This is the second glaze painting I did on a fortified white clay, concave ceramic surface, a big soup plate, a memorial pond. For several months, I attempted to name the piece, a tribute to my mother, painted as she was dying. Nothing I thought of ever rang true; the painting simply looked too much like me to be her. I was fairly creeped out at the idea of having a memorial piece of myself, thinking it of course indicated that I would be dying surprisingly soon. I had to give up though, accept it as a self portrait and hope it reflected nothing more than a very lively self. Twelve years later, I sit here, proving death could not be brought about by a shifting portrait. I have had death worry on and off throughout my life, but not too much these days. I really just have far too much work to do, can't afford dying any time soon. Indeed, when I stop a moment to assess the work ahead of me, I also think appreciatively of the rest to come.
In my teens, passing by students and faculty in the school hallways, I became absurdly concerned that unknowingly, I had become a ghost or possibly somehow invisible. Way too often people passing by failed to look at me with any recognition at all, of me or any corporeal existence. Too many times, if I hadn't made a quick dodge out of their path, it seemed they might have walked straight through me. This latter continues to happen here in New York. I've figured out people are just plain rude, or need to take their stinking lives out on somebody. Hmm, not about me.
By my late twenties I developed a full-fledged belief that I would die before I could turn thirty. I can only think it had to do with not trusting people over thirty which was a very common thought of the time. I guess I couldn't bear the chance of becoming untrustworthy. I performed a number of Death Defying Acts in order to cancel that prediction. After surviving that early death, I believed I couldn't possibly grow older than my dad, who died at forty-nine. Well, I have beaten that one too. I took many a deep rooted breath, calming myself as fifty neared and when I survived again, Heather and I congratulated my liveliness with a trip to Paris.
I came pretty close to old death's door at the ages of twenty-four and thirty-four, without a bit of awareness or concern for losing my life. I held a remarkable desire and belief in my ability to endure. So many youthful years spent oddly out of touch with my own sturdy lust for life and steered by self-inflicted death superstition. Life in these mid-fifties, with so much still to accomplish, is far less fantastical. I suppose though, I must add to my to do list, finding a place in this world that will give enough rain for gazing out from my resting spot.
