I have been using this month to begin the process of developing some structure for myself. While I was a pretty disciplined and successful copy writer for more than a decade, I had a few regular clients and I knew their needs and schedules. My back had its own schedule and I knew it by heart, by feel, to my core. Everything fell apart three years ago.
Now, as I start my new life with new parameters, new brick walls to avoid, and free of anyone's deadlines but my own, well, I find myself a little unnerved. I have been reading some books on the new publishing world--on my Kindle, of course, which is only fitting. It would seem I must develop a platform; yes, I knew this already but I didn't know it, if you get my drift. This home blog of mine, this testing ground, this home base for some internet relationships that matter to me ... well, it won't cut it for a platform. Again, I know this in my mind, but it is unlikely I will abandon it. It serves a deeper purpose for me.
I just read an article in this month's Poet & Writers' Magazine about the Internet and how it can interfere with a writer's creativity. I could cite it more carefully, but what I read was more of a jumping off point that is combined with the three books I've read in the last two weeks about marketing a book in today's world. The message is clear in all of them; I must build a platform long before the book is even written. I must join networks of people who share my interests, who are likely readers of a memoir I would write. I must write SHORT.
Oh. My. God. Help me.
I have to re-enter the world of Twitter. I do not LIKE Twitter. This does not mean I don't appreciate its uses; it means simply that I hate Internet/text/chat speak. So much room for misunderstanding, for lazy communication. On the other hand, I know that I am often lazy in my meandering trips to nowhere on my blog. I am lucky that some of you enjoy the ride without particularly worrying about the side trips and the fact that there may not be a particular goal. But I have to start finding things to write about on a regular basis, things I can put into 500 words, or perhaps 750.
I have to tweet, post status updates, comment, write, connect. CONNECT. CONNECT.
And I have a wonderful compendium now of ways to do this, most of which I kind of understand, despite my protests to the contrary. I just don't know which of them will help my actual writing. Which will contribute to the act of getting the thing done? My blog right here does that. Reading the blogs I do help my writing. So I know I must keep this going and I have to incorporate reading YOUR words, thinking about them and commenting on them.
I have seen some of you do a fantastic job of building substantial followings and, when I think about it, I realize how you do it. Part of it is your frequency and the variety of your work. Or the fact that you connect with people who do what you do. Linda Lou is a marvel to me! And I watched Donna take off. I read blogs which have thousands of followers and I wonder how you all can write so often and so well, about so much. (Naturally, in this frame of mind, I see only my shortcomings. This ain't about logical thinking today!)
But my goal was never about how many followers I have had. My goal was to have followers who wanted to come back, even though I am sporadic here. My goal was to find my own voice and to use it; to learn how to write what is painful or horrific, without making people want to run away screaming into the night. It's cool to see the number grow, when I publish every week, when I explore new blogs and comment. But that's not the object for me.
The article I just read talked about how the social networking can also divert us from the very thing we started networking FOR! To create a welcoming platform for the book we want to write, or have begun to write. It talked about how we have to walk AWAY from all the networking and unplug ourselves in order to produce, to give our creativity time to percolate.
Well, then I hit my brick wall this week and got the shakes and put myself into a dither.
Visions of Hell
This is a talent I have; perhaps it is an artform for me. I'm not sure.
I have about four upright hours in every day. Occasionally I have as many as six, as long as they are spread out with many long breaks. By upright I mean sitting UP. I have to lie down a lot, and I DO mean lie down. I can one day perhaps get one of the Dragonspeak programs and do more. But for now it hit me that I have a great deal of work I must do online to lay the groundwork for being able to publish this book I am also working. And I have FIVE paintings in the works. Suddenly, it all became overwhelming to me.
How do I give time to it all, every day, and still have a life with the people I love, and do my laundry, and my grocery shopping, and, well, leave my apartment? Not to mention go to the gym nearby for about four hours a week so that I can KEEP WALKING?
