“Everyone carries a shadow”

This morning I had the chance to look at the digital ARC for my forthcoming book, The Art of Looking Back: A painter, an obsession, and reclaiming the gaze. The designers have done a beautiful job of arranging the material. The text is a series of sections, some brief, some longer, many of them in conversation with a portrait of myself, painted when I was 23. I didn’t expect to write a book like this but a few things conspired, in the way that they do, and I realized that I needed to do this work. It wasn’t entirely a happy process. In the course of writing about a story I’ve held for nearly 50 years, I came to understand that it wasn’t really that story at all. It was far more complicated, uglier, and there were times I wanted to quietly give up. But somehow seeing the portrait at the foot of my stairs filled me with shaky resolve, even though there was pain as well. And shame. I didn’t expect to write a book like this and yet I did. And this morning I looked at the ARC as though at a book written by someone else and I realized that it has substance. The form I evolved to carry the story works. Or at least it feels that way this morning.

What gift of counsel would you give your younger self if you could? I ask that with interest and curiosity. Would she listen? Would you have listened? Would I have paid attention to an older woman advising me to be patient, to care for myself, to value myself? Would I (she) have listened as she (me) talked about desire, manipulation, and boundaries? I wonder. I truly do.

Writing this book changed me, in a way. I feel quieter. I understand how the life that we live can be full of darker depths that we are seldom willing to explore. Exploring them is often a murky process and it would easier to simply leave them be. If there are other people involved, you can’t count on them being understanding and generous, though some of them will be, your own husband most of all.