Have you ever felt like everything you ever felt or believed was possibly wrong? Have you ever woke up in the morning feeling like the world was your oyster just find out ten minutes later that you were still just a grain of sand floating in the sea? Well…if not…WAKE UP!!!!!

We all believe something. It doesn’t matter if its religious or spiritual or scientific or denial. We make our way through the day believing something to be true. We make breakfast because “it’s the most important meal of the day” or not because “eating breakfast slows me down.” We honk the horn because “that idiot must be sleeping at the wheel!” OR, we just drive past with a glare because what we have to do today is so much more important than THAT person…

What if…? What if that person you just honked at was overwhelmed with stress because everything they believed in was just ripped out of their soul and replaced with doubt and someone just honked at them for a 2 second delay on the gas pedal…? What if…YOU were the person waiting for the light to change and it suddenly dawned on you that you hate your job, you miss your spouse, you need a hug, you figured out how to make energy from cat litter or better yet, you just solved the mystery for how that sock disappeared from the drier!? Now…How would you feel if you were honked at?

Flip the script…You’re on your way to the hospital because your mom fell and couldn’t get up. You are scared and frustrated and someone in front of you is solving world problems while they drive and is slow to start when the light turns green… To honk or not to honk? That is the question. What do you believe?

I believe I honked…I thought about it after and it dawned on me that we are all human and we all believe we are the most important at any moment. Even when we believe we are worried about another. We are actually more concerned with our worry at the time than what we are worried about. My mom was on her way to the hospital with a gash on her forehead not knowing her own name or what day it was and I was worried about “is she going to be ok?” Why? because if she wasn’t ok, what would that mean? What would I do with all her stuff? what would I do with her cat? Where would I find the time to DEAL with this?!

On the way home from the hospital, after hours and hours spent in the emergency room on uncomfortable chairs then in ICU with more uncomfortable chairs, with little to no information about whether she would be alright, I sat at a green light waiting for it to change…yes…it was a GREEN light! The person behind me never honked… As I looked in the rearview mirror as I finally started to pass through the intersection, I saw another person with beliefs…I don’t know what they are, but I believe she was more patient than me…

When I started this little journey of finding myself through expression of my thoughts and feelings via blog, I had no idea how much it would affect me. The first post was fun and cathartic, but now I am struggling to figure out what is the next most important thing to share with the Aesthetisphere. ( Aesthetisphere is one of my concepts from years ago…you can read more at http://www.aesthetisphere.com/).

When I wrote “backtrackin”  https://bohemiantiger.com/2013/12/05/backtrackin/ the other day. I was set to write a book on the subject of art and rejection when my mom called right in the middle of a thought…you can probably tell when by the sudden change in my tone. All the thoughts in my mind vaporized when I heard her once booming but now very timid voice ask if I could help her move some books. I remember the day when she didn’t want me to touch her books…

My mom raised me by herself with a lot of help from my grandparents. My dad wasn’t in the picture until I was 23…(that’s a story for another day too.) Because she was alone and my grandparents weren’t much for socializing with her, I was her social network and companion.  She did have 2 friends that we would visit sometimes, but for the most part I was to be unseen and unheard when we did.

When we got home from our visits, my mom would vent to me about how much she “hated” her friends because they always talked about the same things and smoked like chimneys. She would cry because she was alone… and I didn’t at the time understand how she could be alone when I was standing right there…She would send me to the fridge to get her ice cream and taught me how to bake cakes and cookies so I could serve them to her for years to come. I was her chef, servant and therapist. When she wanted to kill herself, I would beg her not to and strain my brain to figure out what I could do to be better… or as I got older just gave up on being good enough and accepted my fate as “not in the room” and decided “why even try” was a better way to cope. This got me through for a while…It’s amazing how good denial and withdrawal can protect your psyche…

Things did get better for while…When I was 10 my mom tried to get herself up off the bed and back out into the world. She went to school, got a certificate in commercial art and by the time I was 12, she was working for the city teaching art classes to kids and making posters for Parks and Rec centers around the city. Life was good. I even got to take some classes taught by other teachers and found that I was very good at ceramics. So good in fact that by the ripe age of 14, I was teaching beginning pottery classes myself.

