I am a scrawler of notes. They help me focus, but they also serve as a home security system. Because they make me look insane. I imagine thieves breaking in to see a word scrap explosion on the walls…… they look at each other and bolt! “This chick is CRAZY”.
One such note “See Yourself In Everyone” is scrawled directly on a door. It speaks to me everyday. It is a thought that I love! Many of my reminders are difficult and uncomfortable……But “See Yourself in Everyone ” is one that I am really good at.
While I need constant visual reminders to partake in the simplest of self care,
the capacity to see myself in everyone is easy peasy for me. It is an ability that transcends everybody and goes into everything. On my mind every time I leave the house, it has contributed to the weird relationship I have formed with my vines.
I planted jasmine in the yard. I was told it would climb and cover the sad chainlink fence. A few years later it has grown lush and inviting. I pieced together some sticks like an arbor. It made a beautiful archway as the vines strengthened it, it was lovely.
Over time and rain the archway began to fail. It became a limbo game, you had to contort yourself alphabet style just to enter the yard. If you went in at the wrong angle you got a stick in the eye. (also a good theft deterrent ) To prevent injury and start anew, we cut it down.
A few weeks passed and now the vines are wondering where their friend the archway ran off to.
They are reaching to cling to something. On one end of the fence some of the vines found a nearby tree. They lunged foreward forming a 3 foot tension line. It appears to be waiting for a zipline burglar or circus performer to traverse it. Every time I see this taut and stretching vine I am flooded with feelings.
“How desperate” I walk by disgusted, glaring at the vine. “How desperate and needy, You will cling to anything”, I think to myself about the vine. “That tree will suffocate under your grip”.
I have watched it, day after day winding tighter and tighter growing up the bark.
I will have to cut it eventually. I realize this and I am angry for it…I wish the vine would just know better. “Tree’s just not into you girl” I wish it would just let go of the damn trunk on it’s own accord. I wish the vine had some respect for itself and wouldn’t cling to just whatever happened to be there. But that is the nature of the vine and I wonder if it is my nature too. I see myself in the vine.
On the other end of the fence, where the archway used to be, the vine is reaching out, but there is nothing for it to cling to. It is growing and growing and crying. I can hear it’s creaky whine. It wants to cling to something so bad, but there is nothing, so it just grows, twisting searching, falling back heavy on itself. I see myself in that vine too.
The vines try to hug at me. “Get a grip vines” I say to them. I am meaner to vines than I am proud of. I don’t want to be like them, I want to grow strong and healthy and vibrant without needing someone else to hold me up. More respectable like a tree, with its own trunk, or a mountain, or Oprah I think to myself, yeah that’s the better way to be.
I get in my car, satisfied that I know something about who I want to be.
But my mind drifts to fungus, as it often does and I wonder if the vine is a parasite? Does it grow only at the expense of another? Or does it simply love. Is it simply craving connection, is that it’s mission.
I have been obsessively thinking about these vines and therefore, what love is.
I can not think about love without thinking about sex, and I can’t think about sex without thinking about food. So naturally I have been equally obsessed with this unicorn donut holder.
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| “Unicorn With Donuts Horn” |
I have drawn it over and over again for years. Sometimes I am not even aware of it, I will be on the phone and I hang up and realized I have penetrated half a dozen donuts on a horn with a lackadaisical doodle.
I think well this is obviously about gratification.
I take a moment to think about penis envy. I think about jousting and the sweet suggestive symbolism of a glazed donut. I think I must be really really lonely.
If I were an analyst I would stroke my chin and say ” I find it interesting that you have chosen a mythical creature to represent a man and the notorious confectionary mascot of fat people everywhere to represent the female form. Do you believe that good men do not exist and that women are just sugar covered objects to be consumed. Do you believe they are just holes ED? do you? DO YOU?
I wonder why the vines and the unicorn donut holder take up the same brain space in my head when they look nothing alike.
Then I realize that I like drawing the unicorn horn because it is just this giant undeniable protrusion and it only makes sense to me if it is doing something. Otherwise it is a pointless horn. Is there anything more terrifying then a pointless horn?
I like to draw it purpose full and connected. Knitting with a Narwhale for instance, or roasting marshmellows, picking locks, a practice pole for stripper fairies…It doesn’t matter, it just needs a purpose. It needs to connect with something. I see myself in the unicorn horn.
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| “Unicorn and Narwhale Knitting Love With Their Horns” |
Somehow the recognition that things alone, while fine…are not fulfilled, softened my gaze towards the whiny vines in my front yard.
I Have Drawn The Conclusion That: These vines need a purpose, something to be a part of that is larger than themselves. I went out and hugged them this morning, and they hugged back and tried to keep me. “Mom, can we go!!!” My son is yelling at me to stop hugging the fence. I untangled myself, whispering appreciation. ” Thank you for reaching out, for being relentlessly yourselves”
I see myself in the vines.
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| ED Hose Hugging Her Vines
Is it ok that I captioned this in third person? |
*Unicorn Art available Here, or contact me for special orders. 912-399-4533
