First Position

I beg you,
To have patience with everything
Unresolved in your heart
And try to love the questions themselves
As if they were locked rooms
Or books written in a very foreign language.
Don’t search for the answers,
Which could not be given to you now,
Because you would not be able to live them.
– Unknown

I have a fondness for dialogue that feels like a dance. It matters not, actually, what dance, if the syncopation is poetic. Even the mashed potato has the capacity to be ecstatic. The magic of the tango, a ballet, or waltz, requires no explanation. And that’s how it feels to paint when I surrender and allow some higher power take the lead.
This night in the studio was contrary. It was akin to beginning at the beginning and learning position one, and then taking a pause, and then holding. Not that there is anything lost entirely from performing only the first position. It’s an important pose. Sink fully into the position and hold it there until it becomes completely ingrained and serves as a fortitude and courage to inform each step that supersedes. It can both stand on its own, which in itself is immeasurably magnificent in its simplicity, and bring stability and grace to whatever steps follow.
No other dialogue surfaced beyond the first position on this painting.
It felt to me like a dialogue that began and was never revisited. It simply stood there staring back at me and begged to be seen for what it was.

Life is like that. A conversation begins, a lovely exchange, but for whatever reason, is never finished. There is more to be said, but we must allow for some acceptance that what else we believed we needed to know wasn’t meant to be known. What was more important was to allow the thing we might believe was incomplete to be exactly as is.
This painting sat in my studio for months as is. It’s not that there was anything inherently wrong with it. And to be honest, I quite enjoyed the feeling of the simplicity of the first position. Something about the colors and the gentle movement felt mysteriously soothing. It’s just that no matter how many times I placed it back on the easel, no direction ever arrived.

But, one night a friend came to dinner and he asked if he could buy this painting. He said that he had been looking at it each time he visited and was drawn to it. I explained that it wasn’t finished. And he replied that he really loved it just as it is. And further more, he already had a place in mind to hang it.
I find life to be filled with nonsensical magic. What lives as a question to me is a complete answer to someone else. I’ll dance to that. As is.