Green World

8x10 oil

One day last week I thought I was losing it. It was disconcerting, to say the least.

I was pleasantly lost in a painting when my pesky inner critic popped up and told me I needed to hydrate. I hadn’t had much water at all that morning. So I put down my brush and headed to the kitchen for my water bottle. Once there, I noticed that my breakfast dishes were still in the sink, unwashed. Huh, I thought. I never leave unwashed dishes in the sink. So I quickly washed them and went back to my home studio and resumed painting.

Fifteen minutes later, I put my brush down again and closed my eyes. Good grief, I thought, remembering I’d gotten up to drink some water … and never did. Where is your brain, man?

That Friday, I was having dinner with my girlfriend, a preschool teacher. She told me that she’d made lunch that morning to take with her to school, and when she arrived, she realized that she’d totally forgotten to bring it with her.

I smiled as I listened. “Thank you!” I said. “That’s so great to hear.”

She gave me a “say-what” look and I explained about my memory lapse, and how I was glad to hear that I wasn’t the only one with such unsettling issues. She confessed that she had these periodic lapses, as well. We decided that maybe this was all due to the massive shift we have all been forced into due to the pandemic. Not much of anything is the same as it was. We have to wear masks when see each other. We have to stay six feet apart everywhere we go. Our normal lives have been turned upside-down. We are adjusting, rethinking, realigning, coping. We are overwhelmed.

So once a while our minds take a break.

“Green World” reminds me of this phenomenon … as if when painting this I’d forgotten that there was any color other than green.

Does any of this ring a bell?

Sigh…