a painter’s reverie

reverie – noun; a state of being pleasantly lost in one’s thoughts

Sometimes I wish I wasn’t a writer. Sometimes I wish I were a painter with an easel on my balcony and watercolors in my makeup drawer.

If I were a painter, I wouldn’t have to choose between logic and sense.  My abstract reverie would be my homeopathic remedy and personal sense of normalcy.

If I were a painter, I’d have all of earth’s tones to choose from just to express one emotion and I wouldn’t have to rely on me.

Or would I?  Do painters get painter’s block the same way writers come down with writer’s block?

Would a painter prevent herself from making debilitating artistic decisions for the sake of her career?

Do we all eventually find ourselves in rehab when our rainbow is not enough? And speaking of color (ed) girls, is the only way for us to overcome our masochistic reality to find God in ourselves and love ourselves fiercely?

When I think of God and fierce love, I think of peace and happy hearts worth following.  I think of pre-chosen paths that hide themselves from us until we are ready to fearlessly walk down them.  And I also think of how a painter masters this long before a writer.

My best writing has come from the most agonizing painstaking moments of this petite life of mine.  As a writer, misery is my comfortable hiding spot.  But a painter listens to the God within her and follows the vibrant path laid before her with an anxious brush.  A painter grows up to be a painter.

Just like an actor, photographer, or athlete, there’s only one route for a painter right?

You ask a writer what she wants to be when she grows up and she says, a journalist, a producer, a director, an editor, a studio executive…

but. i. want. to. be. a writer. And I want the world to give me no other choice.

I want to keep watercolors in my makeup drawer. I want to have permanent cerulean blue acrylic stains in my nail beds.

I want my desires to make sense.  To be a part of the plan. To be the only plan.

We all want what we can’t have.

I’m sure there’s some painter out there who longs for similar simplicity; who wishes they were a writer; who wishes all they required was a pen and paper to create a masterpiece.

this. is. my. writer’s. rehab.

“If I were a painter I would paint my reverie if that’s the only way for you to be with me…If I were a painter and could paint a memory I’d climb inside the swirling skies to be with you” -norah jones

“painter song” by norah jones