I am dedicating 4-5 hours on my days off to draw. I spent the past two days drawing myself in the mirror the only live model available. It is really better to draw from real life if you can but nowadays who can do that? I use to see all these self portraits and think "how self absorbed artist must be" Funny the judgments you make. Looking at myself I kept thinking I have seen those lips before - Who's lips are those in the mirror?
I realized that they belonged to my Uncle Gene. I take after my mother's side of the family not like my sister who takes after my daddy's side of the family. I know this because I spent hours last week drawing my sister. She was always prettier than me in a more classical way. I did get my mothers blue eyes but she got the olive skin and the symmetrical more petite features. Okay I have a big nose or at least bigger than her.
When you look at someone's face for hours even your own you really see them. Drawing people from my past or present really feels like a form a meditation. I feel like I can feel their spirit and I have been practicing sending healing towards them or for some people forgiveness especially today towards myself.
My mother's side of family was plagued with alcoholism from my mother's granddaddy who died in a bar brawl to all of my uncle's except Gene. He was the only one of the four boys who went to college briefly. He got a scholarship to a christian college but really got interested and all religions and was told he had to choose between his trunk of books on different kinds of religion or the way of the Pentecostals. He left immediately with his trunk.
He was a hard man and worked for the sheriffs department his entire adult life. He liked driving fast and carrying a gun. He liked making people behave too working as a bouncer at night for extra money. He worked all the time because he married a woman with five boys.
She was Mormon and all the boys were under twelve. She was a clerk at the courthouse and they hit it off. She was only 4' 8" and none of her boys ever grew any taller than that. She wanted to be married in the Mormon church but he refused. They were married for 15 years and divorced then later after he retired got back together again. They did get married the second time in the Mormon church and he spent is last years working in the temple in Utah every day.
When I realized where I had seen those lips I went a retrieved a picture I think from their second wedding. I know he loved his family but he was hard on them because that was who he was. To us he was just our funny uncle who was really smart and read non stop.
The death of my mother devastated him and he said that he stop believing in God for awhile but in the end he ended up doing God's work in one of the largest denominations in the world. In the end you go back to the beginning to what you learned early and in his case that was trusting God.
I come from some really strong stock on both sides of my family. They both were hard working stubborn principled people. That generation lived through things I can't imagine. My grandmother, after the death of her husband, had to raise nine kids on her own. She said she never remarried because she didn't want someone else treating her kids badly.
I meditated on my uncle's life today and for every life he touched. He meant well and hopefully did more good than harm overall. We all do our best even if it isn't that great sometimes.
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