Sketching and Self-Reflection

I like the way a good sketch makes me feel more alive. When I’m infatuated/in love/obsessed with someone, I see more hues. I see more clearly. That’s why it makes sense to sketch during those times. Now, though, I don’t feel much for anyone. There’s Lady Librarian, but she’s more like a dream lady to me. I’ve given up trying to speak to her. I just wait until she turns away and then I give her back dark, smoldering looks. And I try to memorize her.

Is that creepy?

Well, I’ve given up being normal, being conversational, being healthily among people. Now, I spend lots of time by myself, staring at the wall or laying on the couch staring at the ceiling or squatting next to one of my plants and staring at a leaf.

More than a few times, I’ve told my sister Christine that I feel unbearably lonely. And she rolls her eyes and sneers back—Well, no wonder. It’s been years since you’ve called [name] and [name] and . . . And then I would feel even more guilty because it’s true. I am guilty of leaving so many friends behind. One day, for no apparent reason, I just stop communicating. I can’t even give a good reason to myself. Most of the time, I don’t know what I mean by lonely.

Well, lately, doing all this sketching has made me realized what I mean by I feel lonely. I feel lonely for myself. When I’m really busy, I feel lonely for the deepest, truest part of myself—who is an artist and a writer. I’m a creative person who has given up art and writing to pursue science. And it has cost me. I don’t know how to survive as an artist and a writer, so I’ve chosen a career. A scientific career. And I’m afraid that I’ll wake up one day and realize that Myself has left and what is left is a shell.

This summer is a gift. I am so glad that I failed two classed and they put me on probation and I have to spend a whole extra year in college. Because If I hadn’t failed, I would be spending this summer pursuing my scientific career and wondering why I felt so unhappy. Instead, I failed, hence I have an easy summer, hence, I chased after Myself, hugged her back into my mind, placed a sketching instrument into her hand and a sketch book into her lap, and told her to be herself.

Sometimes, I feel like going back to former sketches and reworking them, but I don’t. I have less than two months of vacation left, and I need to get as many sketches done as possible, because I am pursuing . . . something unexplainable. I’m . . . pursuing art. That’s the best way to put it. I am racking up ideas for the empty, sad times ahead, so that I can look on this blog when I’m not sketching, and I can see that my art hasn’t died yet. Oh, so dramatic, but I feel like these sketches are headed somewhere. Maybe it’s the birth pains of developing my own artistic style. Who knows.

Even last year, when I painted a thirty foot long beach mural, I could not have sketched like this. And I am not currently obsessed with anyone. So why am I sketching like this—as though there were a purpose to these sketches? Maybe, just maybe, I am pursuing my artistic career? If so, I have cause for celebration.

Why I Sketch

There was a high school teacher whom I adored for years and years, even after I didn’t see her again. I stopped talking to her because I wanted to be emotionally healthy and sane again. And then for years, I taught myself not to think of her every day. I never told her how I felt, but I think she guessed. As of now, I don’t think I’ll ever see her again, even though she wanted us to stay in touch.

I felt sorrow when I saw her during those last few times three years ago. Before our last meeting, I emailed her and told her how I felt about women, and then we met for dinner, and during the dinner, I realized that nothing could be the same between us again—not with the knowledge of the way I loved and perhaps why I told her. There was no way we could treat it lightly, when there is always love on my face when I see her and when she always turns away, perhaps knowing that I am watching her and the reason for it. If I had known that telling her would mean saying good-bye to her, I would do it again exactly the same way again. I have no regrets.

She is engaged now and will probably be married soon, if not already. To a good man. He has a son by a previous marriage, and so she will be happy, I think. I am happy for her.

Once every few months, I forget that I’m not supposed to think of her, and I search the internet for her name—to find pictures of her and save them, and to find where she is teaching now and how she is involved with her community.

When I sketch women, I always sketch women who remind me of her—if not by their physical features then by the expression on their faces. She is beautiful, but I did not notice until a year after I first met her. What I noticed first were the varied expressions on her face as she spoke about things that mattered to her. I was captivated. And then one day, while listening to her, I looked at her, really looked—and realized with a shock how beautiful her face and body were. Suddenly, her expressions and movements had glow and effervescence, as though I had suddenly opened my mind to her. That was when I first started to imprint her into my memory. She is still the most beautiful woman I have ever known. When I sketch, I sketch the memory of her. I sketch hope and imagination and magic—I sketch what life would have been like if she were mine. In my imagination—if never in reality—she is mine to love.

I pretend that I don’t love her with my whole heart anymore because it keeps me sane. All these years, I’ve tried to love other women just so that I can forget her.

One day, if I ever find a woman who will spend her life with me—it will be a different kind of love. The way I feel now, for this woman whom I’ll never see again—it is a love based on deep, quiet yearning—and this love has affected the person I’ve become, more than anything else that’s happened to me. I may put thoughts and memories of her away, but they are still there, buried deep in my treasure chest.

I suppose she is my muse. I painted murals for her. She has several of my artwork. If I could, I would give all my artwork to her. The first artwork I ever gave her, I gave idly, not really caring, just thinking, oh, she might like this, but the expression on her face, and the way she touched the inked lines so delicately with just the tips of her fingers—I felt as though she were touching my heart with the same love and delicacy.

Here is that pen-and-ink drawing~



And that’s why I sketch. Not only because I like observing the world through an artist's eyes, but mainly because of the memory of love.