Sally Duback and Leyla Sarigol

Flow
By Sally Duback
Oil and acrylic painting on handmade paper,
with black marks drawn in with charred fireplace cinders, 24″x40″
Painted using Leyla Sarigol’s story (below) as inspiration

flow
By leylâ sarıgöl

Feeling a little miserable. A little disappointed.  A little anxious, maybe… Well, without a doubt. That rhythm, that flow that I once imagined, has slowed to a rest, a calm. Not a peaceful calm, but a calm with weight. An air without wind that is thick to the skin.

Just when that weight is pressing in from every angle… starting with the extremities and seeping into the heart, the belly- there is someone else’s pace that creeps in. Reminds me that while my story is not progressing in my 4/4 time, there is something to be gained in that uncomfortable calm.

My standstill is like a luxury when compared to the story I happened upon in a way that seemed to be owed more to strategy than serendipity. There I sat in my lone seat on the Metro. It was well suited to the tight space I’d found myself in. A single seat that just harnessed me, a concentrated mass of energy.

And there he strolled before me. Through the doors, past my seat to sit in the two seats at the rear, one set of seats between us.

Loud. Calling out. And, with more space.

His brother just tried to kill himself, he said. Walk out in front of traffic. Ironically, after a day designed to nurture him, filled with the “normal” social activity that comforts many of us these days – a movie and a meal out.

But, after this day with his brother, the shove of his life’s hands pushed him into that street as the cars urged forward. Backed by the force of “days without meds” and days with drugs, apartments with unlocked doors and “some woman” inside.

He’s under suicide watch now. And his train-riding brother, armed with a six pack, commands the Metro operator to pull the train up to his bed so that he can roll in from out of those doors through which he had just entered only moments earlier.

He’s hoping that a couple of beers will drown out the piercing reality of the collective exhaustion of his family, and the pain of hiding the truth from a mother whose own struggles are too much to bear.

Yet this is night.

As I stroll into work the next morning, as I do every morning of the week, there’s the rhythm of another that changes my pace. “Good morning” is his attempt with a woman just ahead. And, then another for me. I glance and smile in acknowledgment. Then he follows with “Have a good Friday. And, enjoy your weekend.”

My rhythm changes. At least momentarily.

——————————————————-

New Life
By Sally Duback
Oil on panel, 4″ x 4″
Inspiration Piece provided to Leyla Sarigol

aah
By leylâ sarıgöl
Response to Sally Duback’s painting (above)

perpetual motion.
dynamic.
warm.
it is at once transparent and complex.

radiant energy.
powerful.
vibrant.
it is at once magnetic and liberating.

maternal root.
connected.
fluid.
it is at once singular and unending.

beat.
breath.
beat.
breath.

aah.

this…
is…
life.