My friend asked me this today. I could only think, what is there not to talk about? I started rambling about the painting I am currently in the process of creating. It's the most fantastic and most mundane thing I can think of.
I spend a great deal of time in the shower. It is where I think. Water and walls drown out all sound, so it's just me and my thoughts. One would think that this would get boring, considering all the showers I spend time in have white tiled walls. There are no interesting prints on the tiles or anything like that. On sunny days, the sun comes through the window as a creamy white, or on cloudy days, as a pale gray, so the tiles are either creamy white or pale gray. But there is one thing that always catches my attention.
This I will say, thank God for Herbal Essences. I absolutely love that brand. They make excellent shampoo and package it in the most magnificent way. I have a whole collection of Herbal Essences bottles up on the shelf in front of the window. I have one for straight hair. I have one for luscious curls. I have one for when I had very long hair. My personal favorite is the green one, the one I have that is just for daily cleansing. I don't use conditioner, just shampoo. Each of the bottles is transparent and a different color. Right up there next to the window, the sun shines through them. It's almost like an ever changing stained glass window. When a new body wash comes in, that goes up there too.
I have built my own personal sanctuary out of body wash and shampoo bottles. I'd light candles, but the water would probably put them out.
Anyway, this is what I am painting. I am painting my sanctuary. When I told my friend I was painting the bathroom, she asked if I was painting a mural. Now there's a thought. It's like Michelangelo, except instead of painting the sanctuary to make it prettier, I am painting the beauty that is my sanctuary. I could keep it to myself, but I don't think that they are meant to stay that way. If only I could explain the emotion that rises up in me when I get an idea or I see something beautiful. It eats at me.
I saw a picture in a magazine last year of a woman draped with a red satin cloth. I said to myself, that woman must be painted. She must be painted blue. She needs paint. That is all I could think of for the next two weeks. There was just that driving voice saying, she needs paint. She needs blue paint. I couldn't even take the time to draw her onto a canvas or illustration board. I painted right on the picture in the magazine. I cut her out and pasted her onto an old sheet of music. She was beautiful. A girl at school got very attached to her. I let her have it. I loved her, but she loved her better.
That's how I felt about my bottles. They were eating at me. They had to be exposed. I was jealous though. I didn't want to share my bottles, but in the end, I knew and know that I have to. I'm only worried now that no one will feel the same way about my bottles. But I must expose them. I'll expose them to the eye of the critic and viewer alike. They'll be forced to share in my little sanctuary whether they realize what they are experiencing or not. I have to let it go.
I suppose it's part of healing. Part of my effort to change and to clear out the unnecessary junk in my life. There can be nothing unclean about shampoo bottles, their existence is to make people clean externally anyway. I wish it were the same for the insides. I suppose that is why I spend so much time in my sanctuary. I am trying, albeit somewhat pointlessly, to clean myself inside and out. Where can I go that He will not find me? I am disgusting, full of impurities and deep faults and bleeding wounds. I'm a bit like a sick animal at the Vet. He could heal them, if I let Him, but instead I sulk and lick my wounds, making them worse. I must believe that He knows what He is doing.
So what shall we talk about?