I began to sob, not just cry. I threw an all out hissy fit. I got scared. I am sixty years old in June and I have only JUST adjusted to this new and frail body I do not like, to the point where I can consider starting the program to perhaps make it stronger and maybe add another half hour or hour to the productivity.
And then I began to laugh. How come AlAnon still helps me? ONE STEP AT A TIME. One DAY. One Hour. I let it all gang up in my mind. I must do all things on every day. I must build a network of thousands by next Tuesday? And I must start my hour and a quarter workouts THIS week THREE days a week immediately. And I must twitter, begin a new blog, write on this blog, read ALL the blogs I've missed, develop a webpage, compile a list of existing contacts, AND read the three memoirs waiting for me--in the coming week.
There is no time. I must also complete at least twelve paintings by 2013.
In four hours a day.
Or I am a failure.
It's good to be a grown up...
Step Back and Breathe
My brothers and sisters all called me in the same twenty-four hour period after one of my mom's most infamous binges after my dad died. I had almost the same conversation with each.
Sibling: Mother is drinking. Did you know she drank like this?
Me: No shit. [sorry. In this case, the word fit. I'd been screaming about it for twenty years.] I've told you she was an alcoholic for years.
Sibling: Well. Yes, but I never knew it was this bad.
Me: silence .... then, What's your point?
Sibling: What are you going to do about it?
Me: Get the hell to AlAnon.
I went to my first meeting that Wednesday and got me an ODAT book (One Day At A Time). I sat at that meeting and listened, then went home and read all 365 days that very night. Like so many before me, I figured if I did it all at once, I'd be cured real fast. They reminded me to slow down.
And so it has been as I've been doing my research, as I have been allowing myself to actually take my dreams seriously and lay the groundwork.
Mommy, I am telling them what we had. Honestly, I am. And I am shining as hard as I can for you.
But I sure do wish you were here the way you were when I'd run so fast I'd fall; to lightly tip my chin up toward your face and say, "Jetty, Jetty. Breathe. Life is not a race. Sweetie, catch your breath and try moving one foot at a time so you don't get all tangled up and keep falling down. You'll get there in your own time." And then kiss me on my nose.
I guess maybe I'll just breathe. And write. And get there in my own time now, one word at a time, so I don't get myself all tangled up and fall down.
OOOOHHHHHHHMMMMMM.... Oh. Wait. I'm not supposed to be saying that with clenched fists, huh.
Here's to those baby steps I was writing about!
Accidental Spring
"Accidental Spring" This began as the background for painting other papers, but became something else!
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Showing posts with label dreams. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 18, 2012
Sunday, January 1, 2012
New Year's Path; Old Year's Victories
I think I have written before about what I try to do every New Year's Eve, but what the heck. I will write about it again...
Last Year Is Done: Let Go of Missteps, Keep the Grace
I take a serious, long look at the year that is ending, reading the goals to move toward a more desirable path, and trying to honestly see how far along I have moved in that path and whether or not it remains a valid guide for what comes next. I also write down every single misstep I believe I have taken with somewhat brutal honesty at times.
Then I read those missteps aloud, pausing after each and I systematically tear up the list into as tiny pieces as I can and I throw them away. Sometimes I put the day's coffee grounds on top of them, just so that I feel I have thoroughly obliterated them.
Finally, I write what I feel I have accomplished on the left side of a piece of paper, as well as all the good things that I feel have happened TO me--the serendipitous gifts, or points of grace. Some years I have had a terrible time finding either, but more often I find that it's easier to list points of grace than accomplishments. I tend to minimize my role in anything good. I have noticed this in the last three years, most particularly; I had far less trouble finding my flawed acts than giving myself credit for anything.
Bit by bit, though, I got better at that. In 2010 I managed not to blame the house not selling on me. I gave myself credit for readying the house for market, for making some progress in some self-destructive obsessive behaviors, and for forgiving myself. Never before had I listed that as a positive accomplishment, but I finally saw that I would have appreciated this in other people--why not myself? But enough about 2010. It was a terrifying and painful and difficult year.
