Walk with ME Walk #5 with Dave

I have to admit that after two walks in one day. I was exhausted. The weather had changed from sunny and windy to cloudy and colder with a bit more wind. Dave is someone I did not know when I was in Boston. He was in a band with Irina which I saw play a few times. So when I saw him he looked familiar but I don't think we ever spoke or interacted.
Dave has amazing glasses with nice big black frames. He is a skinny guy and seems bookish. i guess with the glasses. He seemed very approachable and friendly without being outgoing. I at a clementine and drank some water and got ready for walk three of the day. It felt like a chore at first getting out the door but almost immediately I was glad I had agreed to one more walk.

Dave immediately told me that he is pretty blind and has no peripheral vision. Which meant we really were not looking at each other unless we turned our heads at the same time. Dave's gait was very different form mine and I was really worried that we were not going to be able to sync up walking and that it may even be a bit painful for me. After the first ten minutes though, we were able to sync up and it was really enjoyable to walk with Dave. When we did make eye contact it was a treat cause I knew we were making the effort to see each other, not just a side glance. I could feel his bones crack a few times in his hand and his shoulder.
I felt comfortable to talk about my fears of getting older and not having a significant other. I was able to talk about my fears about the project. that people are judging me for not going out on the street and asking complete strangers. How it is actually harder for me to walk with people I know....I talked about how I am really ready to live and not achieve. That I have been very goal oriented and that now I am ready to move through life in a different way. That I want to not just focus on goals but on people. I used to live in Boston and I admitted to Dave that with what I had built up there I shouldn't have just walked away. But that when I had I never thought of moving back. That with LA I don't want to do the same thing. I can't just rip up all the roots I have there and walk away. It killed a part of me to walk away from Boston because I was walking away from a part of myself. Dave spoke of his and his girlfriends goals for the immediate future. how he understood my desire to travel and my desire not to tear up roots. He spoke of his job and his lives travels the past 10 years.

I don't know how to say this but while walking with Dave I felt like I received the whole story of Dave. Not through words. He didn't tell me his darkest secrets or his whole life story. not through words but through feelings i felt like I received Dave as a whole. With that some walks feel more healing for the other walks, some walks feel about the same, within this walk for me, I felt like i was the one that had the heart space to heal.
We walked from his house to Davis Square. Which was an emotional walk for me. As that is where one of my exes lived and where I spent a lot of time. We ended the walk at Diesel Cafe and wrote our reflections there. the earl grey tea I had there was really lovely smelling...intensified by the presence the day had walked into me.

5 days until Boston

 

Wednesday, April 10...what day it is has a lot less importance as work, art, and life, get all blurred together. I am feeling incredibly lucky to have created the time and space to explore what my life can be and what art is to me. It has been a really long week of saying good bye and trying to work as much as I can. So I can pay the health insurance my family insist I get. 

Everyday is a chance to stay in the present moment. To reach out to people and let them in.following this dream is keeping me in the present. It hasn't been easy, as I dream up what my life can be. I wonder what my life could/would be like if I just didn't dream so big and stayed here in Highland Park. Who would I fall in love with? what could I build if I just stayed put? What connections would be made? But then a friend cheers me on and screams out, "This is going to be the most amazing adventure!!!" It will be, and I hope to share it with all my loves in Los Angeles and here. 

The picture above is what my life now looks like...an exploded backpack, prints of the book, and advil. For the past two weeks, I have gotten together soundscapes for the Ben Maltz Gallery's opening of "This Side of the 405," worked with Jinger Heffner a few days to help install the same show, 

worked with Kim Abeles as an art assistant, and had the most heart-wrenchingly wonderful going away dinner. 

Ten of my bestest friends, along with a friend who is a chef, created/enjoyed a 7 course meal to celebrate my going away. The chef's house is so beautifully decorated and the food was served with such love and precision, all of us floated from one course to another, drinking, talking, and laughing. the lights were a little low and the napkins were cloth, I looked around the table and saw four and a half years of really good decisions. Decisions to connect with artistic, loving, kind, funny people. When I first started running, I would get discouraged or want to stop, in those moments I would think of my friend Laurie cheering me on. I would sort of thinking of her holding me up lovingly as I ran. I now have these visual images of my best friends sitting around this table and outside in the glow of late night hanging lights, to hold me up while I get out on the road. When things get rough, I have dozens of friends that I will imagine and have their support instantly.All the hugs I got at the end of the night will keep me going. 

 So I have been working hard on making money and preparing for this trip. Along with this, Alen Catolico and I have met and he has shown me the drafts of the book treatment...and all I can say is this is going to be a stunning book that continues to be more than i could have imagined. Wow! Things keep rolling along with all the hard work Alen and I are putting into the concept and content of this book. 

Stay tuned! I will be posting lots of images and stories this coming two months! 

Love

Paige

 

Hand

Two years ago, I went to Santa Fe for the wedding of a dear friend. While there, like many tourists do, I felt compelled to buy something Southwestern. This hand piece stuck out to me. As an artist the hand is the conduit of creativity.
When I was a teen I took an art class in which I found a Mayan symbol...the blue hand...or something like that. As a youth I was searching for a symbol that I could relate to and my teacher had a book of Mayan symbols...to this day I sign my name with this hand symbol.
Well it all has come together this blue hand and this pendent purchase. When I thought up the Walk with ME project, I thought it came out of the blue but as I look at old notes and think about my artistic path this is a culmination of thoughts and acts. Which these relics of the past point to.

My bags are...

This morning, the love of my life left. ..my memory foam mattress...it went to a good home and I woke up with a stiff hip after sleeping on it for 11 hours... the mattress is asking me to get out of here.
My apartment is mostly clean.  The last of my possesions are being distributed to friends to watch over. Part of me wonders if I should have held on to my apartment and renting it out. But at this point my bags are almost packed and I have to get moving.