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.

Loss of True Love

Two weeks ago, my aunt’s husband passed away. They had been married for thirty-nine years. They were truly, deeply in love. He had a stroke, lost consciousness, and never woke up again. No chance to say good-bye. My aunt was inconsolable—her husband once said that if she died, he would die too—he would not know what else to do. My aunt feels the same way.

Two years ago, I was corresponding with my aunt, and then I stopped—because I was too lazy, too sad, too busy, too self-absorbed maybe. I have never spoken to my aunt on the phone—only ever wrote her letters. My mother went to Los Angeles for one week, and during that time, she called me twice, telling me that my aunt would like to talk to me on the phone. I refused. Why? I was selfish. I was too scared. I was too concerned about myself. Even though I didn’t know my uncle well, I feel for my aunt. I regret my inability to offer comfort—I regret, I regret so much. My mother told me yesterday that my aunt would like a letter from me because it would comfort her.

I finally wrote my aunt a letter tonight, trying to offer comfort, feeling with each word I wrote that everything I said was inadequate. Such a loss—the loss of true love—there is no comfort someone else can offer. My mother told me that when my aunt is home alone—in the home where once she shared with the love of her life—she walks around, calling for her husband, wishing that if he had become a ghost, he would come back to her.

The only thing that I could think to offer to such loss was my own loneliness. I have never known true love, and I cannot imagine the devastation such a loss would cause. I’ve made a promise that I’ll write her a letter every week, no matter how busy, how depressed, how wretched I am. It is going to be difficult to write those letters.

If I were a character in a fairy tale, I would be the hard and bitter old witch, sitting in my tower room, brewing my potions, reading my spell books, weaving dark spells. I have spent my life avoiding people, because I always get hurt when I get too close. Something always goes wrong, and each time something does go wrong, the deep and dark forest around my witch’s hut becomes more and more impassable. Loneliness becomes my bad addiction. It becomes my way of life. It is so difficult to care about someone else.

A year ago, a friend told me that my life would be guided by love. Of course I laughed bitterly—I’m chained to love, more like it. I’m addicted to love. Most of the novels I read each year are love stories. The stories I tell myself before I go to sleep are all love stories. The stories I write are all love stories. The most bittersweet dreams I have—the ones that I dare not write about—are all dreams of love. Every year, I tell myself—it’s over, no more of this pathetic letting-love-guide-your-life nonsense. Find something else. Let ambition guide your life. Or the quest for knowledge. Or hope for peace. Or your need to understand religion. Anything but love. I tell myself—living like this—longing for love, hoping for love—this way of living will kill you. If I knew which part of my brain is love, I would cut it out, with no regrets whatsoever. I would cut it out and throw it away. That may seem harsh, but I know—surely as I know anything about myself—that my cyclic bouts of depression are because of unrequited love. Every time I fail in my quest for love, I shut down—I lose the ability to function, I lose the will to live. My emotional stability is pathetic. My loneliness becomes a monster crawling inside my mind.

That is why I fear writing to my aunt. For only one precious month so far this year, I have not suffered because of love. I have been free of hope, of fear, of desire for love. I have been functioning like a normal human being. I have been okay, and I have been feeling that I will be okay forever because I know my weakness, I have made the same mistake too many times, and I am stronger than this sick need for love. I feel like I am being tested. Am I strong enough to write to my aunt and hear her stories about her true love? Am I strong enough to offer comfort, even when I feel awful, just plain awful, that my aunt, who has suffered so much in her life, has just endured the worst loss in her life? I think I am. I am so angry, so sick, so freakin’ bitter about the way love makes me feel that I think I am strong enough. I am strong enough on the strength of my negative feelings. If it helps to be a bitter, hard, lonely old witch, then by Thunder, I will gladly take on this persona. Am I closing myself off to love? Yes. Yes. Love belongs in my stories and my imagination, but longing for it in real life is akin to seeking my own death.

[Self-Commentation: Whew, I seem to be having a bad day. Where’s my sense of humor today?? Actually, it’s a relief to write all this out, because that’s really how I have been feeling for three years—been too afraid to admit these things to myself, I suppose. The truth surely hurts, and I hope my sense of humor is back tomorrow.]

John Donne

I had my last final today at 8:00 AM. I was exhausted until three hours ago, when I napped, woken up thirty minutes ago by thunder and rain. When you open your eyes to a darkened blue room, your mind groggy, and the rain is pounding away incessantly, it feels like the world is drowning. I am now refreshed, ready to listen to music for the next 12 hours, take my heart out, lay it on my sleeve, and write.