I joined the Ceramics Club at the high school I attended. I tutored some of the football players that needed art credits to graduate…(why they needed a tutor for ceramics I will never know…math, science reading would have been a better use of their time if you ask me…I guess its all about the GPA. Bring an F to B and now your other Fs and Ds look better in the stats!)

Anyway…I really enjoyed life and art for a period of time and me and my mom got along better and she wasn’t as sad and lonely and didn’t want to kill herself every weekend…God!!! that was so liberating for me!

Ok…I know I said I would write about puberty next, but I couldn’t sleep last night thinking about when I was 3.  Yes…I do remember that far back…not every detail, but I have highlights.

I was watching my mom paint a huge painting. It had a purple background and a large black cat amidst a fantasy land of flowers. We lived in Los Angeles then… My mom worked for the animation industry. Hanna-Barbera, Filmation and Walter Lance. I’m not sure if it was all at the same time or one after the other. She also worked at a bar, but that story is for another day.

Before I get too involved here, I must preface this with this statement.  I love my mom! We have become closer recently and I have a new found respect for her. What I write about here may seem harsh at times but I am expressing my feelings from a specific time in my life and those feelings were colored with my age and level of understanding at that time. Yes I do still harbor some negative emotions and thoughts but life goes on and we grow and learn and sometimes even find out our parents were human too.

Back to the painting of the cat and flowers…We were sitting on the lawn in the front of the apartment we lived in. It was warm, the sun was bright and my mom had red hair…It was long and shiny and draped her shoulders as she reached across the huge canvas. I picked up a paint brush I saw laying on the ground next to a big bucket of purple paint. I asked if I could help. My mom grabbed the brush from me and told me “No!! you’ll ruin it!” I sat back, held in the tears because crying wouldn’t change anything, and watched my mom paint. I loved the colors but never liked that painting…maybe it was sour grapes, but it always seemed like a huge reminder that I wasn’t good enough.

A long time ago, I liked to draw pictures, paint, and make things from other things…then one day, I got scared to be a “Starving Artist” and I ran far, far away from anything that even remotely looked like it could have anything to do with art.  That was when I was 8 years old.

Why? You ask…well…my mom was (is) an artist. I grew up on handouts, hand-me-downs and “hell no! you can’t have that!” I some how realized that her being an artist was the REASON we were broke, living with my grandparents and always digging through sofa cushions for change…

After many months and much arguing between my mom and my grandparents, my mom finally found a enough change in the cushions and a job with a regular pay check big enough to buy a house! I was so excited to have my own room! I drew a few pictures one day and really enjoyed myself…then…my mom quit her job, sold most of what we had and sent me to my grampa’s house to ask for food.

My Grampa told me, “If you want to make it in this world, you have to sweat, bleed and pay taxes like the rest of us!” So when I was 10, he handed my a sledge hammer and told me to work if I wanted to eat! I did…I shoveled walks in the winter, and mowed lawns all summer. I helped my mom pay the utility bill and bought my own shoes. I was workin my butt off for $10 here and $5 there. Then, we lost the house anyway…what a bummer…

We moved into a crappy, subsidized apartment and my mom went to school to study Commercial Art. My Grampa said she needed to find a way to make doing art profitable. So while my mom went to school to learn how to make money with art, I hung out in the projects with a bunch of pot heads and hookers and learned how to roll a joint, slide on ice while holding on to a car bumper and that red porch lights mean Veronica is busy!

…this looks like its gonna be longer than one post worth…I’ll start puberty in the next post!

I did it!!!

I did it!!!

I did it!!!

I made a blog to document my process for becoming an artist! I’m so excited! Now…what do I do?