Camille and Claude. It sounds like the star-crossed lovers Romeo and Juliet. Maybe how Yoko was John\u2019s muse. Or how supportive our fellow compatriot Josephine was to her Napoleon. Or Joan Baez and Bobby Dylan in their heyday.<\/p>\n
The leaves rustle gently beneath the soles of our feet in this ocean of greenery before us. We are not quite at the higher edge, and we aren\u2019t at the end. Jean and I are floating in this wispy wind as vibrantly red poppies ripple everywhere. Claude is somewhere around here. With his tools. Capturing this. He is a real artist. Over the years, he has perfected his disappearing act. He knows how to constantly be around and remain unseen.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m the wife of an artist. I\u2019m the luckiest woman alive. I\u2019m a red poppy plucked from the ground, chosen among all those similar-looking, equally beautiful flowers to be by his side. I was his model. I became his wife. I bore his child. He missed almost the entirety of the pregnancy, but I was there when he painted his masterpieces. I was a muse, and I am a muse. It\u2019s a mammoth fortune to be in the vicinity of his g\u00e9nie.<\/p>\n
My husband had to be away, pretend we weren\u2019t together so his aunt could continue paying him a monthly ch\u00e8que. He sacrificed a lot for us. He is so courageous. When he got drafted, he fought his father when the latter offered to help him get out of the army only if he gave up painting. Men like Claude don\u2019t give up. They don\u2019t sacrifice their passions. I admire him for his decision.<\/p>\n
Even if it\u2019s at my expense sometimes.<\/p>\n
I do get frustrated, especially on days like this when it\u2019s too windy and my parasol is merely an accessory for Claude to paint. I can\u2019t be mad at him for long; he struggled a lot for us. I can\u2019t forget that one time he attempted suicide after the birth of Jean. Those were dark times of living with strangers until Claude stopped receiving rejections and started receiving ch\u00e8ques instead.<\/p>\n
This is the price you have to pay if you want to be remembered alongside your artist husband. You have to weather his torments, his brokenness. You have to acknowledge that your brokenness must match his. He must look at you and find his own hollowness staring back at him. For richer, for poorer. In sickness and in health.<\/p>\n
Self-erasure is a must. It starts with the last name and ends with a section on his Wikipedia page. You have to be an anchor during the hurricanes of self-doubt and creative blockages, and the anger that follows them. You share the misery, the depression, the moodiness, but not the successes. They are in his name, and that\u2019s okay. After all, you are in the toile. You are a part of the masterpiece, even if it took you days and days of battling loneliness because he needs his space to create.<\/p>\n
My husband is not a perfect man, and this is why he is a great artist. Someone once said Art is a handicap. We make art because we are flawed. I thought he was talking about Claude. Claude is a bad husband; this is why he is a great artist.<\/p>\n
I sometimes wonder if I were an artist like him, could I spend my mornings in this field of poppies, and leave my son to his devices so I can recreate his childhood on a canvas? Let the blue brushstrokes consume my every thought? I can\u2019t imagine competing against this\u2026 dedication. After all, I refuse to believe I\u2019m totally stripped of art. Claude loves me because he finds art in my being. In small towns like Argenteuil, the only benchmark you can strap your value onto is your spouse.<\/p>\n
And what is the point of trying to fight it when you\u2019re closer to death\u2019s door than he is? He was offered the talent and granted enough years of good health to put together a legacy. We grow to accept our imminent death and our bestowed roles in life. He will be the legendary painter, and I\u2019m the silhouette of the woman you\u2019re staring at and printing on your tote bags.<\/p>\n
Until death do us part.<\/p>\n
I haven\u2019t been feeling my best these days. I\u2019m on the precipice of a revelation. I feel death advancing, and while I wait for a diagnosis, I decide to diagnose my decisions in life to kill time before it does me. And I understand now I could\u2019ve done life better if I knew better.<\/p>\n
But fantasies only go as far as imagining being married to a predictable accountant and losing the part of me who did choose Claude. I don\u2019t like to think I was duped. I simply outgrew the environment I chose. A person is allowed to change their mind, but I missed the one technicality preventing it, which is being a woman.<\/p>\n
I wish I was plucked like a red poppy, but I\u2019m nothing like it. Our similarities started with our affinity for short lives and stopped at our abhorrence of being fussed over. Unlike me, red poppies love to grow on their own. They are rebels. They disturb the soil. They don\u2019t care if they are undesirable. They are independent. An adjective my generation hasn\u2019t known yet, and if some did, I did not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This is the price you have to pay if you want to be remembered alongside your artist husband. You have to weather his torments, his brokenness. You have to acknowledge that your brokenness must match his. He must look at you and find his own hollowness staring back at him.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":182,"featured_media":22927,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3530],"tags":[222],"class_list":["post-22173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-flash-fiction","tag-art","writer-rola-elnaggar"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/182"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22173"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22926,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22173\/revisions\/22926"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22927"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mrbullbull.com\/newbull\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}