X-Ray
(50cm x50cm, acrylics)
Each morning, with my coffee, I make two lists:
A to-do list — and, in parallel, a “yet-to-do” list, made from the previous day’s unfinished items.
I romanticize the reasons I didn’t complete them.
I edit my excuses with poetry.
I string the verses into a necklace, adding beads to the beat of what’s still undone.
The rhythm that rises from the skipped items plays a quiet tune —
a tempo composed in the key of incompleteness.
And when people hear it, they recognize it as their own.
They secretly enjoy it.
We all do.
Together, we celebrate the undone.
We write songs and create artsy compositions around this hush-hush theme.
And then — something new is heard:
a note that had never been played before.
A color that had never existed now surfaces in celebration.
I see it clearly.
A new turquoise.
A new, fuzzy completeness.
Ardoise
(50cm x50cm, acrylics)
II was trying to describe to my friend what happened to me in the pool — how, mid-stroke, I suddenly saw myself resembling that athlete on YouTube: slicing through the water, creating waves with ease, and somehow being compensated for my effort in silence.
Distances ahead of me slipped by — faster than expected — as if I were being helped along, receiving more than I had worked for. It didn’t feel entirely like my doing. There was something in it that edged on the spiritual.
She smiled and said, Congratulations… you’re finally gliding.
I didn’t confess that I wasn’t sure I could ever recreate it.
Was it just a fluke?
I don’t remember exactly what led to it. What I did right. Or different.
Still — ever since that day, this new magical word, Gliding, has stayed with me.
It found a place in all my conversations.
It became a metaphor I couldn’t let go of.
Baboushka
(50cm x50cm, acrylics)
You know how your mind gets stuck on something unfinished —
a silent promise lingering somewhere, that it’ll be dealt with later,
at a more convenient time.
Unfinished questions, unsettled stories, unclassified business…
They range from a mathematical uncertainty disguised as a conjecture,
down to the wondering you carried at age six:
what does my mom do while I’m at school?
Does she brush her teeth and put on nice clothes?
Does she listen to the radio and learn recipes she’ll never try?
Does she wear her brown coat, her pink lipstick, that colorful scarf — and go to the bank?
Or cook for me? Or buy groceries?
Does she make the bed to the sound of the radio?
Or crawl back into it and wait for me to come home?
Is she sad that I’m gone — or just sad, the way she always seemed to be?
Does she feel bored?
Lonely?
Does she cry?
I never answered any of these questions.
They keep coming back.
Will I ever stop wondering?