Free Bird

{Primal}

Everyday life intrudes without permission. I have a fear of insects — anything that moves. I’ve taken on the fruit flies — by which I mean I’ve accepted them as one of us. Their persistent curiosity — hovering at the edge of a fragrant meal — fragrant that is, with fruit or wine or cheese or even meat. Spiders are supposed to bring good luck and wisdom. I distinguish them from insects as insect killers. I maintain a fearful distance, especially from jumping spiders — who have no fear and bounding curiosity. I follow their movements across the wall and marvel at their dance. I cringe at cobwebs in disgusted fascination and clean up regularly after their meals. Insects of all varieties. Desiccated. Drained of their blood.

I was once deeply startled by what transpired to be a gecko in the wood pile — then watched as it exited, positioned itself. Shat. And then went back to the woodpile to continue looking for insects. I was privy to two geckos mating on the outside wall beneath the security light. I was witness to their cannibalistic destruction of everything I thought was good about them. I babysat a young gecko as it climbed my bedroom walls at night. I wondered and worried about where and how it would find food and water. Geckos are prolific, but they also have a pretty high attrition rate. They have serious powers, besides clambering on walls and hunting termites. Their vision is a more advanced color night vision — extra rods or somesuch.

Birds aren’t descended from dinosaurs — they are dinosaurs that evolved. Or so they say, and there is some debate, but there’s great poetry in imagining that they have existed all along. Like imagining small mammals like rats populating an entire planet. I want to be right with the natural world, but it keeps throwing insects at me. Being outside makes me itch intolerably. I’ve swallowed many insects — and been stung by a few. I’ve genuinely cheered on the birds hunting off the electric wires and scavenging on the ground. I once watched two birds chase each other under the car, one of them holding a giant praying mantis, which it devoured with complete determination not to share. I live in fear of the Nairobi Eye, or Fly, which is actually a Beetle. Brush it off, don’t smash it. It’s not a bite, it’s the acid insides, but is that something I’ll remember when confronted by an ambiguous itch? I remember the stink bugs that I wound up researching and discovering alarming varieties of them that didn’t exactly look alike. So now everything is a stink bug and my only offense is a defense — don’t let them in, don’t antagonize or scare or startle the thing. It’s the smell of musty garlic crotch and it’s next to impossible to get rid of. In the end, it was vinegar and something else — and burning sage. The thing dropped on a single spot on the counter. That was all it took to bomb the whole room. I read about a couple in the States who were invaded by 26,000 of them and all they could do was brush them off the walls and curtains and literally everywhere and then release them.

{The Empty Chair}

I was defeated by a chair.  Too many angles and not enough mastery of foreshortening and perspective.  Technically, it was a stool with several rungs positioned around four legs — a round top like a brown wooden tray.  Too many things in the background — distractions — easels and canvases and furniture legs.  The glass of the window wall behind it — brick-colored tiles on the floor — burnt ochre. Closing one eye, arms burning, pen shaking.

I was defeated fair and square.  They brought out reinforcements — whole lives lived as artists and painters and dabblers.  Sketchbooks and Instagrams — Pinterests and portfolios.  Travel tales.  I remained quiet and despondent in front of the empty chair.  “I can’t do it,” I said.  At some point, you have to stop erasing and just draw the line.  How many times was that?  Three? Four?  It just isn’t right.  Two frames that measure exactly the same on a ruler, but one consistently appearing to be blown up on the page, the other shrunken.  It’s closing one eye versus binocular vision.  Perspective is an illusion.  Holding the pencil up and measuring with my thumb seems to get lost in translation.  The only solution is to stop trying and just draw the thing.  There are exercises that some brains simply won’t do, or they’ll do them some other way that may not be obvious, but accomplishes the same task.  A mental calculation that gets around the awkwardness of math.  I doubt I’ll fill up whole notebooks with my art.  I don’t even see myself as a painter — the next step, the presumed path, the logical progression.  I’ll likely remain a dabbler — a comic book heroine with newly discovered powers of sight.