2011 began differently. The list of graces was enormous, but I saw that I felt I had accomplished a lot as well. I had returned to my blog, exceeding my target of 26 entries for the year. I had finished two more paintings and have five in the works. I let go of worrying about how much money I would have after paying off all my debts if the house sold. I changed the dynamic of a relationship that was truly codependent. I found the core and the structure for my book. I began to exercise again, if somewhat sporadically so far. All of my baby steps had added up to something.
Baby Steps Matter! From Broad Strokes to Filling In the Details...
I have overlooked the baby steps so often in my life, not recognizing that they added up to moving along a path I valued. The path? To live more creatively and closer to the bone of Jeannette. Who I am, rather than someone I think other people will approve of or like. Living my life out of loving rather than being loved. (That's a kicker, and I cannot say that I come close to living that way, but it's a pretty worthy goal I think.) That little girl who kept company with the mice in the traps, who talked to them and loved them who somehow got it that loving things was an answer to something scary ... she was only three and understood how to do that. In some ways, the path I wrote down to work toward in 2012 is hers. The path is the elementary school girl who wrote her first poems in free verse. The girl who saw a foster child with scanty clothing and asked her mother whether they could do something to help, and then helped her. My path is the same as the middle school girl who completed her first "real painting" of three faces of women, crying out for help in her art, crying out through the false smile, the anger, the scream--but no one heard. They saw the skill but ignored the voice. My path is to write and to paint my soul, to do my best to be felt and seen and heard--but to do it for the act of the doing.
Those were the broad strokes I wrote for moving forward. I do tend to find writing some specific steps helps me to get started in every year, though I don't label them resolutions. While I put the broad strokes as the start of the right side of my paper, I always follow it with specific actions. That's all I call them, rather than telling myself they are resolutions.
I recognize that taking care of my health issues must be included, or I won't be able to do a damned thing. I start with them because they are the least interesting to me--this year, just getting to the apartment gym once a week and to ride my own recumbent bike at least an hour a week are enough for someone who has been bedridden for so many hours a day.
I want to have at least 52 blog entries this year. I don't say once a week, since that would set me up for failure if there is a week I don't get to it. But this year I DID get ambitious, for once. I simply put WRITE THE BOOK, yes, in BIG lettering. I did not put write the finished product, nor publish it. I just have to write it now. (Bruce, you are so right. Most of it is written in my head or in my blog, but I have to put it in a compelling, readable form. The whole thing. Period.)
Finally, I wrote "start and complete at least three new paintings." That may not seem like many, but since I also put "Finish partly done paintings," that means I would wind up with ten completed paintings, at least. I keep finding partly done paintings that I had forgotten about entirely, from 2009 and early 2010. I had had to dismantle my studio early in 2010 because I was readying the place to sell. They remained packed up and hidden until I moved. When I put up my Christmas tree, I found another nest of them!
Age, Schmage (or Old, Schmold, if You Like)
I had begun this year's list with the intention of giving myself a schedule, but I cut to the chase instead. I may have the same list next year, or I may not. But in reading the list of accomplishments and graces of last year aloud, I realized that I felt like having myself shoot for the stars. Why dream little?
I will be sixty this year. I did not think of my parents as old at sixty. My mom hit that age when I was twenty-five, so it was not unreasonable for my friends to think it was old. What I saw in my parents, though, was that they both had minds like steel traps and, when she was sober, my mom had an insatiable curiosity about just about everything--except things that had to do with popular culture. Dad became Registrar of a university when he was sixty, after changing careers five years before. They were not over. When my health took such a terrifying turn in January of 2009, and so many dreams blew up in my face, I had started to let those thoughts of "getting old" and being "washed up" creep in through the cracks where my soul had been bleeding.
I allowed myself to start to believe that the best years of my life were behind me. Why? Because I was in acute pain? Because an old love had been used my heart then thrown it and me away, like garbage? Because I was poor? Because I had lost my career or any hope of regaining that particular career I'd built over ten years? Because I had to go through the humiliating process of applying for Disability? Because I knew I had to lose my home? Because my son had become increasingly withdrawn and depressed, and there was not a thing I could do? Well, yeah! Because of all those things.