Good news! There is an ant next to my keyboard. My sister cooked yellow cake yesterday, so there are plenty of crumbs. Have at it, ant!

I will be going to my parents’ home tomorrow and staying there for three weeks until summer school starts. Two nutritional science classes this summer. My father is also interested in this stuff, so I hope I get some interesting tidbits to tell him. Next school year will mark my sixth year on my journey to get my undergraduate English/Science degrees. As of now, it will be my last year. I will walk next May. Most of the time, I feel like a loser for being in college for so long. And what have I learned all these years? Sometimes, though, I know I am in the right place. This is the only place where I can explore all my options.

How about some English Renaissance poetry from my final this morning? These dead dudes—Shakespeare, Donne, Milton—they were all interested in only two things: love and death. If they weren’t moaning about unrequited love, they were tearing their hair out about the fact that we all return to dust. Most of them weren’t kind to women. For example, dear, dear John Donne had this to say:

Hope not for the mind in women; at their best
Sweetness and wit, they’re but mummy, possessed.
~Love’s Alchemy

My reply: Well, excuse us if we seem a tad bit embalmed while in your delightful company. Perhaps it’s because of your very witty conversation that makes us want to have our brains sucked out of our nose holes and encased safely in a jar. The Good Lord preserve us from the likes of your wit.

Donne on women’s fidelity:

Yet she
Will be
False, ere I come, to two, or three.
~Song

My reply: Huh, so all women are whores, are they? Well, God bless them for enjoying themselves with two, or three lovers at a time. Can’t stand a little orgy, can we? I like nothing better than a woman with a ravenous appetite.

Donne using peer pressure to get a woman naked in bed:

To teach thee, I am naked first; why then
What need’st thou have more covering than a man?
~Elegy 19: To His Mistress Going to Bed

My reply: Why? Why? Well, you’re kind of desperate, aren’t you, if you’re willing to bare that hideously puny thing!

About Donne: So, he ran away with his true love, married her, and during the sixteen years of their marriage, proceeded to impregnate her twelve times! Twelve. As my sister Christine would say—ouch. Did she ever leave her bed? And guess how she died. In childbirth. Surprised, anyone? Couldn’t put the darn thing away, could we? What’s interesting is that after her death, Donne, for all his vast sexual appetites, swore off women and turned to God. He then proceeded to write his Holy Sonnets. Let’s take a look at one:

Take me to you, imprison me, for I
Except you enthrall me, never shall be free,
Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me.
~Holy Sonnet #10

For those of you confused, me is Donne and you is God. Huh. Seems like he wants to be raped by God. Or, if not that, to have very, very good sex with God. Donne seems to be a bit of a sado-masochist, especially since earlier in the poem, he wants God to o’erthrow me, and bend / Your force, to break, blow, burn and make me new.

My reply: So that’s why you turned to God! Well, Donne, old boy, if you got into Heaven, then by all means try to seduce God. God knows, God needs a little relaxation away from all his ruling and everything. But I warn you, if your dear wife got into Heaven too, she won’t take kindly to your infidelity! What’s that? Til death do you part? Okay, okay, fine, but don’t come complaining to me when she hurls your ass down to Hell.

I’m just poking good fun at Donne. If my humor’s a little offensive, I blame South Park. Donne’s a good poet. Gave us some of the best lines about love:

Twice or thrice had I loved thee,
Before I knew thy face or name
~Air and Angels

I wonder by my troth, what thou, and I
Did, till we loved? Were we not weaned till then?
~The Good Morrow

This one’s for us queers; the [Blah, blah, blah] are skipped lines; however, let’s pretend that the [Blah, blah, blah] are the idiot Prop 8 people and let’s imagine that Donne is speaking for us:

For God’s sake hold your tongue, and let me love,
[Blah, blah, blah]
Alas, alas, who’s injured by my love?
[Blah, blah, blah]
Call us what you will, we are made such by love.
[Blah, blah, blah]
We can die by it, if not live by love.
[Blah, blah, blah]
And thus invoke us: You whom reverend love
Made one another’s hermitage [place of refuge];
You, to whom love was peace, that now is rage;
Who did the whole world’s soul contract, and drove
Into the glasses [lenses] of your eyes.
~The Canonization

The last five lines are confusing, so here’s my take on it: You who revere the power of love, you made refuges for each other and for your love. If you can love with deep passion, if you can understand what love is, how can you not understand us? How can our love enrage you, when we too love with as deep passion and reverence as you do? Look into our eyes and you will see the whole world’s soul reflected back at you. Look into our eyes and you will see the grief and violence you have created reflected back at you.

[Sigh] Thinking about Prop 8 has made me blue.