Today, in pursuit of my long-lost iPod and a bit of down tempo music to fill my soul for an afternoon jog, I came across a sketch pad I had purchased years ago - maybe even a decade ago - shoved into the deep throes of my storage closet. I pulled the pad down from the shelf and dusted it off, and slowly, gingerly, lifted the cover. What I came face to face with didn’t necessarily surprise me, but it did pinch me with a surprising sting of sadness: the entire book, crafted of finely woven cotton fibers, was blank.
See, years ago - before many of you knew me; before I allowed another craft to take main stage and steal the limelight; before so many other ever afters that have come and gone - I drew. I painted. I sketched. I drafted. And, truth be told, I was quite good. My artwork continually won prizes while growing up: some school-wide blue ribbons; a few state-wide accolades; and I even placed as a finalist in a national contest once upon a time. Unfortunately, as I grew older - and things like having the right clothes, the right haircut and the right length between my perpetually bushy eyebrows started to matter more - my passion and my talent started to matter less, and eventually grew to become a figment of my adolescent imagination.
Though my memory is hazy, I think I purchased this sketch pad on a whim on some ordinary Saturday afternoon, as if to ignite the passion that lay dormant beneath my Maybelline-colored epidermis. The sketchpad, no doubt, remained a stationary figure through a tumultuous time of my life - to college dorms and back again; amidst few family moves and to each of the three apartments I’ve lived in independently as an adult. Perhaps I’ve torn a sheet or two to jot down my ‘To Do’ lists (manicures and pedicures; dry cleaning and laundry; scheduled times to meet a friend for a drink and maybe meet the Man Of My Dreams), and I’m sure that a charcoal outline of a city scene with my name on it lay in a dumpster somewhere. I’m sure, too, that a proper set of colored pencils - finely sharpened and never used - exists somewhere in my tiny studio beneath a box of old letters and photographs.
We all have sketchpads - some literal, some proverbial - stored on shelves - some in our hallways, some in our subconscious - that are pining for liberation. Pages that crave the caress of lilac-colored watercolor and the depiction of a never ending sunrise. The spirit of the artist in us that yearns to be freed - as Sylvia Plath would say, “To shoot off in all directions, like a Fourth of July rocket” - but is dampened and dimmed by the could haves, would haves and should haves that we pack into schedules that often leave us less than satisfied. Our plates are full, but our stomachs are empty.
I eventually gave up on locating my iPod, finding a certain relaxation through the gentle pounding of my sneakers on the city pavement. But more importantly, I found a part of my wholly creative, unabridged and unapologetic past that can’t wait to introduce herself to 2009.
It is never too late to be who you might have been. ~George Eliot
“Our plates are full, but our stomachs are empty” love it