The art of letting go

My dear friend sent me a beautiful book “Wildflowers of North America” for inspiration for my watercolors. I turned to a page and this was my very first painting— Lake Louise Arnica.

I’ve never tried my hand at painting; my creative outlet has always been writing. Sure, I did the usual art class in school, and the occasional doodling or adult coloring book. It’s my Dad who loved to paint, he got so much joy from drawing his flowers and apples, and molding his pottery. 

I’ve been wanting to try watercolors during this time when I’ve eased up on work commitments and have more unstructured days. I walked into Michaels, got overwhelmed by the vast array of choices of paints, brushes, paper, and left confused and empty handed. Then I saw a piece in the NYT about the best Mother’s Day gifts; one of them was a Japanese watercolor set—how’d they know? 

I decided to paint things that people have gifted me during these months—from flowers and mangoes and tea sets, to my organized jewelry drawer, walks in nature, and a few days on the Chesapeake Bay.

A stunning Wedgwood tea pot and teacups, a perfect gift for a tea lover. I drink tea in it most mornings, especially when I make Adeni chai from Qahwah House—a meditative process for me.

I have no illusion that these paintings are any good at all. And that is absolutely fine with me. To be honest, I don’t want to learn to be a good painter, I have no desire to watch YouTube videos to understand perspective or shadow or depth or mixing colors. With writing, I labor over every word; I can spend days thinking about and writing this newsletter. With painting, I simply want to play—put brush to paper, no sketching or planning beforehand, no expectation or judgement afterwards.

It’s Suleika Jaouad, author of Between Two Kingdoms and my personal inspiration during this time (as I wrote about in this newsletter) who taught me about the joy of experimentation with watercolors, as she discovered it on her own cancer journey. Suleika was undergoing her second bone marrow transplant after a recurrence of leukemia a couple years ago. The debilitating treatment hindered her ability to write, so she turned to watercolors. Confined to her hospital bed, she started painting the fever dreams and hallucinations she was experiencing. As a recovering perfectionist, she found this practice both therapeutic and freeing as she gave in to what she calls “happy accidents” from colors improvising on the page.  

This amaryllis bulb came in a purple sock covered with hearts. It grew when it was ready—first a bright green stem peeked through, then one gorgeous red flower bloomed, then another, and another—living up to its name, from Greek, ‘to sparkle’.

I too discovered that watercolors insist on having the last word on how they show up in your painting. My attempt to add the stem on a mango made the black run so I got a bruised mango instead; my lovely kundun earrings look more splotchy than elegant. You can’t help but relinquish control; the colors mix and dance on the page and there’s little you can do than waltz along, and smile. Just like when I chopped off my hair a couple weeks ago, this feels liberating too. 

A friend recently shared a book with me called Your Brain on Art, which provides scientific proof that the arts are essential to our health and well-being, indeed to our very survival. In a section on “Reconnect to your creativity”, artist Nicholas Wilton says, “Art-making is, really, about feeling more alive in your life,” and that the biggest deterrent is the inner critic that shuts down our creativity. He suggests reframing art-making as a process of becoming yourself, rather than focusing on the end result.

The first mangoes of the season, from my cousin. Oh how I love mangoes—especially Pakistani mangoes that are so hard to find.

One night when I couldn’t sleep, I came down to grab a snack and saw my watercolors out. I sat at the kitchen stable and started painting a basket of mangoes. My mind was focused on capturing the shades of ripeness, figuring out how to display the weave of the Tanzanian basket, and whether I should add the barcode labels to my plump pieces of fruit—it was 3am before I knew it! I was fully present in that moment—what psychologists call “flow”, when you’re completely involved in an activity for its own sake, without ego, and you lose track of time. According to this book’s authors, “When you enter that state, there is a physical feeling of bliss that can’t be explained—it is a wordless sensation.”

We live in a culture that demands productivity at all times, that insists on perfection for something to be considered worthy, that values the “go big or go home” mentality. It feels good to try something new and not worry about being good at it—even if my kids chuckle at my paintings. It feels liberating to simply enjoy the process, to get into a flow. No doubt the resulting bliss is confusing those cancer cells!

We (by ‘we’ I mean Arif and the kids ;-)) had crabs by the bushel, at a friend’s home on the bay.

We spent the past few days on the Chesapeake Bay to celebrate Arif’s 60th birthday. The kids were with us which makes everything more special, and my cousins and their children joined for a day which added to the fun. We went to the fishmonger daily to get lobster, shrimp, catfish, and more, and Saanya whipped up some magical soirées on the bay. We played scrabble and went fishing, had afternoon naps and watched glorious sunsets. Arif said it was the most perfect way to reel in a new decade.

This week I’ll be back at chemo. My last chemo was the hardest yet—the scalp cooling was incredibly painful without any hair as a buffer, and the side effects seem to be getting stronger, especially the exhaustion.

Joyous times and challenging ones, we have to make space for both, as I wrote about in “We’ll get through this InshAllah”. As long as we notice, and then take the time to eke out the joy amidst the hard times—to just ‘sit on the dock of the bay, and watch the tide roll away…’—we’ll get through hard times, inshAllah.

Eid Mubarak and Happy Father’s Day to all celebrating. 

With all my love,

Salma

My house has been filled with flowers from friends, I can paint a whole book of them. These tulips were for Mother’s Day from my cousin, along with her incredible homemade bread and churned butter!

My dear friend from Houston came to visit and organized my dreaded jewelry drawer, as I didn’t have the energy to tackle it alone. Now each earring is in its own cubby space!