me — is the daily constancy of doing.
Even if I only have to reflect or plan what I want to work on, I’ve long since kept the healthy habit of dedicating two or three hours each day solely to embroidery. Winter, summer, holidays, weekends — nothing distracts me. And if I skip a day or two, I make up the hours in the days that follow. This helps me not scatter myself, something common to all creatives. And it is one of the most important reasons why people don’t reach the results they long for.
Another mindset I’ve had to work hard on, and still do, though less often now, is: “Who could ever like what I do?” This self-devaluation probably comes from some ancestral collective karma, or from discouraging parents. But it makes no sense in art, because art is not created to please. Art exists for itself. It has the dignity to live in whatever form it takes — to be cherished by those who resonate with it, despised when needed, or ignored altogether.
If only we had this awareness and the strength to carry it into everyday life, when as teenagers we worry about pleasing this one or that one — how much more serene our existence would be.
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