The Next Self-Portrait

The Next Self-Portrait

by ginger northcutt

response to Reedsy’s Prompt Contest

#374 “Mirror Mirror”

TW: references to domestic abuse

           Gypsy was sitting at her small kitchen table, glumly looking over the pile of supplies covering it. For the last several hours she had brought to the table enough art supplies for five self-portraits. But this morning not one of these materials had sparked her, called to her. The pile was quite colorful, the colored pencils, the watercolor pencils, a goodly amount of markers representing different ink or brush, different shades, different thickness, different levels of adaptability. That still left out all the others, the pastels, the encased watercolor colors in a line of loudly colored circles - all to tempt her hands to start. She was missing something here, was puzzled why seizing just one idea was such an effort today. Over the past twenty years she had created a dozen self-portraits; most of them started when an idea suddenly formed in her mind. This idea could come in the form of a question to answer, a need for a me-status-check-in, or a sense that this time needed to be documented. Gypsy’s muse would gift her with a focus and a dedicated shot of energy, and Gypsy would run with it.

           As her eyes moved over all the media on her table her mind revisited the first self-portrait created, just over twenty years ago. It was still in the same sketch pad it had been drawn in. She had used pastels, one of her favorite tools for taking what she heard and saw in her more spiritual inner-self, and translating that symbolic language into a message she would be able to comprehend back in the physical world. Gypsy brought to life that day an image that was sparse, edgy, and symbolic on multiple levels.

           Vincent Van Gogh had forever been the artist she was most intrigued with, the artist who first drew her towards the self-portrait. His different pieces of self-examination combined a stark, unique view of the man, but in Gypsy’s mind they all were strung together with the elements brought into play by the man as artist.

Since she was ten Gypsy dreamed of being a writer, and a photographer, or possibly a painter like Van Gogh, or O’Keefe, or even Joni Mitchell. But she would first of all be a writer. She explored working with her camera in various classes and different locations. Her photography has left her with a wonderful collection of memory-invoking shots documenting the journey of her life. She never moved into the field in any professional manner as she once dreamed, but she was satisfied.

It was her writing dream that sparked her curiosity, that opened her mind to all the possibilities of a writing career. This dream was the one she followed, this dream was the one which expanded, grew stronger. This passion to write, and write well, motivated her to start a diary. Two years later Gypsy put together a piece that would capture her family’s attention, letting them know she was a writer, and opening the space for family members to offer advice and support, ask questions, and to surround Gypsy with blessings and hugs.

That Spring the matriarchs of her family had the telephones lines buzzing, from her family in Missouri, to Florida where Grandma and the beloved Aunt lived (Aunt Jewel loved her two sons, but never had the daughter she longed for. Her sister-in-law, Gypsy’s mother, had three lovely daughters who sat high in their Aunt’s life. They stayed close through phone calls and letters, and every summer a visit in Florida for at least a month), then circled up to Illinois and the older, more sophisticated Cousin Cindy. Filled with personal opinions and underlying philosophy, the articulate and free-spoken exchanges raced through the telephone lines. All this activity centered around Gypsy’s older sister, beautiful and quite popular, who had been invited to her high school prom. Her first prom; the first girl of her generation to go to prom.

Gypsy had a family network that consisted primarily of females; watching their men walk away was a rite of passage for the women of her line. But to Gypsy it had been a colorful and loving nest, where she was safe to explore and question her world, and the world outside. Gypsy loved her family; she felt a gladness and relief whenever she returned home from visiting friends. Their houses had fathers in them, or even worse, mother’s boyfriends, televisions that continuously blared at high volume, and were almost always too stuffy and warm for Gypsy’s comfort. In her home, and the homes of her grandmas and cousins, plants were a part of the environment, windows were usually left cracked, and cats lounged upon the piles and piles of books that seemed to grow out of the wooden floors. She was taught about The Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr, JFK, Gloria Steinem, civil rights, women’s rights, patriarchy, misogyny, MS. Magazine, birth control, and self-defense. Her reading was not censored or controlled, activism and volunteering were applauded, and speaking up against something wrong was just what one did. Her love for reading and her curiosity, her frequent bubbling laughter and all her questions, were considered golden traits, and her women kin always provided support and gave answers that were honest, complex and mostly relevant.

As the day of the prom neared the buzzing of the phone lines thickened and whirred, the whispers and friendly cackles reverberated as they whizzed across the country. Gypsy felt all this excitement, but not knowing how she could participate more fully, just listened harder. The day before the prom Gypsy got her first muse-sent inspiration…she would write a newsletter about all the prom occurrences, for her prom-crazed relatives in three states. She sizzled when hit with this idea! This was the project for her. In her room she had the perfect paper for this endeavor; it was just regular lined school paper, but an inch of the left-hand side was adorned with a column of brightly colored flowers. She took one small journal to keep her notes in, settled in the kitchen and waited for the stories to come. And they came!

Professional manicures were considered, experiences shared. Then a problem with the dress was discovered, creases! For the solution a flurry of calls transpired between the family’s women, keeping the telephone circuits flying.

The day of the dance came, and Gypsy could barely keep up with her notes. The preparations began not long after breakfast. There was the hair, of course, decided on weeks ago, but the first attempt was a nerve-jangling failure. Then the make-up became the main discussion: What was too much? What would be too little? As it got closer and closer to the time of the boy’s arrival, Gypsy noticed the electricity in the air, crackling, spiraling up and around. She saw traces of the energy and movement swirling in the air, as the family’s emotions pulled and tightened with excitement, all their hopes for the evening fluttering wildly through the house.

