YOU CAN’T BE GOOD AT DISHES

Good News! Feral April unleashed the art gremlin within me and the beast is fully engaged, present, here and thriving. I’m painting! I’m writing! I’m getting paid to play with one-year olds! Oh to be given permission to crawl around on the floor and go so extremely slow, to learn to walk again by witnessing babies move their bodies! Nanny work is profoundly spiritual and soul-nourishing in a way that adds fuel to the art fire. After a day full of slow witnessing, how can you do anything but make marks on a canvas? I’ve given up everything related to the kitchen, including dishes, YES SERIOUSLY, and it’s serving me extremely well for the time being. The only thing I’ve been cooking for myself is a fruit compote for my oatmeal and this I eat every single day.

A few weeks ago I rolled out a 15-foot canvas for the first time since February 2023 and hung it on my wall. I started it back in Lubbock and I’ve been too afraid to open it up again to see what marks I’d made in the depths of winter in a West Texas warehouse with no heat. Upon unrolling it and nailing it to the wall I was pleasantly surprised with the treat I’d left myself: orbs of spirits, orange fire in the sky, golden droplets raining down, charcoal lines suggesting that I follow their lead. I’ve added tiny somethings to it almost every day WHILE I started and nearly completed Jade aka #8 of 12 in the Colors As Companions series.

This color was always meant to evoke the Jadeite dishes I’ve carefully collected for the last decade. I knew that this color would be in the series, but I couldn’t give myself the permission to do it at the start. I needed time to wrestle with what this color means to me. Once, in an argument, shortly after a lengthy kitchen renovation which included a brand new farmhouse white ceramic sink that I’d lusted after for years— I threw a plate in anger. Into the sink, which chipped the enamel, which reminded me every single time I did the dishes just how seriously to take the rage bubbling up under my skin. What are you trying to show me, Rage?

I’ve included broken dishes in my art in the past as a way to acknowledge this unflattering part of my past and to somehow take accountability, to never forget how dangerous it is push away your rage— what it can lead to. It’s been fascinating to collect the inspiration for the color- beyond the Jadeite dishes, it’s sea foam, it’s this old truck, it’s the color my eye connects with when I’m picking out a Hydroflask water bottle or a beach towel, occasionally clothing. It’s such a soothing color, but it’s also a roiling ocean. Behind the translucent green, an abyss of blue, crushing into white. Here are some of my inspiration photos:

As I explored this color, I was also facing a new facet of my chronic back pain: lightning bolt attacks in my left shoulder, just below my shoulder blade, radiating from my spine. It’s hard to convey what these attacks feel like. They last about 15 seconds and I can often feel them coming on, but if I don’t stop what I’m doing and lay down, the pain will come in so white hot that I can’t breathe, tears flood my eyes and I can’t even move to find reprieve. I simply have to wait for it to pass. For months I’ve ignored it to the best of my ability, especially through the baking months, doing my best to put mind over matter and get on with life.

While at the hot spring on our recent vacation, I meditated and asked my spine why it was in pain. I floated and floated, finding perfect suspension, easing pressure off of every part of my body that could possibly express pain in an attempt to listen, to remember what it could feel like, to feel into the nuances of this alert system.

No response.

I journaled and tried to look into the shadowy corners of my psyche— was there something I was refusing to see? I got logical with it. When are these lightning bolt attacks happening? Housework. Dishes. Dishes. Dishes.

The epiphany came hot and fast and I asked if I could talk it out with Whit. They were lying in the tent, resting after breakfast while I journaled at our picnic table. I told them that I have to get honest with myself— I’m planning my day around when I expect to have pain. The attacks are happening when I do dishes. And I find myself choosing between dishes or painting- painting can cause an attack, too. It must be the angle of my arm, a pinched nerve? A psycho-somatic response to old trauma?

So stop doing dishes.

Don’t be crazy.

No, seriously. You’re not allowed to do dishes.

But I’m good at dishes.

You can’t be good at dishes, Sam.

Yes, I can! I am very good at dishes!

Dishes can only be done or not done.

FUUUUUUUCK!!!

Crying ensued, I hate to say. I thrashed and cried on my knees wailing like you told me I was never allowed to eat again. I had never considered not doing dishes. I had never considered that the dishes might not be my sole responsibility. Listen, if this sounds crazy, it’s because it is. But after a lifetime of hustling for love through housework in my family and in my former marriage, I am just now considering that you cannot be good at doing dishes. Nor can you be good because you did the dishes. As hard as I’ve worked to disentangle my self worth from my ability to do housework, there are some threads that still need pruning.

I’ve worked hard to engage with this compulsive dynamic of mine- to always ben tending to the home no matter what. But I was hearing something different this time. What I heard from my partner is, “I will not be complicit in you earning your place as Good by doing dishes. Stop hurting yourself. Go do something else.”

When we came home, I stopped doing the dishes.

I painted [about dishes] every day.

I wrote every day— including a more compassionate approach to a 2016 argument in which my ex-wife and I argued over whose responsibility it was to make the coffee in the morning.

I cleaned and organized my studio table.

I repotted some plants.

I dropped off my typewriter to get fixed.

I mopped because I wanted to.

I took my camera in to be serviced.

I scheduled a knife sharpening appointment.

And we also went to the Broad to see some of my faves all together: Basquiat, Warhol and Twombly. The Twombly sculptures caught my eye before I knew who they were and then I did a double take at the name— it felt like recognizing a sweet friend— I knew I loved you. It felt like that moment when you’re in public with your lover and you go separate ways and when you see them again, before your brain can register that you know this person, you catch yourself checking them out. Reaffirming, an objective test of our subconscious.

If I am not hustling for love through housework, what am I doing instead?

Making art, seeing art, putzing around the house taking care of things, having a writing breakthrough, drinking a glass of wine with friends, writing at a cafe. Below is a peak at a new take on an old 2016 argument for paid subscribers.

Love y’all. Divert your time and energy as needed!!

Sam