Sunday, October 18, 2009

Got a Touch of the Blues


(click on photo to enlarge it)

My cousin called me today from Italy and we had a long conversation about growing older, life in general, and the feeling I have lately had of being rootless. I love talking with her, because we were very close when we were much younger and both lived in Italy. Now our conversations are fun but infrequent. Life gets in the way.

I've never suffered from depression and don't really think I do now, but lately I have grown very introspective and have been in this trying-to-figure-things-out mode. For some reason the talk with my cousin made me very blue, and only increased my sense of not having roots. When I was a child my father was in the military so we traveled back and forth from Italy a couple of times. I was not quite ten when he retired from the armed forces and we moved back to Italy. When it was time for college I came back to the US and after college I went back to Italy. Three years later I moved back to the US. I think all this wandering in my youth has finally taken its toll.

I decided that even though I often don't see the point of doing a page in my visual journal, this might be the day to do just that. So I started out using Lisa Bebi's paint over technique  from the Spring 2008 issue of Somerset Workshops, but ended up painting around the images instead of over them, for the page on the left, or not even around them, for the page on the right.

I was going to write stuff about siblings and ancestral roots, but instead opted for the tiny strip of paper that has been floating around my chaotic little workspace for about 10 months, and which I thought for sure I would never be able to find when I wanted it. Miraculously, I immediately found it in a little container of odds and ends and glued it
down. Finished.

The children on the left are my mother and her younger brother, maybe 1920, and the woman and young boy on the right are my father's mother and his older brother, maybe 1915.

8 comments:

sharon said...

This ia a beauty of a journal entry! The colors are fantastic....they simply glow.....and the images are touching. I hope you find the peace within that you need, you express it so well on paper!

lisabebi said...

this is just beautiful and heartfelt and i think i am going to cry now. i can relate to your un-rooted feeling - in my mid to late 20's i lived in england. i felt transatlantic - i guess i was transatlantic. neither here nor there. but then, i am very prone to depression. i have to watch myself.
your journal page expresses this to me. the tender part. of family photos - yet dwarfed by the page (beautiful colors) - and when you feel this way - journal words would only give it too much weight
too heavy for that far away and small feeling......i love what you have done here.

anna maria said...

Thank you Sharon and Lisa, I am so very touched by your kind and thoughtful comments.
I think that making the pages actually improved my mood.

Diana Trout {Nan.DT@verizon.net} said...

Beautiful post and a very lovely personal journal page. Your blog is very lovely: bookmarked!
I'm so glad your bracelet arrived in good condition, wear it in good health.

Alisa Burke said...

Anna Maria!! Thank you so much for catching the mistake on my website- I SO appreciate it!! AND...I love this post, I can so relate to the way you feel- I often struggle with the same thoughts and while I have lots of family, these days I have been feeling a longing for finding deeper connections- bravo for being so open in sharing this!

anna maria said...

Diana and Alisa,

thank you for your kind comments, and coincidentally both from artists from whom I recently bought a bracelet! Small world.

Alisa I figured you would want to know because you have recently made it a point to let everyone know about the extended access to your classes.

Pam said...

I enlarged your photograph, and saw the note 'I miss them all' and it brought tears to my eyes. It's been one and a half years since my mother passed away, and the sadness is different and simplier but still present in most moments. I've often told myself how fortunate I am to have someone to miss - that I was lucky enough to have someone to miss. Does that make sense? There can only be sadness in a life that has been (and is) truly rich.

anna maria said...

Pam, it makes total sense. We are lucky to have had people in our lives that we loved and who loved us enough for us to miss them. Not everyone is so fortunate.