In his weeks of travel and turmoil, Jake had done very little painting, with the exception of a few sketches. He felt restless and was glad when Eleni gently made it clear that he needed something to do. “I don’t want you underfoot all day. I’ve things to do and people to see of my own,” she said.
So late in the first week at Big Sur, he drove into Santa Cruz to an art supply store and bought paint to last a few weeks. He also placed an order with a friend of Don and Mieke’s near Lucia, the little town to the south, for a dozen stretched canvases of various sizes. He spent a couple of days creating an impromptu studio in a small shed at the rear of the garden. It had no electricity, but it had big windows and plenty of shelving space. He found two saw horses and an old door and planned to work outside as long as the weather was good.
And it was good all that late fall and well into November. The days would start with a chilly fog and then burn off into a cool, clear crispness of sun and fresh breeze. Some days, Eleni would let him know she wanted him gone, and he would take the truck and drive the dirt roads into the hills and find a good view and draw in the open air. Other days, she asked him to stay around and he made sketches of the house and the garden and of her in various poses, studies he planned to use for later paintings.
The truth was, though, that most days he just went through the motions. Some days he prepared canvasses with under-painting. For a week, he painted the same small grove of trees on the same canvas, washing out what he had done the day before. Other days he couldn’t work at all and he drove into the library at Santa Cruz or Carmel and went through art books or fooled around on the Internet. He spent one day reading about the Canadian Emily Carr and studying her work. It sparked something in him, but he couldn’t see how to turn it into something original.
One noontime, after a morning spent half-heartedly painting an old apple tree he’d found in a small abandoned orchard, he stopped by the Loma Vista for coffee and a burger. Mieke was there, absorbed in a magazine and a bowl of chowder, but when she saw him, she motioned him over.
“Join me, Jake, please. I hate to eat alone.” Her smile was broad and welcoming and the painter in him noticed for the first time what a handsome woman she was—the strong cheek bones of her Japanese heritage, skin that was aging well, thick shiny hair with only a few strands of gray.
He gave the waitress his order and then searched for some kind of conversation to start. “What are you reading?”
She pushed the magazine his way. Cloth, Paper, Scissors the cover read. Articles about fiber arts, collage, weaving. “Do you do this kind of work, Mieke?” he asked, looking up.
She nodded. “I started out as a weaver. I took it up when my kids were grown—something to do. Then I moved into more mixed media. But I still love the feel of the yarns and the colors.” Her face lit up. “I love color.”
“Me too,” Jake said. “The first time I painted a color chart and saw how they all worked together, in that logical way they have, I felt I’d learned some special secret.”
Mieke tilted her head to one side and frowned a little. “I’ve never been interested in any of the science of it. It’s the feeling I get from colors that interests me. It touches something deep. I can’t really explain it. Has that happened to you?”
Jake shook his head. “I don’t think so. I like some colors more than others but I haven’t really seen them as emotional.” The moment at Paul’s weaving flashed through his mind. “Well, maybe yes, now that I think about it. One time at least. I don’t know what I’d call the feeling I had but it touched something in me.”
Mieke smiled. “I can see the feeling on your face as you remembered. It’s that feeling that I do art for.”
“I envy you that,” Jake said. “I’m not sure I know why I do art anymore.”
She laughed but it was gentle and kind. “Having a hard time of it?”
“Yeah, I guess. Needing something new, I guess.” He felt suddenly uncomfortable, exposed, and he turned his attention to the burger that had come and sat untouched.
Maybe Mieke saw his discomfort for she changed the subject. Talked about the subtle changes in the weather as the winter approached, about her plans with Don to spend some weeks in the desert. Jake felt out of the spotlight and he was grateful. He didn’t feel he could explain any more of his dilemma, his yearning for something different to happen.
That night, after dinner, he decided to talk to Eleni. “I have a confession to make,” he said, as they sat over tea in the garden. Although the nights were chilly now, the little earthenware chiminea put off heat and a nice glow.
“You mean, you’re ready to tell me that you’re not really painting?” Eleni replied.
