The Art of Forgetting

     At my age, my short-term memory sometimes sputters like a dollar store lighter. My long-term memory, however, flares bold and bright. Though I have the requisite sunny happy memories, a few ancient negative experiences sometimes outshine them. Can I really still be bothered by a bad experience in first grade, so many decades ago? Yeah. Watch.

.   For the first three months of that year, I was only five. Way too young to be told I suck at art, but that is indeed what happened.

    I remember the private school classroom perfectly. Tidy rows of brown desks. Large windows affording a powder blue glimpse of Miami's Biscayne Bay. I sat behind Francis Martinez who had beautiful hair but was a serial vomiter. Whenever it happened, I'd see Rorschach patterns in the mess on her desktop. "Francis threw up again today" I'd inform my mom. "It looked like the bottle on I Dream of Jeannie."  

    I was happy at Bayshore, the best reader in my class and a quick friend to the other children- or should I say soon-to-be little traitors.

    One sunny afternoon our teacher plopped a vase of flowers on a stool. "Get out your crayons please and draw this. Make your drawing look as much like this as you can."

    I wasn't particularly excited about this assignment. The flowers were already there. Why was I being asked to make a copy of them? I loved drawing and coloring, but art for me was about freedom.

    Still, I got out my 64 box of Crayolas with the built in sharpener and chose my colors carefully. It was hard to sacrifice my favorites for the yellows, reds, and greens of the just okay bouquet. 

    Our papers were collected. "Now we're going to divide them into a good pile and a bad pile." said Mrs.Smith, or whatever the fuck her name was. She pinched the first paper between her thumbs and index finger and held it up. "Good!" chorused my class. "Bad!" they yelled for the second one. "Good!" they screamed for the third. 

    When my drawing was held up, I may have simply fallen on the wrong side of a Good-Bad-Good pattern. But the enthusiastically shouted "Bad!" spilled thickly over my developing ego.

    Until then crayons and paint had been pure joy. But now my fate was cast. I was not an artist. I was BAD!

    For the rest of my childhood, I was a non-participant in drawing activities. If an art assignment had parameters, I sat silently until it was over. "There's an F in art Wendy" sniffed my 4th grade teacher, seeing no trace of the assigned Disney character on my paper. I glowered in silence. No one was going to accuse me of a sub-par Goofy.

    In college, I found some redemption in photography. I snapped soul-revealing portraits of strangers in strange towns. I layered negatives in the darkroom and burned and dodged surrealistic visions to life. Critiques boosted my ego, but if you'd asked me to draw anything in those days- anything at all- I'd resort to the lamest geometry. Mountains were sharp triangles, houses rectangles. No one could accuse me of trying and therefore no one could accuse me of failing. After all, I'd abandoned art at five. 

    When I became a teacher, my students insisted I was good at instructing them in art. It was a compliment I adored, and one I'd sweated for. Whatever the assignment, I forced it into doability beforehand. "Here's a trick you can use" I told other tormented artistic souls, allowing the under-confident to produce something pleasing. The kids who could draw? I let them fly free and far. I was busy safeguarding egos. My students  were not allowed to see themselves as BAD.

    I was a hypocrite. I still saw myself as bad. I craved color so ardently I wanted to swim in it, but no jumping into the art pool for me. It was only for the talented- those who could render in a lifelike manner.

    "Are you good?"  Those three words were a demonic question lodged in my stained brain for decades. I imagined- a horrible number of times- revealing I painted in my free time.  "ARE YOU GOOD?" the listener would demand. In response I'd either have to defend myself or lie. Either option felt exhausting. Though strictly in nightmare form, the "Are you good?" people stopped me from the self expression and joy I needed.

    My ghost people may as well have asked if I was good at watching TV or chewing gum. Some things we do just for pleasure, and they're our own damn business. 

    I finally realized that a few years ago and started painting. I paint sometimes once a week, sometimes once every two months, usually close to midnight, when my thinking is fuzzy and I'm therefore at my most creatively intelligent. I mix palettes of magical colors, and swan dive in with no particular vision or agenda. In the morning I give my creations names that suit their random weirdness: Asparagus and Balloons. Siberian Roller Coaster. Jamaican Pod Farm. My paintings are whimsical, amusing, and ever-so imperfect. Like me. Maybe one day I'll show one to you, maybe I won't. Either way, I'm good.