Liz Huston

I finished a new piece of art recently which was 10 months in the making. Even with such a long creation time, I am waiting until the right moment to release her into the world. It’s possible that she won’t be revealed until my Sunday tea reception on June 4 – exactly one month from now. And I’m kind of okay with that.

Something has shifted in me recently. It’s a paradox, to be sure. I have been cultivating a painful awareness of the passing of time and the preciousness of each breath while deliberately slowing down to savor life more. All this rushing around to get from A to B and back again, and for what? To be exhausted when you get there?

I used to go as fast as I could for as long as I could. I got a lot done on sheer momentum. These days I am recognizing that my body has limits and am trying to pull back before I crash into one of those limits. These days, if I run myself full tilt for too long I need at least that much time to recuperate – if not double. It wasn’t always like that – this is a new development. My health could be better it seems.

And so I slow down a bit.

I notice myself choosing my time and companions more wisely – if I choose a companion at all, for most of my time is in solitude. In companions, I opt for kindness, a depth of character, a joyful disposition, even a peaceful one. I pay more attention to how I feel about and with them, than worrying about what they think of me. Maybe that’s the blessing of arriving into your fourth decade – and if only I had learned that sooner…

Toxic people, people who take more than they give – they no longer interest me. I am no longer interested in that which will rile me up. That is to say, no thanks to the drama. I’d rather put the drama into my art instead of my life, if anywhere. Another adult shift in perception, perhaps…

The title of this new, unreleased piece is: ‘Under a Waning Moon, She Re-Members’

It began as a piece about being broken, and coming to acceptance of that broken-ness. Somewhere along the line it was less about being broken/dismembered and more about being re-membered. Remembering yourself. Putting the pieces back together, while knowing that they will never-not-be-broken. Even repaired, they will never be exactly as they once were, and there is a certain exquisiteness in that.

My personal re-membering process started to heat up over the last couple of weeks as I began to revisit old writings. There was enough distance between me-now and me-then that I could see clearly her. I dropped the judgmental attitude about what she/I should be and just recognized her for her strengths, for her bravery, for her tenacity, her loving heart, her love of words and even her many weaknesses and faults. I just noticed…

The re-membering leaked in to my visual art repertoire, too. I recently arranged all of my art into a book chronologically as a gift for my Patreon patrons. Standing back and viewing them in order like that – the growth in my art and process was fascinating to me. A personal timeline is probably more interesting to me than you, but the growth and the phases are evident I think, even if you don’t know the stories. And I realized I had it all wrong in my memory. But arranged in actual order of occurrence, I re-membered…

So with this new piece, it seems I have once again made something that reflects a deep internal process – rather than the story I thought I was telling. Wasn’t it Rumi who wrote, “he who steps inside the orchard also steps inside the orchard keeper?” That is true here, for me, even with the creation of this piece. The art allows me to step inside the orchard of myself and I re-member.