“Nothing gets past you, does it?”
“Lots gets past me, Jake,” she said, “but not something that obvious.”
“I feel completely stuck, empty of ideas,” he said. “The skills are there. I can draw and sketch and create studies, but I don’t care about any of it. I don’t care if I paint, and it frightens me. “
She said nothing, just waited in her quiet way for him to continue.
He got up and put another few sticks into the fire. “Well, maybe that’s not true. I do want to paint, but I don’t want to paint what I did before. It sells but it makes me feel like a hack.” He settled back into his chair and stared into the fire.
Eleni too watched the fire. Neither of them spoke for quite a while.
Then Jake said, “May I tell you the truth?”
Eleni smiled. “Please.”
“I expected you to inspire me to something new, original, innovative, I don’t know, something fabulous. That night in the stone house, I felt healed up after we slept together. I felt better than I had in many months. But this time…” He found he couldn’t go on, couldn’t explain it any further.
“This time,” she said, “it didn’t work.”
He nodded, misery rising in his throat.
“What you needed that night in the desert was simple. Love and understanding. And you just needed enough to go back and face the truth of Marnie and Paul and you. Now it isn’t simple. Yes, you’ve faced that truth and come away from them, but you have not yet left them behind. They are still a thorn in your heart.”
She paused and looked up at the clear starry night. “My love and understanding can help, but only you can heal your heart. In my community’s beliefs, we seek within Nature to find what is needed for our health and well-being, not within another. When we are whole in ourselves, we bring more to the relationship, be it friendship or partnership.”
The fire crackled and rearranged itself and the coals burned bright. Eleni wrapped her shawl more tightly around her shoulders.
“Tell me what to do, Eleni.”
“I can’t, Jake, but I can make a suggestion. Go and be with yourself in Nature. Let go of all distractions and be with yourself until you find yourself. Once you do, you will know what to do and you will know what―and how―to paint in a new way.”
And she told him of a place deep in the woods, a simple one-room cabin near a running stream. It belonged to her community and if he wanted, she would see if he could use it. She herself had found peace and direction there years before.
“How long will it take?” he asked.
“It’s a couple of hours’ drive,” she replied.
“No, I mean, how long will it take me to heal myself?”
Eleni laughed. “I know what you were asking, Jake. I don’t have an answer for that. A day, a week, a year? Only you will know.”
“I want to believe you, Eleni.”
She laughed and touched his cheek. “You already do believe me. Hesitation to change is not disbelief. It’s fear, fear of the unknown, and perhaps, for you, fear of being happy.” She was silent a moment, then went on. “Those who believe as I do learn to trust in the goodness of the world. Just because people make mistakes or are weak or selfish and hurt you, it doesn’t mean the world is an unsafe place. If you take the time to trust yourself, you can learn to trust the world.” She laughed again. “It will be all right, Jake.”
Jake slept in Eleni’s bed that night but she left him after they made love. She built a small fire in the big stone fireplace in the living room and sat on through the night, singing to herself and writing. She burned herbs and small slips of paper in a ritual of her own making that asked for protection for Jake on his quest. She crocheted a small red pouch and placed tiny objects in it and hung it from a leather braid.
In the morning, she helped him make a list of supplies that he would need: canned and dried food for a few weeks, a sleeping bag and blankets, matches and a flashlight, warm clothes. When he asked about art supplies, she shook her head. “No books or paper either for now, except for making a fire. You are committing to be with yourself, by yourself,” she said. “Except for Sadie, of course.”
Jake felt frightened and wondered what he was getting into.
After he had shopped and loaded the truck and Sadie was safely in the cab, Eleni handed him a map to the cabin, placed the small pouch on the braid around his neck, and gave him an envelope. “Open this when you need to,” she said. She smiled and kissed him.
“Will you be here when I get back?” he asked.
“It won’t matter, Jake. If we are to meet again, we will find each other.”
Jake frowned.
“It will be all for the good, Jake. Believe me.” And she went inside then, not waiting to see him off.