A little over two years ago, I wrote a post called "The Blank Canvas", and this isn't really a follow-up to that, but after nearly 800 posts, it can be challenging not to repeat my titles!
Anyway, the point being...on Monday, I wrote a post that I left in draft form because it wasn't ready, or I wasn't ready, or the timing was wrong, or whatever. And this morning, without even reading it again, I deleted it. I can't explain why this gave me such pleasure...I had worked hard on it, and there was, I am sure, much in it that was worthy or pertinent. But it was too wordy, and I knew I just had to let it go. I started this morning with, if you will, a blank canvas.
I think I told the story several years ago (although I cannot find it) of one of my painting classes at Parsons School of Design. We spent three hours working on a piece, and all of us assumed we were meant to take it home and finish it. However, when we got to the door at the end of class, the teacher told us to toss our work in the trash! It was extremely hard to do this! She told us it was a life lesson in not taking ourselves (or our work) too seriously/letting go and, as you can see, I have never forgotten it. When I was painting in oils, I sometimes reached a point in a painting where I knew it had gone off track, and wasn't what I had intended. So I would take the turpenoid or mineral spirits, soak a rag, and completely wipe the canvas clean of paint. Of course, once the canvas dried, there was usually a ghost image still remaining, and it often informed the new painting, kind of a spiritual underpinning. But I never tried to actually replicate the original. Somehow, between my brain and my heart and my brush, there must have been a dialogue about, what (from the old painting) do I want to recreate, and what isn't working. The new painting was nearly always better, but would an observer have "seen" the old one peeking through? Unlikely. Yet it was energetically present.
I guess I put that out there today, in the context of so many people losing homes and belongings, and the earth's maps literally being redrawn. Can we find a way to look at these times as "painting a new painting"? Can we find a way to welcome the blank canvas?
