I realize that life is merely an illusion that the only thing really important is our emotional connection to things. How is that we feel the older we get the more disconnected we become from our feelings? Is it really the business of our lives, the desperate race to fulfill our desires? To somehow find meaning sometimes where there may not be any at all. Sometimes the desire taking us further away from who we are to the point that we become lost and begin to abandon the things that are essential to our livelihood. I keep trying to be an artist in Montana, but it seems the harder I pursue it the further I get away from connecting to what is meaningful. I have somehow forgotten what brought me here from the beginning.

This morning I had a dream about my Grandmother Elise Cyr. I saw her living out her last days in a hospital bed and I would go to visit her. And though her body had become lifeless, I could see the vitality within her eyes and expression. I somehow helped her to relive that vitality again as we became suspended in a reverie of thoughts, feelings, emotions, and memories. In my dream I took her to a place of life and I could see within her soul that she was contented. Though she could not speak, she was filled with joy. In the dream I was trying to move her to a retirement center that was filled with other people similar to me, artists, where she would find inspiration and live in adoration. You see my grandmother always delighted in entering my world. It is my grandmother who gave me the passion of my creativity. You see, she saw things in me that no one else could envision. I was a very strange kid, enveloped in a darkness I could not understand. All I can remember from childhood was an angst, perhaps because I was so different. Where everyone else found fault in the difference, she somehow took delight and helped me explore it, to celebrate in my uniqueness. She was the most wondrous cook and she taught me magic of her world. But somehow the more I learned from her the greater a suspension grew out of me becoming a sissy as dread began to strike others around me, plunging me into a world of isolation and for the first time I found harmony in a world of creation. She taught me to sew, I soon pulled the old brightly colored flour sack curtain from the windows in the little shack and made myself a shirt, taking apart one I had already had to imitate the pattern. My grandmother poured every creative talent she had into me, and she believed in me when no one else could see my remarkable potential. My life flourished as a creative kid and I was further ahead than most others my age. I was ridiculed and tormented on the playground. I become fascinated with theater and the possibility of telling a story acting it out. I sang a solo at the Christmas Pageant. And when I finally went to the University, barely able to afford tuition, she secretly bought me a season subscription to a performing arts series to see all the amazing talents coming to our small town.

Many years ago I was working my way through a program called The Artist Way and one of the exercises specifically asked me to name the true champions of my life. My grandmother was at the top of that list. She still is.

In my dream she found the solace she was looking for at the end of her life in the adorning place of my creation. Tears filled my eyes. Not with sadness, but with joy that someone could see the remarkable qualities in me and allow them to flourish, when I know others chided her not to encourage such behavior.

A strange series of events the past could of days keep leading me back to the beginning; what is essential. I have taken a break away from my creative process, filled with distraction. Now my grandmother comes back from the grave as the ghost of my creative conscience, to hold my hand and remind me of what was once forgotten.