Oh, my dear Shell.
It has been a strange and difficult time, indeed, but much worse than merely fretting about getting work done. Sadly, it will even affect you.
Yes, I have been fretting about my show. As always, I have left the main body of work to be born under the panic of an impending deadline. But that has been a sort of wonderful feeling.
Let me back-track...
You know that I went to New York to try to get over Lewis. To remind myself that the world is large, colorful, magical, and that, within it, I can command my own happiness.
It was a really good reminder, and I returned strong, independent, happy... And still in love with that gorgeous boy.
Wondrously, a week after my return, Lewis sent me a most beautiful gift: a slideshow of his photographs of curled leaves (a curious and terribly touching passion of his) set to Joan Armatrading's 'Dry Land'. I'm going to assume you know the song.
It meant a huge amount to me. It was a momentous feeling, sitting late at night, alone in my room, watching these leaves curled up like lovers, and hearing these words of glad surrender, after many journeys and storms, to love, to safety. To me!!
I can't say there were not some warning bells. Lewis's sending such a powerful, unambiguous message might cause a panic of doubt and regret in him. Might scare him out of his wits.
So, imagine my feelings when I went to have dinner with him and he told me, "Moss, I have fallen ridiculously in love with you".
A curious, mitigating detail here is that he was cooking at the time, had his head in the fridge, and addressed these longed-for words to the cheese compartment.
But it mattered little. I was in bliss. I had not misread his beautiful gift. He had not back-pedaled as I had expected him to. He was ridiculously in love with me.
Ridiculously.
The back-pedaling happened in slow-motion.
"I want to ask you if we can be together...
... But not talk about having kids...
...And not talk about forever, for a while."
But that's where we were at, before! That's what had been so hard. Had nothing shifted in him, even a little, with this tremendous romantic revelation of his?
Some softening, some tiny venture into perhapses?
I surprised myself by saying a firm "no".
In retrospect, I understood his proposition as he had intended it: could we try being together as we should have been from the start - try falling in love without all those big, insurmountable hurdles he
had installed, so prematurely, in our path?
A part of me still sees the appeal of this idea. But I know it could only be a fantasy. So I told him to come up with something better, or let me go, properly.
We spent the following weekend together. It was beautiful. Loving, close, free and real. We were like we should always have been. But by the end of it, we had no solution to our problem, still, so we agreed, instead, to stop contact, at least for a while. He wanted to start counseling, sort out his head, his heart, his fears, his past. It seemed wisest for him to do this alone, and without keeping me waiting.
But of course, I have been waiting. He'd said he was in love with me!
I was not miserable. I had an idea and a plan. All my sorrow, all my confusion and loneliness and loss, I would channel towards my show. I would work hard. I HAVE worked hard. No matter that my studio suddenly became unavailable. I found a new one. Part of a big old factory. It needed a good work surface: I built a wall in one day! First-ever experiment with a power-drill.
The factory belongs to my Dad's youngest brother and his wife.
There's a fig tree outside it. I ate figs warmed by the Autumn sun and worked hard. I knew I had only one way to communicate with Lewis without breaking our rule of silence. I knew he would come to my show. The exhibition would have to say everything. It would be the most beautiful love letter I've ever conceived. And there was not a single moment to be lost.
At this, of all times! I have to work full time at the shop for a fortnight, to compensate for my trip to New York. Plus teaching. It doesn't matter. I am wonder woman, fueled by love and sadness and
hope. Hope hope hope.
I have felt so full of sunshine, Michelle, pedaling every spare day to the Brunswick studio, donning my apron. I am every great woman artist. I am every literary heroine who has been patient with love. I am
living the story. Making magic out of my troubled heart.
You get the picture?
On Wednesday, I had a phone call from the director of my gallery.
They are in financial difficulty, and are closing. Before my show can open.
("Not to worry - we plan to merge, resurface elsewhere in a slightly different form, we will honour our commitment to you. Your show may be pushed back as little as three weeks! We'll keep you posted".)
Michelle, I'm so sorry. You are one of four friends to have booked flights from interstate for this. I can't tell you how much it means that you would come all the way to see my show. But I will give you a special studio preview. We'll make it even better than the opening would have been, okay?
In terms of my love letter... I went to pieces. May 26th had been burnt on my brain as the night my fortunes would change. Lewis would come to the opening, see, understand. He would love me and realise I was far too extraordinary to let go. We would never part again!
Yes, a small part of me is precisely this silly.
Ironically, my show is to be called 'What Remains to Keep' ... my idea was to focus on the parts of happiness that remain in one's keeping, from small keepsakes and souvenirs of love and travel, for instance, to changes in one's spirit that become lifelong gifts, even when their
source is gone.
The theme first took shape months ago, when I was grappling with Lewis's fear of losing his freedom; my own wish to 'keep' him, and to be kept; and my belief that real freedom lies in love.
'To have and to hold' - in my mind such beautiful, wondrous privileges - can mean, to one such as Lewis, 'to possess and to entrap.' How does one reconcile these things?
It's an awkward, tangled, elusive train of thought. But it was coming to my drawings in simpler terms, quite independently of my conscious design.
But old lady Universe has picked up on the theme, it seems, and wants to see 'what remains to keep' when there is no lover, no hope, no gallery. She's very clever. She's asking me what I'm made of, I think.
I felt utterly devastated about the gallery. I cried all the tears I had not cried over Lewis. I was inconsolable. Dad was there. I sobbed into my pillow and he put his silky, shaggy head on my back and said, 'Oh, dear'. I don't think he could have said anything more helpful. I loved him for being powerless with me. It's only a postponement, Michelle. But it burst open the foolishness of my secret hopes. I felt resourceless, silenced, purposeless.
I wrote to Lewis and asked him directly whether I could have any hope for us, whether he did.
He does not, came his reply last night (clearly, firmly, thoughtfully written) and neither should I.
Michelle, I have never cried so many tears as I have in the last week, and never felt so profoundly directionless as I did last night. My beautiful sister took me home, put me in the shower, made my bed with fresh sheets, and lay stroking my head until I went to sleep. I was terrified of the morning.
But today is a new day, and I find myself remarkably purposeful.
Lewis called just now to mumble general apologies for failing me, told me counseling was going well, and that he's finally booked his ticket for that holiday he's been afraid to take for so long.
He flies out...
On
the
26th
of
May.
He was not even going to be there.
So, Michelle, I have dried my tears and am rolling up my sleeves because there is not a moment to lose: I have a show coming up, someday, somewhere, and it must be exceptionally good and worthy,
because it's an open love letter to the Universe at large...
... and to myself.
