the haphazard doodles do her in

wandering
Originally uploaded by calobee

I have this thing about roots. Not so much the bad hair color variety, but the belonging, feeling-at-home variety.

I hate for my routines to be disrupted. I hate to be uprooted. I’ve told the S.O. on a number of occasions that we could win the lottery and move to our dream home and it would still be just as traumatic as your everyday, run-of-the-mill move to suburbia. You could tell me my new bedroom would be lined in fleece and diamonds, and I would say, “Yay! OhgodIdon’twannamooooove.”

I’ve come to understand this about myself, so it’s not a surprise that I’ve been a bit weird lately. Crying for no reason. Wandering aimlessly around our house, convinced I need to pack something, even though most of the packing is done. Thinking I should really clean, but why bother?

I know I should be excited, and I am. But as I told my friend when we moved to our current place a couple years ago, “I’ll be most happy when it’s over.”

It’s also frustrating in that the strange, discombobulated way of things is not conducive to making art. I know, I know – I should “use” my discomfort to fuel a veritable creating spree, but I’ve never been good at channeling negative energy into anything more than the bottom of a pint – a pint of Ben n’ Jerry’s, that is.

(In my defense, I haven’t tried eating my way into a diabetic coma yet, and that’s a feat, considering we’ve been in this uncomfortable in-between stage for several weeks now. Yesterday I damned near fell over when I opened my cupboard and found a whole bag of those Hershey’s chocolate toffee nuggets – unopened. I vaguely remember buying them at the grocery store on a whim over two weeks ago. I’m pretty sure Moses never witnessed a miracle the likes of chocolate surviving more than three days in my house. But I digress.)

Yesterday evening, in an effort to distract myself from that itchy, restless gnawing at my insides, I opened Illustrator and started doodling, and this little girl wandered out of the woods. I don’t think I intended for the result to be so… ominous? Foreboding? Why do the trees look like claws? Why do the red fruits look like drops of blood? And why doesn’t she seem to notice, or care?

Freaky.