Fine. I had reasons to be depressed, to be fearful, to be stuck. So what? I realized at the end of 2010 that none of those things had anything to do with being old, or being done. I have no idea what snapped me to attention, but I do know that something practical and tangible--winning my disability hearing and having the judge lambast the board that denied me turned me around. How crass, one might say. Well, when you are penniless and have to rely on a credit card and the kindness of your friends to put food on the table, having an independent income, no matter how meager, changes your life.
I got unstuck in 2011. I made reachable, small goals for myself last year. I met every single one of them, and have you any idea how good that made me feel last night?
Why Dream Little? My Mantra, Perhaps...
So I am dreaming BIG this year. And I actually yelled at a friend who talked about our being old and how we had to accept that from here on opportunity is for the young. It made me angry because I feel as if, once again, I am just getting started. I had to start from scratch when my husband took off when I was forty. I was on disability and had been for almost a decade. I had to start to build a career from almost NOTHING. I did it. And here I am, twenty years later, having to start from scratch in a different way, so I will do it.
It isn't about the poverty; it's about having a sense of purpose. I have that now, and I have some financial security for a couple of years, at least. Who could ask for more than that? I am a lucky woman; I keep writing that, I know. But I feel it all the way through, and I think it is a healthy way to feel. It's up to me not to squander this opportunity I have.
An old friend, told me that all he wanted for me was to be able to get up each day and choose whether I wanted to write or to paint, or whether I needed to simply rest because of my back. He said he wanted me to be able to choose how I lived my days without having to be so worried all the time. Well, his wish for me has come true, and I did not think it would.
I have an exciting year ahead to look forward to. I find the thought of being sixty kind of freeing. I am not sure why yet, but undoubtedly I'll babble about it at some point. My "other big sister," Nancy will be seventy. She's not old, either. She volunteers in two organizations, works part-time because she wants to, travels to marvelous places--in another year, she's going to go to the Polar Bear town in Alaska... My Aunt in Alaska's 97. Yes, she IS old, but I love listening to the wanderings of her mind when we talk.
She begins on one topic about a friend, then skips all over the place, but if I wait long enough, she always returns to the place she started... and it's always a marvelous ride along the way. Hmmm... I think that's the whole point to living creatively, perhaps. The ride's as important as the destination, maybe more so.
END of this ramble. Happy New Year! (I may revise this three or four times after I publish, but I just want to put it out there and start on my goals NOW.)
Last Year Is Done: Let Go of Missteps, Keep the Grace
I take a serious, long look at the year that is ending, reading the goals to move toward a more desirable path, and trying to honestly see how far along I have moved in that path and whether or not it remains a valid guide for what comes next. I also write down every single misstep I believe I have taken with somewhat brutal honesty at times.
Then I read those missteps aloud, pausing after each and I systematically tear up the list into as tiny pieces as I can and I throw them away. Sometimes I put the day's coffee grounds on top of them, just so that I feel I have thoroughly obliterated them.
Finally, I write what I feel I have accomplished on the left side of a piece of paper, as well as all the good things that I feel have happened TO me--the serendipitous gifts, or points of grace. Some years I have had a terrible time finding either, but more often I find that it's easier to list points of grace than accomplishments. I tend to minimize my role in anything good. I have noticed this in the last three years, most particularly; I had far less trouble finding my flawed acts than giving myself credit for anything.
Bit by bit, though, I got better at that. In 2010 I managed not to blame the house not selling on me. I gave myself credit for readying the house for market, for making some progress in some self-destructive obsessive behaviors, and for forgiving myself. Never before had I listed that as a positive accomplishment, but I finally saw that I would have appreciated this in other people--why not myself? But enough about 2010. It was a terrifying and painful and difficult year.
