Projected Desires

I thought I would check in here while I'm feeling good, because poor ole Discombobula has been rather a mopey place to be, lately, eh?  The niacin I was talking about the other day seems to be helping to stabilise my mood so I'm not all paranoid and uber-almost-schizophrenic/catatonic ~ that and the fact that I haven't eaten any wheat for several days.  I find it so difficult to believe that such an innocuous thing as a loaf of wheat bread could cause such havoc.  It's hard to believe too because though my body obviously doesn't want to eat it, I'm also craving it.  Which is the way of these sorts of things.  It's why so many food allergies and intolerances are so hard to pinpoint.  And I think that's why I keep going back to it, in disbelief that it could be this ole thing I've been eating all my life that hurls me down a particularly bad mood road.  But then, all of the poisons we encounter these days are invisible ones, so it stands to reason.

I have begun routinely scrutinising myself to find out what it is that I'm really desiring to do but am feeling held back from doing in some way.  The way I discover what I'm desiring is via how jealous and admiring I feel of others who are doing what it is that in actual fact I want to do.  And that, consistently, is growing food, and making art.

And so last week I broke out the paints and started just painting whatever, a vague image I had in my head.  And I kept playing around with it until I was happy with it, and lo, a few hours did pass so that when I looked at the clock I was surprised at the time.  And I realised that that getting lost in something hasn't happened much lately.  Being creative and making stuff, even if it's things you put on your wall but don't post on the internet, let alone give or sell to anyone else, is as empowering and inspiring for me as eating food.  It's just that it feels disconnected from me.  Sometimes, if I have been away from being creative for a little stretch, the only way I can discern how much I actually really want to come back in is to find my projection.  And from there I can see just how much I want to do it.  My desire has been extrapolated out onto other people who are able to do this thing that I feel for some reason I'm not able to do.  It's a curious way of gauging your desire, that's for sure.  But it works.

Sitting down and messing about with colour and shape, I feel that that disassociated part flipping back into my own body.  It feels heavenly.  It makes me feel happy.  I think every single one of us on the planet has our own personal desires, things that take us to this space.  But so often we're too busy and we're too tired.  Both valid arguments, both of which keep me from doing what I really want to do, which is be creative for big stretches of every single day instead of typing like a drone.  But what can you do?

But then there's a grace, that the small start and the tiny step often balloon out into something bigger.  The deciding that even though I can't quite see how I'm going to be able to do this every day with time and energy limitations, that I will just do it for half an hour today then.  And often that half an hour is what stretches out into losing track of time, and then I'm back on track again.


I have begun gessoing a sheet from my canvas pad and drawn a rough outline on it, and am feeling excited about what it might turn into once I start.  The layering and layering, and building on what has gone before, and taking shortcuts because you've fucked up with this blotch over here and so you need to incorporate it when you had no plans of having something like that ... and sometimes those things end up taking it in a direction you never would have gone but which ends up feeling like it was always meant to be, in hindsight.  Kind of the way lives are.  They look planned at the end, but in the middle, they often feel like chaos.