2/23/96

Today I am torn between some inner drive to continue painting a copy of Jupiter and Io.   I’m intrigued by the image of Jupiter as a cloud.   I understand this feeling of being a cloud, smoke; Something with form and without form at the same time; Something definite and definitely not.   I believe that time at the painting will help resolve some of my disparate thoughts and feelings.   Instead, I will work.   Maybe I can lay down my burdens by picking up others.   Maybe I’ll have to place mine aside to function at work.   Nothing stops me from moving.   Nothing binds my tongue.   Yet I am confronted by barriers as real as if they were walls of a labyrinth.   I push up against them and they do not yield.   I wonder if each of us is a prisoner within our own individual maze.   We construct the walls, invisible to others as well as ourselves, and then are trapped within our own device.

The mythic theme of the ancient Gods reminds me of the story of Theseus within the labyrinth.   Did he find the Minotaur to be a sad compatriot to himself; Pitied and recognized as a mirror image of Theseus, himself?   Is the labyrinth simply the complex of our thoughts and those things not quite thoughts that direct our muscles to contract and glands to secret and stop us from walking out.   Why should some people see these walls and others do not?

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