I've been keeping up with my applications, though admittedly my goals are modest.  Working on a statement for the Saltonstall Colony, I actually had a kind of epiphany:  a burst of understanding about how my work conflates (parallels? expands?) facets of my personality and pursuits.

The bolt hit when I was trying to articulate the role of restraint in my work - and like a flash seeing it as an act of generosity.  Holding back can maintain and protect a space, which means it can allow (wait?) for something or someone to enter.  Psychotherapy comes to mind, as technique.  (I love In Treatment, and am going to catch up on some episodes when I finish here.)

Holding back is different from withholding, which is rooted in anger (and fear); my father could be guilty of that.  Withholding is selfish, so that would make the two opposites.  They take opposing approaches to creating distance, one offering possibility and the other taking it away.  Where does this inclination live?  How deep?  Can a person change?

While this might not seem like an earth-shaking observation (my insecurity about stating the obvious as if it were a deep insight), something has come into juxtaposition that I don't think I understood as clearly before.  I've carried around a fear that I'm selfish, instilled by my father.  I've had to work to uproot that, which meant learning enough about myself to know whether he was right (he wasn't) or projecting (he was).

Perhaps without consciousness I've feared the restraint in my work has its roots in hostility.  (It doesn't.)