I want to thank all of you who have been asking about my grandmother’s condition. It’s really touching that you haven’t forgotten. I’m proud to say that my grandma was checked out of the hospital over a week ago. She is now under the care of my aunts and mother at my Aunt Claudia’s house only a few minutes west of me. They take turns staying with her at night and addressing her needs. I call her just about every night to find out how she’s doing. She complains of her body feeling sore at times and admits to having irrational fears of the worst kind sometimes. “Es la medicina,” she explains. One of the few things that brings her real comfort is having someone to pray with her. The nights when I visit, she’ll ask me to stay until the night so we can pray together. I remind her that I have friends who are praying for her by name and she thanks the Lord for them. Her paralysis is slowly fading away. The left side of her face shows more expressions these days. Her eyes are wide open and every so often she cracks a smirk large enough to force a smile. It’s a beautiful thing.
Last week she lifted her left leg a bit and I couldn’t believe it. She could bend it slightly enough to hover over the wheelchair pedal. I am told that sometimes when she yawns, her left hand will raise up ever so gently. Every inch matters these days. It is an amazing process to see her heal.
She confesses that sometimes her faith is weak. She asks for the strength to continue. As we pray in that dark room I feel a humility that is beyond my own capability. I’m referring to her’s. She talks to God with poetry and honesty. Every prayer I’ve ever said seems to be a mumble of broken words and prideful pleas. As if praying were ever really meant to be about me. But not her. She asks God to do His own will. In those quiet moments when a stillness of thoughts engulfs the room, she expresses an adoration that the saints would envy. Those heavy tears return and I can barely muster up enough air in my lungs to say Amen. But I do. And she says Amen, too.
She wants to meet these friends that I’ve been telling her about. I tell her I would like her to meet them as well. And so now I am asking if anyone would be willing to make an evening of it. I don’t have a particular day in mind, but I suppose a Saturday or Sunday would make for a good time. Anybody interested? Email me if so.
Thank you all again.
My final project for Illustration 2 is a poster promoting the Chrysler Building. Sounds simple enough right? Add a group of people to manage and a perfectionist professor into the equation and the task increases in difficulty tenfold. I have not only my own design and concept and layout and color scheme, but those of my 4 teammates as well. I can finally appreciate what it takes to run a design team like my boss does. I think assignments like this one will be the determining factor for my growth as a designer and a leader. To be honest, I’d rather have a strong leader in place and be his right-hand man. I don’t like playing the management role. I’m fortunate to have a great team for this project, though. It helps tremendously.
Now I have to get feedback from my professor and my team. It’s a game of patience. I design rough drafts, I send for review, I receive feedback, I tweak, and the cycle begins once again. At some point I suppose I need to go with my gut, especially when the deadline is lurking over me like the Ghost of Christmas Future. But it would be worse to begin the final painting only to find out from my professor that it’s not strong. (Insert exasperated sigh here.)
I need a vacation. Quick.
So I’m staying off of myspace and facebook and virb for the next 40 days. Maybe now I can finally get things done around here, including homework, getting some sun, having face to face conversations, and blinking.
Being an artist, I find that I tend to do my work in isolation. Sometimes I’ll stay late at the office into the wee hours of the night with nothing but paper, paints, and a soundtrack to keep me company. But nothing can replace the presence of another person. The loneliness factor of doing art is probably the most dissatisfying aspect of the job. Some artists say that they work best late into the night. I’ve put myself in the same situation before and it ain’t all that bad. I rarely do it because I cherish rest too much. But even then I’ve always felt better when there was someone with me, even if they were watching tv. Today I went to the office and worked on an illustration for class. Being that it was a Saturday, I was the only person around again. Eventually the cleaning lady came with her son and mother to keep the place nice and tidy. It made me smile. The chubby little boy offered me french fries from his Burger King paper bag and I accepted. Grabbing a few fries, I tried to make out what he was mumbling to me and I only understood something about a cartoon with a wound on his eyebrow. I smiled again and went back to work, headphones on and a task ahead of me. A few moments later he interrupted me to ask where he could play his dvd. I directed him to our television and popped in the movie for him. He mumbled some more about this cartoon with a distracted smirk on his round face . He was too lost in his descriptions to notice I was confused.
For the next hour and a half I was more productive than before. I worried less about unchecked emails, possible comments, and the all around happenings of people distant from me in the online world. The loneliness was stored away in the static background noise of cartoons, vacuum cleaners, and the new Arcade Fire album I had blasting in the other room. I was sad to see the family leave thereafter. It makes me recall how in the Bible the first thing that God attributes as being bad was for man to be alone. I’m convinced that we are wired with this desire for community the same way we are wired with a hunger for food and a thirst for drink. I suppose I should add a new category for my own situation: the desire for an art companion. A study buddy perhaps? The more the merrier.