2011 began differently. The list of graces was enormous, but I saw that I felt I had accomplished a lot as well. I had returned to my blog, exceeding my target of 26 entries for the year. I had finished two more paintings and have five in the works. I let go of worrying about how much money I would have after paying off all my debts if the house sold. I changed the dynamic of a relationship that was truly codependent. I found the core and the structure for my book. I began to exercise again, if somewhat sporadically so far. All of my baby steps had added up to something.
Baby Steps Matter! From Broad Strokes to Filling In the Details...
I have overlooked the baby steps so often in my life, not recognizing that they added up to moving along a path I valued. The path? To live more creatively and closer to the bone of Jeannette. Who I am, rather than someone I think other people will approve of or like. Living my life out of loving rather than being loved. (That's a kicker, and I cannot say that I come close to living that way, but it's a pretty worthy goal I think.) That little girl who kept company with the mice in the traps, who talked to them and loved them who somehow got it that loving things was an answer to something scary ... she was only three and understood how to do that. In some ways, the path I wrote down to work toward in 2012 is hers. The path is the elementary school girl who wrote her first poems in free verse. The girl who saw a foster child with scanty clothing and asked her mother whether they could do something to help, and then helped her. My path is the same as the middle school girl who completed her first "real painting" of three faces of women, crying out for help in her art, crying out through the false smile, the anger, the scream--but no one heard. They saw the skill but ignored the voice. My path is to write and to paint my soul, to do my best to be felt and seen and heard--but to do it for the act of the doing.
Those were the broad strokes I wrote for moving forward. I do tend to find writing some specific steps helps me to get started in every year, though I don't label them resolutions. While I put the broad strokes as the start of the right side of my paper, I always follow it with specific actions. That's all I call them, rather than telling myself they are resolutions.
I recognize that taking care of my health issues must be included, or I won't be able to do a damned thing. I start with them because they are the least interesting to me--this year, just getting to the apartment gym once a week and to ride my own recumbent bike at least an hour a week are enough for someone who has been bedridden for so many hours a day.
I want to have at least 52 blog entries this year. I don't say once a week, since that would set me up for failure if there is a week I don't get to it. But this year I DID get ambitious, for once. I simply put WRITE THE BOOK, yes, in BIG lettering. I did not put write the finished product, nor publish it. I just have to write it now. (Bruce, you are so right. Most of it is written in my head or in my blog, but I have to put it in a compelling, readable form. The whole thing. Period.)
Finally, I wrote "start and complete at least three new paintings." That may not seem like many, but since I also put "Finish partly done paintings," that means I would wind up with ten completed paintings, at least. I keep finding partly done paintings that I had forgotten about entirely, from 2009 and early 2010. I had had to dismantle my studio early in 2010 because I was readying the place to sell. They remained packed up and hidden until I moved. When I put up my Christmas tree, I found another nest of them!
Age, Schmage (or Old, Schmold, if You Like)
I had begun this year's list with the intention of giving myself a schedule, but I cut to the chase instead. I may have the same list next year, or I may not. But in reading the list of accomplishments and graces of last year aloud, I realized that I felt like having myself shoot for the stars. Why dream little?
I will be sixty this year. I did not think of my parents as old at sixty. My mom hit that age when I was twenty-five, so it was not unreasonable for my friends to think it was old. What I saw in my parents, though, was that they both had minds like steel traps and, when she was sober, my mom had an insatiable curiosity about just about everything--except things that had to do with popular culture. Dad became Registrar of a university when he was sixty, after changing careers five years before. They were not over. When my health took such a terrifying turn in January of 2009, and so many dreams blew up in my face, I had started to let those thoughts of "getting old" and being "washed up" creep in through the cracks where my soul had been bleeding.
I allowed myself to start to believe that the best years of my life were behind me. Why? Because I was in acute pain? Because an old love had been used my heart then thrown it and me away, like garbage? Because I was poor? Because I had lost my career or any hope of regaining that particular career I'd built over ten years? Because I had to go through the humiliating process of applying for Disability? Because I knew I had to lose my home? Because my son had become increasingly withdrawn and depressed, and there was not a thing I could do? Well, yeah! Because of all those things.
