Note From Jean: This was originally post on my Substack. I'm added it here partially to test out the long post feature.

This winter, may it end soon, has been cold, wet, and hard. Happy New Year.

Archie and I gained back some weight these past few weeks, months. Each day, I wake up to twenty pounds of orange cat on my chest before I groan and start my day. Maybe I’ll go for a run, I think always. I’ve been unemployed for just over a month now, and am still struggling to reclaim my day.

I don’t have a routine. I see friends a lot more often now. I attend therapy. I go to studio, and paint, and paint, and paint, waiting for the next day for my energy to recharge to paint some more.

David, my old painting teacher, passed away during the winter solstice. We knew it was coming. In the weeks before, I visited him with Charlie at the hospital. Then, David seemed like himself still— a little irritable, a little disagreeable with the state of things. The nurses nervously tried to administer his feeding tube. He fought them all the way. That’s how I’d prefer to remember David, pissed off and full of fight.

He relaxed a bit as his daughter introduced us, loud so that he could hear without his hearing aids. I hadn’t seen him in some time — he had fully forgotten my name the last time I saw him at the studio. To be fair, David was always bad with names. Bathed in the blue light of the hospital room, I focused in on his eyes and saw recollection pass. Good enough for me.

In our first encounter, David confided in me that portrait artists are the best judges of character. He told me this during my atelier interview, after I explained to him my excitement in pursuing the school. I was settling into something purposeful after I had just visited Isabelle in New York. I felt the energy to pursue my dreams, which led me to the studio. “When’s the last time you’ve really looked at someone?” he had asked me. I think about that question often when I’m in the painter’s seat. I still feel shy to see.

I used to think I knew exactly who I was, but it’s all in flux now. I am not sure why everything comes back to painting. If I could do anything, without having to worry about anything, I would paint. I’m not sure how it grew enough to occupy so much real estate in my head. I feel like I'm trying to find something true in it. I feel crazy, like I am thinking yearningly about painting as I am literally in the middle of the act of painting. How did it get like this beyond me noticing?

Months ago I read an interview with Pedro Pascal. He had tried to be an actor in his 20s and 30s, and kept encountering setback after setback. He was going to quit and make drastic life changes, but held on because of the insistence of his friends, who angrily and lovingly told him to keep at it. Separately, I’d been rewatching the anime Hunter x Hunter to fall asleep. Kite tells Gon how good hunters are uniquely blessed with good friends, and favored by animals. I sobbed.

Warmly,
Jean