And Gypsy captured it all. The last minute tears, all the love and good wishes offered, the cat getting stepped on, up to the knocking on the door and the entrance of her handsome, blond-haired date. When every picture had been snapped and the house was finally quiet, Gypsy sat down at the kitchen table to start putting her notes in order. She filled one page, front and back, putting the stories in columns, like the newspapers. She even used a ruler to make a box in the middle of the top page, to offer a glimpse of the evening in a sketch. Then, the sweet girl, she meticulously copied two more newsletters out, so her mother, Florida and Illinois could each have a copy.

Needless to say, the Prom Newsletter was a big hit, and it gave Gypsy the title of Family Writer. She couldn’t have been more elated. So you see Gypsy always had the concept of herself as a writer. It was strong within her, which gave her lift enough to feed her self-esteem. She was a writer. Or, more accurately, she was creative, a creator. A writer first, yet paint and chalk and cotton-balls, glue, clay, acrylic and oil – her life contained all these things. In the past, her creative efforts seemed effortless, she never had to search for an idea because the ideas always came to her. Instinctively she grabbed this color paint, that textured brush, this small metal piece, that length of this colored ribbon. She would take thirty-five minutes or three days, as needed, to get the form in her head to appear in the art she was making with her hands. This time she felt lost - on one hand she had a powerful feeling that it was time for a new self-portrait, but nothing followed from that thought.

Gypsy had a favorite of all her images. It was a textured, dimensional, mixed-media piece. It was in an old frame with a three-inch border, made by weaving thin pieces of golden thread into an intricate pattern. Gypsy had titled it “My DV Women”. The first layer was a detailed, close-up map of the Chicago Near-North neighborhood she had lived in for thirteen years. There was a braid crafted to look like a lush vine, bearing small red flowers randomly. She had bought it because she loved the look of it, not having a clue what she would use it for, until she imagined her map creation, her DV Woman. Using this delicate vine she formed a feminine outline on the map, then gave the woman a necklace with a small blade and a stone hanging from it. She added a miniature Pooh Bear, a stub from a CTA bus ride. Then, bravely, one at a time, she added small markers by parts of the body. “My eyes blackened with his rage” and “My hair – at times he would pull me around by it” and “My strong legs walked a million miles”. Then you would read “The fear, guilt and pain filled me with shadows” or “The hammer left my entire arm maroon, huge, throbbing”. Inside, outside and over the map Gypsy wrote out her terror and her shame. In Lake Michigan she tagged “My tears filled the lake”. The tags numbered just under twenty, and formed testimony of one woman’s truth about domestic violence. “Brainwashed/Abused/Chaos/Fear” was the last tag, in the bottom corner; that seemed to say it all.

           One of her self-portraits was created by her sub-conscious while she was outside herself. While her body flowed with outer tranquility, and her mind had the inner release to seek the universe, Gypsy looked through the eyes of Spirit and fashioned in our mundane world what Spirit was giving her. Spirit was viewing a traumatic scene in Gypsy’s past, in Chicago. The burden of suffering and impact became even more abhorrent every time it repeated, which was frequently. Gypsy understood clearly the story Spirit wished to make visible. She worked silently and swiftly, each addition to the page made with definite, certain moves, each addition giving Gypsy deeper understanding of the scene in front of her. When Gypsy came back to herself, she viewed the lined page criss- crossed with pieces of washi tape. For an initial moment she still understood every placement and choice of tape, but as time continued forward Gypsy lost the clarity of her Spirit view, it faded before her eyes. She thought to herself that maybe that was the best thing, to not have such a clear vision of a recurring event that had filled her with intense fear, and stark memories of being powerless and hopeless. It gave her sure knowledge of what hell was. What she was left with was an urge to release all her self-blame, to hug her younger self and remind her that they did get out, Gypsy and her boys, all alive. Huge drops of stinging tears popped from her eyes as she searched the washi tape of weekday names, random patterns, changing angles. Certainty spoke in her mind, “This is a path of your life you have already walked, you survived, you saved your boys, YOU ARE FREE.”

           But today Gypsy was solo as she walked slowly through her small home, stroking her plants, giving them a little mist, a pinch or two where needed. She scuffled down the hallway, scrubbing her eyes and face to erase the tears. At her bedroom door, she paused, for a second thinking to hide under her covers for the rest of the day, getting high and eating too much until her feelings numbed and receded. But from her center she knew that would be a bad decision. She sat on the end of her bed, stroking the smooth blanket and sheets. She could smell sandalwood, the scent a part of this room because she burned sandalwood incense in here several times a day. She thought about her sketch pad, that it was just feet away, in its place inside her closet. But then she went to her bedside and picked up her journal. She had an idea that today she would create a self-portrait with words, maybe a poem, maybe just musings on paper, or it could come out of a deep reflection. She settled on her bed, jamming all the pillows behind her for support. Grabbing a thin-line marker, she relaxed back on the pillows and opened her journal. Like all her self-portraits this one would come with no obvious effort on her part. Curious to see what thoughts and form her words would take, she placed her pen against the paper and set her mind free.