Fine. I had reasons to be depressed, to be fearful, to be stuck. So what? I realized at the end of 2010 that none of those things had anything to do with being old, or being done. I have no idea what snapped me to attention, but I do know that something practical and tangible--winning my disability hearing and having the judge lambast the board that denied me turned me around. How crass, one might say. Well, when you are penniless and have to rely on a credit card and the kindness of your friends to put food on the table, having an independent income, no matter how meager, changes your life.
I got unstuck in 2011. I made reachable, small goals for myself last year. I met every single one of them, and have you any idea how good that made me feel last night?
Why Dream Little? My Mantra, Perhaps...
So I am dreaming BIG this year. And I actually yelled at a friend who talked about our being old and how we had to accept that from here on opportunity is for the young. It made me angry because I feel as if, once again, I am just getting started. I had to start from scratch when my husband took off when I was forty. I was on disability and had been for almost a decade. I had to start to build a career from almost NOTHING. I did it. And here I am, twenty years later, having to start from scratch in a different way, so I will do it.
It isn't about the poverty; it's about having a sense of purpose. I have that now, and I have some financial security for a couple of years, at least. Who could ask for more than that? I am a lucky woman; I keep writing that, I know. But I feel it all the way through, and I think it is a healthy way to feel. It's up to me not to squander this opportunity I have.
An old friend, told me that all he wanted for me was to be able to get up each day and choose whether I wanted to write or to paint, or whether I needed to simply rest because of my back. He said he wanted me to be able to choose how I lived my days without having to be so worried all the time. Well, his wish for me has come true, and I did not think it would.
I have an exciting year ahead to look forward to. I find the thought of being sixty kind of freeing. I am not sure why yet, but undoubtedly I'll babble about it at some point. My "other big sister," Nancy will be seventy. She's not old, either. She volunteers in two organizations, works part-time because she wants to, travels to marvelous places--in another year, she's going to go to the Polar Bear town in Alaska... My Aunt in Alaska's 97. Yes, she IS old, but I love listening to the wanderings of her mind when we talk.
She begins on one topic about a friend, then skips all over the place, but if I wait long enough, she always returns to the place she started... and it's always a marvelous ride along the way. Hmmm... I think that's the whole point to living creatively, perhaps. The ride's as important as the destination, maybe more so.
END of this ramble. Happy New Year! (I may revise this three or four times after I publish, but I just want to put it out there and start on my goals NOW.)
Sunday, November 13, 2011
Finally! Translating inspiration into a Painting
Again, this won't be a long entry. Well. For me, it's not that long. Oh, who am I kidding? It's long.
Writer's Block Is Painter's Block
I have been blocked at the painting table this last week. I have been dreaming paintings for weeks, but the moment I sat down to paint after the week of storm chaos, nothing.
I sat with my taped down paper, all my beautiful brushes, my tissue papers, everything out for me to use and... nothing.
The demon voices from childhood clamored instead, in their original forms and in the "grown up" permutations.
"You? An artist? Your sister was the artist, not you." This voice is the counterpart to the "You? A writer? Daddy wrote the book. You haven't published a goddamned word, except for that Stanford stuff. Advertising, really. Just schlock."
Clever voices, those. You all know enough of my family to be able to figure out how those got there. And here is one of my favorites, interchangeable for singing, song-writing, regular writing AND painting. I call her Mom's 'Demon for All Seasons.'
"You just like the sound of it. I am an Artist. A Writer. I am apart from the rest of you somehow. Who do you think you are? You're not such a much, any more than anyone else. Do something real with your life. Something practical. If you won't be a teacher, get into banking, or something that will pay the bills. An artist. Save that for the weekends."
That one is the age old WASP voice of New England. Modesty is THE virtue above all virtues, followed closely by practicality.
