THE PLEASURE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

"Art Student" - 1997

Silver Parnell

Layers of consciousness pervade creations, whether a sketch, a story, a crocheted baby blanket, or a piece of jewelry made by hand, they are all steeped in experience, feeling and relevance, especially for the creator, the artist.

We aesthetic types are driven to produce beautiful things. Some artists produce stark and sometimes even ugly things, but those creations have a dark beauty that comments upon and reveals the dark aspects of our lives and our world. It all shakes down to some kind of beauty in the end.

Capturing a moment in time, and placing it onto a canvas or a sheet of paper (such as the one, above) merges the moment with the beautiful object produced. In this sketch is the inspired feeling of throwing myself back into the two dimensional art during a period of heartache, the end of a short marriage in which I discovered that my new husband was actually a con artist, though not a very ambitious one. He had lied about everything except his name, then rushed me into marriage on the pretext that he was so keen to have me, when the truth was considerably more modest.

The man was in financial ruin and had to hop onto someone - anyone - who would keep him from becoming homeless and thereby looking bad in the eyes of his parents. It was a disaster, most particularly because, while I had a rather good job as an office manager and litigation secretary, I had no money to speak of. At any rate, I got out as soon as I could, vowing to never go near another man as long as I lived. I have never been and would never be "lucky in love." It made me feel very little to have been used so badly for so pedestrian a reward.

So I furiously sketched out my disappointment and regret, channeling that energy into my classwork. I had never been so prolific. I remember the day I sketched my fellow artist in class, but it is more than intellectual recollection that is fused with the image. The energetic wave created while begetting a picture without looking at the paper feels something like doing a high wire act. At times, tears came to my eyes as I risked the daring trapeze - depicting without a net.

Birthing art into the world, even when fueled by despair and heartache, is a glorious thing because it arises out of body and mind and then returns to body and mind, gifting the mind with pleasing line and shape that strikes a chord in the brain. Consciousness of the object, in first the creation of it, and then the appreciation of it, is its own reward. If you can sell your work, that's really wonderful, but it's almost beside the point.

Today, I am disabled, in chronic pain, and am very slowly going blind and, although cheated out of an inheritance promised to me for 50 odd years, and living an embarrassingly mean existence on Social Security alone, I revel in the pleasure of consciousness. The drama and color of it all is remarkably pleasing, in the same way that a really good movie or Broadway play would be. Movies and plays would be dull, if not for considerable conflict. Books about writing will often counsel budding writers to be sure and include big conflict over which the hero prevails.

We are all the heroes of our own little dramas, and the degree to which we rise above our cares is the degree to which we 'succeed' in life. The weight of the cross that each of us carries through our own drama is a testament to our dignity as human creatures and, even when someone is discounting us or demeaning us, we are dignified by it if we can view all of it through the lens of gratitude for the consciousness of all of it. The greater the conflict, the better the story.

Today I am taking great pleasure in my perceptions of life and my own peculiar story, experiencing the movement of the Lord throughout, and I hope that all of my readers may likewise take great joy in the pleasure of the gift of consciousness and self reflection, today and every day.

Silver Rose