The Art Drawer

Today, a soggy, wet, cool, cloudy day, I cleaned out my Art Drawer.  This was a huge undertaking, for many reasons.  The Art Drawer is a very large box on wheels beneath the bed, and holds an astounding amount of stuff.    Not only papers, sketches, pencils and markers, sponges and the like, but memories of the different stages in my life.  (Yes, this drawer has not been properly gone through for years).  There was the shadow puppet era, when I performed elaborate puppet shows with handmade puppets, music, a screen with a black curtain and lights.  The stories were written by me, and each puppet had moveable joints, making them come to life behind the screen.

And every puppet was alive to me, holding so much of myself within it.  I loved doing the shows, and probably could have made a career out of it.  But it was an incredible amount of work, and I was moved in other directions by other forces, so the puppets got put into the Art Drawer, where they have been lying asleep for many years while more and more things got stacked on top of them.  Today I dug clear to the bottom of the drawer and got out the puppets,  I knew this day was coming. They are now in a bag on the back porch, where they'll sit for awhile, until I get around to recycling them.  How can I say goodbye to all that?  And yet I already have.  There were more layers to go through, hundreds of sketches, each with a story to tell.  Why is it so heart-wrenching to look back on the past?  Would I want to go back?  No!  But there is a sadness about things that captivated you for a time and then faded, like an unfinished song.

So I'd best look forward to the future and wait to see what it brings.  There is always a herald out there if we take the time to listen, and always something new to broaden our horizons.

Hoping for sun!