Lunch with an artist

I met an artist for lunch.

Asked what she ordered.

Black-eyed pea soup, she said.

Then we descended.

I told her I’ve not been drinking, thinking of conceiving.

She didn’t know about all that. My mom drank to help her lactate.

I heard pregnant women in Ireland drink a Guinness a day.

I’ve been resistant to marriage and kids because I don’t want to lose my independence, want to be selfish with my time, want to be able to pick up and go whenever I want.

I feel like I can talk to her about this because we’re both anti-government, anti all of it in a way.

She’s from the 70s when it was cool to be anti.

It’s not as cool now as it seemed to be back then.

She met a French horn player.

Raised a son with him for 15 years.

Another man asked her, “When have been your most artistically productive years? When you’ve been living your creative lifestyle? Or when you’ve been home with the French horn player and your son?”

My partner told me if I weren’t with her I’d be wasting my energy going on dates.

She still gets mad at me when I make art instead of paying attention to her.

I know, but I do it anyway. Took out my phone to type a poem when we were at the gallery, even though I said I’d try not to think about work.

The artist tells me of an essay, “The Unloved Wife,” by art critic Leo Steinberg. He writes about how the wives of great artists look unloved in their portraits. The point is that you can be either a good husband or a good artist, but you cannot be both.

Yet, you are artistically productive in the marriage, perhaps because of the marriage.

When I was young, I picked blackberries on a farm. On hot days, I took off my shirt. I reached into the bush, contorted my body to reach deeper. When I tried to slide back out, thorns stuck into my skin. I couldn’t reach to pull them out because there were thorns all around. I couldn’t keep sliding out because the thorns were at such an angle that it only drove them deeper. The only choice I had was to go deeper into the bush until the thorns came out of my skin the same way they stuck in.

I was after the berries.

Without realizing I was in a thorn bush.

And now the only way is forward.