My mom shook her head in frustration as she swept up my mess. It was difficult because the wet pieces of food didn't lend themselves to the broom. I don't know why I suddenly couldn't swallow. I was seven. I had done it all my life but now I just could not. I didn't know why and my mother didn't ask. And that was the way of it. We would all sit at the dinner table; the huge flowers of the wall paper smiling down on our vinyl dinette set. Bright yellows oranges and golds accented with avocado appliances felt soothing and loud all at once. The sun always the unnamed guest at our table shown through the bay window onto my seven year old sun-tanned legs, tan from hours of exploring, playing, and catching bugs outside. My mother's food was always beautifully delicious and crazy like her.
Marla Janell Langley was my mother's name. It was also Janell Marla Langley. She went by both combinations. When I asked my grandparents her name, they never seemed to agree on which version was correct. Nor did my mother know. It seemed to me that this was a bad start in life to not even know the order of your name. It was like so many things surrounding my mother. it lacked clear boundaries or order. Things concerning her being were always murky and convoluted dotted with islands of radiance and genius that kept a voyager captivated and willing to keep plodding through the murky waters. I was just such a voyager on the beautiful harrowing depths of the seas that were my mother.
That night in my memory Marla Janell Janell Marla made Egg Foo Young. My mother was fascinated with other worlds, people and cultures. Her meals were delicious, surprising and incoherent. They were as disjointed as her. She didn't think in terms of a protein, starch, dairy and fruit. It was more like a canvas for her. it was a representation of the food groups that captured her imagination at the time, colors, shapes and textures. She was an artist literally. And that fact carelessly spilled over into every aspect of her life. These parts amazed, shocked, frightened and sometimes repulsed her viewers. Marla Janell wasn't the type of artist who had taken a class or knew about art history. it simply was who she was. She couldn't help it. Every cell in her being was simply coded artistic and that was the way of it. In a gallery that works really well. However, in the four walls of a home, it sometimes wasn't the best picture. And with that artistic ability came the fragility.
I believe every artist at some level or another walks in two worlds. I think the veil separating the real and the illusion with all its clutter, weight and noise is very thin for them. I think it is what allows them to see as they do. They take our jumbled up affectations and images and cast a discerning brush to it that brings the truth, good or bad, into the harsh light for all to see. Curiously, in direct juxtaposition their own interior landscape seems to lack such clarity and discernment. As if God meant to show his power and light through the frailty of the artistic heart. Like many artists, my mom was mentally ill. For me, it was a chicken and egg thing. Did the art and seeing through the illusory plane make a person crazy or did one have to first be "crazy" to see beyond the great semptar.
I love artists. I always find a way to have one in my life. What would life be without the imaginations and possibilities they show us. I want to be a part of that moment that they elucidate for us, allowing for us to finally hear the beckoning calls from a place much more divine than the shrill illusion that rings in our ears continually.
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