Estampillas

Original paintings used for Mexican stamps on exhibit at the Museo de Filatelia. My favorite memory of stamps took place eight years ago during a workshop with Nick Bantock, author of Griffin and Sabine. The workshop was called "The Alchemical Wedding," and explored the marriage of visual art and writing. We wrote in the mornings and did paintings and collage in the afternoon. I hold this as a template for the way my life will one day be.

I signed up for the workshop because I loved Nick Bantock's collages and couldn't resist the rare opportunity to study with him. Writing was a complete mystery to me then and I was in awe of those that could do it. I discovered there how writing too is a collage; of people you've known, places you've been, things you want and don't want to be.

One evening, while working in the studio, Nick brought in a bag of stamps and poured them out into a pile on the floor. On hands and knees we pored over the stamps. While we investigated each little detail, conversation flowed about fears and insights, far away places and every day things. I love conversations that emerge from being lost in the flow of doing something else, like painting, folding laundry, or shelling peas.

Fireflies darted outside in the darkness as mid-summer heat swirled with the cool evening breeze. Nick told me he'd observed that I had a lot of knowledge and insight but seemed hesitant when I went to speak. I told him that was how I felt, that often I sensed things but would get tongue-tied and hesitant, because I didn't know if I really knew what I was talking about.

"It reminds me of that famous speech," he said. "The one that says it's our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us."

He pointed out that the fear of doing the wrong thing makes it so we can't do anything at all, and really, the secret was going for it whether we know what we're doing or not, and to accept that mistakes are just part of it. "I f*ck up all the time," he said, while sorting stamps, "What can you do?" He then sat up, looked me straight in the eye, and declared, "I hereby give you permission to f*ck up!"

I felt something lift on that late summer evening while looking at stamps with Nick Bantock.