The Blue Period

The Pickle is studying Picasso in her pre-k 4 class this week. She was full of descriptions and factoids when she got into the car yesterday describing Picasso in great lengths. She asked me if I knew about his Blue Period when "He painted everything that made him sad, blue." When they had the opportunity to try their hand at a Picasso-style masterpiece of their own, she painted mountains and birds and a river running through the whole picture. She was very proud of the fact that she only used blue colors for her painting. (Which in and of itself is amazing because Pickle is usually firmly planted in the pink end of the spectrum.)

She called it "The River of Sadness."

And So It Begins...

Here we are. (Looking around, whistling nonchalantly)

I'm sure I'm supposed to do something with all this space, I'm just not sure what exactly. Looks like it could use a fresh coat of paint, maybe some curtains. I'll definitely need to hang something on the walls.

You may be wondering why I asked you all here. I can't answer that for you, but I can tell you why I am:

You sit down I say...And you try to quiet your mind so you can hear what that landscape or character has to say above the other voices in your mind. The other voices are banshees and drunken monkeys. They are the voices of anxiety, judgment, doom, guilt. Also, severe hypochondria.

Yet somehow, in the face of all this, you clear a space for the writing voice, hacking away at the others with machetes, and you begin composing sentences. You begin to string words together like beads to tell a story. You are desperate to communicate, to edify or entertain, to preserve moments of grace or joy or transcendence, to make real r imagined events come alive. But you cannot will this to happen. It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work. So you might as well just go ahead and get started.



So I might as well just go ahead and get started.