And there is the one that goes, "You know you'll screw it up. You haven't really screwed something up in a while, so this one is going to fail. Really. Why even bother?" And I sit there, with a loaded brush, poised, terrified to put it onto the paper.
Yes. Terrified. And what will happen anyway if I "screw it up?" Yes. The earth WILL swallow me whole and spit me out as unfit. Even the earth will find me objectionable. Yup. And the painting will be so awful it will confirm the other demon voices and I will never paint anything someone will want; I will never paint another painting I like; I will run out of money because I never paint another painting that is anything; I will have a shopping cart and sleep in a cardboard box and wind up having to use a surf board with wheels to get around.
And I get so engrossed with that bizarre image that the paint dries on the brush and I start laughing and give up for the day.
That was a game Jessie and I used to play when she got into her own "I'm a loser because I cannot write this paper perfectly" mode. We'd play, "What's the worst that can happen?"
And Jessie and I would build this elaborately ridiculous story of how her life would be over, she'd lose her friends, all of her family would reject her and--Jessie liked this--we would spit at her when she entered the room, and she would become homeless and die. This usually got her writing just so she could "Get it over with and be homeless and done with it all." (And she rarely got lower than a B+, much to her brother's disgust.)
Only with me, I would simply start laughing and then remember Jess and tear up and then walk away.
We also have the "Your ideas suck and who the HELL wants to read your drivel or see your torn paper scribbles?"
Any of these voices sound familiarly inane? And toxic?
Okay, so I do know that you simply have to keep showing up at the blank paper, no matter what. I have done that with my writing--whether it's with the work I do offline or my blog. I have looked at the blinking cursor for so long that I've written songs to its beat. Bad songs, but songs, nonetheless. In my head, where I cannot possibly see them as productive work. God forbid I should actually admit to myself that writing songs, good or bad, is showing up at the page! After all, my intent was to work on that poem I thought of when I was cleaning the kitchen, NOT some song that no one will ever sing because it is so pathetic.
Finally, we get to "You are almost sixty. Who on this EARTH will care what a sixty year old, overweight woman who walks like the Hunchback of Notre Dame has to say or paint? Where on earth do you get OFF even trying at this late stage? You are no one." Yeah. That one is my favorite.
Light through the Wall of Voices
Only finally, I hear Julia Cameron talking to me. I was lucky enough to do a workshop with her several years back. I see her and hear her voice. "If you wait to start, then you'll be even older than you are now, so why not start?" Sometimes she words it differently, but always the point is the same. So you feel you are too old to start now, so you are going to wait even longer to do what you love? And is the only reason you do this to make money? NO. I have no idea whether I can make a dime more. And I'll certainly have no idea if I do not produce anything.
I write because it is the only way I can process my life EVER. I started my first journal when I was twelve. It wasn't a diary. It was a journal, and it's where I first wrote that poem about the old man and his shack, with the eagle. Since that time, I filled more than forty journals. I tend not to have journals per se any more. I have random musings in a folder on my desk top, and a beautiful handmade "journal" by my bed for snippets when I awaken in the morning. But writing was a habit I developed long ago. And when I peek into a really old journal I see drawings, too...
When I get to the voices I've acquired through the years that are NOT demons, I feel the change inside. I feel something fomenting. First it is anger and all those pathetic tapes that run no matter how hard I try to silence them. And I start telling each one off. You may laugh at me in this, but it is the only way I know how to ditch them. They will never shut up permanently--they are ingrained. However, I have learned how to get them to shut up long enough for me to find my groove again. And once I start, I am very glad I live alone, because I do it aloud.
I scream at them. "Jean Ellen would be HAPPY that I am painting! And Dad would LOVE it that I wrote for Stanford. How DARE you tell me that was schlock. It was good work. It was wonderful work and IT WAS WRITING MY BEST! I can be an artist if I want to be!"
Oh, yes. God forbid I do anything quietly or rationally. Did I ever mention that when I went off to college, I thought I would be an actress? Big surprise there, right? I address them all. That happened Friday morning. I was just plain ANGRY.
