a three inch bug

While hiking up the backside of Cowles Mountain and imagining I was serving out some ancient penitence under the heat for the monotonous route I had chosen, I finally reached the summit and as I endeavored never to stray off the main trail again I saw a huge three inch bug land on one of the dry little brush flower boquets. The bug brought back the memory of my Great Uncle's study (which later became my bedroom) and the framed beetles, tarantula and giant flies on the walls. He was an entomologist and in his study he had two metal base cabinets inhabited by trays upon trays of collected and categorised specimens. Above his desk were two overhead shelves packed with reference books on insects, birds, and flowers. The walls were naturally painted an olive green and the floor had a crimson red carpet, it kind of was like being inside a bug. I realize now that he had hoped for me to be a naturalist too. He tried to take me on trips but that stopped after I wandered off and was lost for 3 hours. I remember him giving me little science kits and instead I was drawing all the time. I was going through a portrait phase while I was living with my Great Aunt and Uncle and I was especially intent on drawing celebrities: Steve Martin, Christina Applegate, Whoopi Goldberg, Bea Arthur. Don't ask me why I chose to draw these particular celebrities. After my great aunt died I remember spending a day with my great uncle and his new wife (he remarried at 7o-something) and newly adopted grand-sons whom were very scientific and nature-loving boys. He was out in the yard showing bugs to them and the expresson on my face must have betrayed me because one of my unofficial in-laws said to me in astonished voice "Jennifer, what's wrong?" - how disturbed I looked, I will never know.

This morning, my mother asked me how my "hobby" is going. My heart fell out the car door and onto the road, killed. Since this morning I also read Susan Vreeland's novel "Artemesia" cover-to-cover (kindly loaned to me by my French-friend before selfishly abandoning me for Costa Rica). The intersection of three-inch bug, art-as-hobby-comment, and Artemesia has brought forth the notion that on a certain level I am a disappointment to my uncle and parents. Unless I'm doing flower still-lifes, creativity has been my ticket to alienation with them as it holds little to zero significance in their value-systems. These latent emotions and value disconnections have revealed themselves to be another aspect of the couch project. The de-couching is not a destructive impulse of requital but a de-constructive impulse moved by intuition. When something has been domesticated and then de-valued and cast out, either intentionally or through calculated neglect it's only road back is through transformation.