Where is the Art?

Life comes fast, changing every day, putting an infinite amount of pressure on me (or I put an infinite amount of pressure on me) and it is sometimes hard to find the thread that leads me back to the page.

My personal struggles with work and school are pretty mellow at this point but what is funny is that when I reach a dip in the tension, in the manic press to meet all obligations at once, my wife reaches a peak. Tracy is trying so hard right now to be everything to everyone and there are simply not enough hours in the day. Her work has exploded, throwing out impossible deadlines, month long events and new coworkers. She is swimming as fast as she can but I feel like she is fighting the undertow.

It is really hard for me to watch her experience this and I want to reach out to her and offer some kind of lifeline, a buoy on to which she can hold, but as her stress level increases, her resistance to me grows.

I think, in her mind, if she decompresses with me, if she lets go of it all and relaxes, she will stop and not start again. The narratives in our lives follow strange curves, peaks and valleys that do not flow in the same manner for each person. I feel like Tracy and I have intersected in our journey, me decompressing from end of semester, her compressing under the pressure of work and somewhere in my descent and her ascent we briefly met for a moment and were equal.

So, in taking care of the baby, trying to do the housework, maintaining my commitment to my day job and trying to help her be OK in her skin, I wonder where does Art fit into all of this. How important is making up stories?

The answer, I know, is that it is critical. With each new story I write I gain a greater understanding of what it is to be a human, a man, a son, a husband, a father, a brother, a friend. Writing is my meditation. It is my outward seeking into the world and I am a better person for it. It seems weird that such an isolated activity can teach me so much about connectedness, how sitting alone in a room can teach me about my need for my loved ones.

In looking at my life right now and seeing the stress my wife is having to endure, I love her all the more because I can recognize myself in her. I can feel her pain and wait for her, patiently, as I should. For when she stops for a moment and looks around at her life and her world. She will see me standing there, holding our daughter, smiling, and it is a picture I created. It is a picture of my devotion to her. It is my greatest work of art.