Works in progress: Paintings, practices, and parenting

Greetings from a not-as-hot-as yesterday Monday in July.

Today I have been attentive to myself. I woke up before Goldie (she will be 3 mid-August) to practice day 16 of 40 of a kundalini kriya that’s keeping me afloat with its intensely challenging repetitive gestures — and the spaciousness that follows in their wake. The last two times I snapped at Goldie, they were days when I waited until later to do my practice.

It’s a choice to dig in, yes. And it’s also an essential form of insurance. The last thing most of us want to do is harm the people we love. And yet, due to their proximity, they’re the people we’re most likely to injure. So I practice.

Work in progress: Goldie, striding

After dropping G at daycare, I heeded my instincts and chose bed and a book over being productive on my computer. I finished the book - a fascinating (if dark) continuation of the Great Gatsby through queer and Vietnamese-American lenses by Nghi Vo called The Beautiful and the Chosen. It did not improve the heaviness of mood that followed me from yesterday (though I’m feeling better than I was, thanks to an urgent parenting break in the late afternoon when I felt like the walls were closing in). Still, I got the satisfaction of finishing something while supine.

I made a nice lunch for myself, and decided to join my teacher on Zoom for his noon vigorous yoga class. If my mood is off, going to yoga is always a good idea. Far as I can recall, in 15 years of yoga, I’ve never felt worse after a practice.

I was also motivated to go because I had a dream with my teacher in it last night. He was unkind (not characteristic of him!), and the best balm for a bad dream about someone I like is interfacing with them. I brought my mat outside and discovered that, having finally healed after years of chronic back pain, headstands are still available to me. (!) Sometimes I just need to go upside down. When my heart gets to spend time over my head, I make better decisions.

I LOVE GOLD LEAF. Been up-cyling Goodwill frames for an art show.

Back to the walls closing in while parenting. This past February, James (beloved husband & bestie) and I spent a week together on St. Croix in the Virgin Islands. When we got back, I realized something that hurt my heart: in my week off from parenting, I liked myself the whole time. It was difficult to return. Not because I don’t love Goldie. I love her tremendously. But coming back to a situation where I struggle regularly to like and love myself? Not easy.

Parenting is hard. We know this. And those of us who are parents know know this. My child’s temperament is similar to mine. We are both creative and whimsical. We are also both hot-tempered. In Ayurveda, this fiery quality is known as pitta. When things are good, they’re really good.

When we clash and I’m not well-enough resourced, I feel like I’m trying to simultaneously disarm a ticking bomb and act like there’s no bomb. The pressure!

I’ve been meaning to include more of my art in my Substack posts. I’ve always been an artist, and creating in multiple dimensions (singing, acting, clowning, painting, embroidering, poetry, prose, etc.) is important to me.

I’ve been working on a landscape recently. And it strikes me that as hard as I can be on myself, even as I orient again and again towards softness, it’s clear to me as I observe my creative output that I’m evolving. I never used to have the patience for landscapes. And this one really called to me.

I’ve also fallen head-over-heels for oil paint - even if I did give myself a chemical burn with paint thinner last week that still happens to be itching - yikes! No wonder I put off exploring the toxic world of oils for so long. Anyways, I’m on guard now - it won’t happen again, inshallah. In retrospect, it’s clear that I was resting in self-denial by not getting into oils sooner.1

So, another notch in my self-love belt - Yes Adair, paint in oils because they make you feel amazing. ENJOY yourself. Nobody’s stopping you - unless you stop you. Or as my painting teacher Steve Carpenter would say, Basta! I think he meant, Enjoy! But I looked it up and that’s not what basta means in Italian. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Okay, I have to prepare for a call about a speaking engagement that’s coming up. On days like this one, it really helps to know that other people want to hear what I have to say.

May you like and love yourself today! And if that’s not possible, may you orient towards liking and loving yourself.