The Last Time I Saw Paris...

"The last time I saw Paris....."

.....was in another lifetime.

In the in the last week or so, Paris has being making itself known.

It has surfaced in the books I've been reading, researching art techniques, and popping up in movies on the television. French jewelry, dancing in Paris, eating at certain cafes, dresses, perfumes, dogs....all Parisian...faint and fleeting colors of chalk washing away in the rain.

Yesterday, I sat in my dining room working in polymer clay. The photos I had chosen as the focal points were mostly small reproductions of Mucha posters or cropped bits from Sargeant paintings. I was turning them into Christmas ornaments for friends.

Gold and copper leaf was worked into the translucent clay, marbling and breaking away in pretty patterns with each turn of the press. Flattening the clay and cutting through it to create the frame work, I cut swirls and worked the clay into Art Nouveau twists and curls. Each frame was different...no two are alike due to the coloring, size, and cut of the piece itself. Baked and cured, I glazed the photos and then added loose pearls and vintage rhinestones from the 20's and 30's. Gold thread was attached to the wire hangers and knotted. Ten ornaments in all.

I should have been satisfied with my work. Instead, I was anxous. I have been for weeks now.

Moving about the house, pacing in lion steps...soft and steady. A hot bath and hot milk with allspice, mace and Irish whiskey did nothing for me. I picked up "Isadora" by Fredricka Blair and was inundated with emotions as she made her trek to Paris and then eventually to Berlin and began her romance with Edward Gordon Craig. Teddy.

Slamming the book shut, I thought "Enough of THIS!" Agitation, restlessness and something unnamed. Crawling under the down covers, I sat in bed and wrote in my journal until I began to fall asleep. My pen strokes began to scribble themselves down the page as sleep set in.

Midnight and I had been dreaming of working on ornaments...there was a stress there within the dream...something was making an otherwise enjoyable time feel pushed, pinched, and miserable. I woke feeling stressed and thirsty. I reached for my journal again and wrote of the bits of dream I remembered.

Fooling around with thoughts on paper...self-analysis and unhappiness with things. I push them away from me because I love them too much and can loose myself in them.

It is as if I am on a sea cliff with oceans of things I love...who I really am...what is important to me, lying below.

It would be so easy to open my arms.
So easy.

Breathing them in, I have embraced this feeling before.

I could open my arms to it...
allowing myself to fall into these things
and back into who I am.

I could...am about to... but am so very afraid that it will change me...

but change me how?

That
I will find out.