Working and Wondering

For two days now I have gone to my table and worked on the sculpture...applying color and wondering why, incising lines to define the figure. What am I trying for? What am I seeking to learn. Really, it isn't much different from living, from seeking to love by living each day as it comes. I am seeking to love by expressing the depths of my heart. Yet the depths cannot be trusted to yield the expected.

Many, many weeks ago I sculpted this vessel and brought forth the feminine figure that lies within. She is very still...
At times I see her as static, and I am close to despairing at what I have made. Then I leave her alone to engage in other pursuits. I distract myself from her floating form. Some mornings I gather the courage to look at her long and hard, willing her into motion, but never succeeding. She remains very still. Even after I stroke on the color...still hopeful that she will wake and respond to my love, she remains unresponsive, seemingly unaware of the watery curves that surround her. She is carried along by the boat-like, shell-like, vessel of watery blue. She might be Ophelia...or the Lady of Shallot. By a stretch of the imagination, she might be Venus, and we might hope she will eventually rise.

Yet again, she might simply be a mysterious part of her creator, practicing patience until the next wave of her life appears. 

On the exterior of the vessel that cradles the waiting woman, other figures swim on the curving sides. Along one side is a woman who trusts where she is...who trusts the subtle momentum that she is expressing. On the other side is a rather androgynous man. His bulk is barely contained by the substance that holds him. Together these figures are guardian to the one who waits within.