The Transformation begins
And Friday night I lugged a formless, nameless painting --the one I began on my retreat -- upstairs. I did not work on the one I thought I would begin. I worked on one where all I knew is that it kind of looks like choppy water. I said aloud, "PLAY with it, for God's sake. Don't worry about what it is, what it may be, just play with it. Screw the voices. To hell with anything but the process. JUST PLAY." I stomped my foot, which, of course, hurt, but when you are six, you don't care whether or not it hurts. If you are mad, you're mad. Stomping is what you do, at least, if you are six-year-old Jetty.
So I played. And then it began to look like the Lake on a choppy day, the way it did when I'd gaze, unfocused, down from the picture window in the cottage, the one by the giant field stone fireplace my grandpa built--on the daybed, tucked there under the window, with the enormous wood box at its head, the old record player in its beautiful wood encasing at the foot. The room always smelled like pine. Sometimes I would open the wood box top and just smell. I'd climb onto the wood box, crouching, and leap from the box onto the daybed, making sure my feet never touched the floor so that the alligator under the bed could not get me; a cheetah pouncing. Then I'd lie on my stomach and slither up to the window, lean on my elbows that rested on the sill, push my nose against the glass and stare. I was a hissing cobra, and my elbows and head were the hood. But finally I would simply lose myself, seeing nothing but the water, dancing. White caps and sparkles and every shade of blue. Sometimes a maple leaf would drift in my line of sight, and I would blink.
And Grandpa would bring me back home with his laugh, having witnessed my transmutations.
And so I began painting nothing but water. I collaged long lengths of tissue with the flat side down, curves and bumps on top, in every shade of blue I could make.
When I was done for the evening, I stood my lake against the oak desk that was at the cottage, too. The one Grandpa did his paper work at, by the one light, in the evenings. If I peeked in after bedtime, opening the swinging door from the bedroom hall, I would see him bent over papers.
"Jet. Aren't you supposed to be in bed?" I would see an eyebrow raise and I would giggle and run to my room again.
I played last night, too. And again, for just a little while this morning--long enough to get that darker blue just so, there, toward the top, to balance something or other that I cannot name.
But now I have to shower and get ready to go tutor my nephew. He is working on an essay about the difference between Lao Tzu and Confucius. And then he needs help understanding Mendel's Principles and how to make and use a Punnett Square. And he wants to get the jump on mitosis...
My brain will hurt by the time I get home on Monday, so I will leave my playground upstairs for now, so that I can use it and recover.
But here's my point. I am working on a painting for real again! And I like it. And maybe no one else in the world will like it, too, when I am done, but it does not matter. And that's the point, isn't it? Today I will be doing something that matters for and WITH my nephew. We manage to have fun in the misery of it all! I love science, which is why I loved my work for Stanford. All of it is real.
Life's a gamble most of the time, isn't it? Every day it is a 30-70 shot whether or not my legs will work. The odds are in my favor, but as the day progresses, the odds shift drastically. Yet I get up. I show up and I make them work. I'm not so sure that my painting and my writing are so very different. I have a friend who asked me why I bother trying so hard to keep walking, since I cannot do the things that are FUN--hiking, going to art shows and museums, taking a trip to New York and things like that.
I walk because I can. I walk because I can still take care of myself as long as I keep on walking. I'll do other things for fun and take the trips inside my head. And I don't know what I might miss if I STOPPED walking just because it's hard.
What will I miss if I stop writing just because I don't know whether or not other people will want to read what I write, let alone pay money for it? And what will I miss if I stop painting? I remembered my grandpa again. He lived for me as I painted. I had not thought of those days in a long, long time. I can smell the cottage again. All from playing with my papers and paint. What will I be missing if I do not try to paint the autumn leaf that will drift into my view, there, over the blues of that water? What will I remember when I paint a few sparkles there, among the white caps?
I don't know. It isn't worth the risk, the not trying. Isn't that why we do what we do? Isn't that why we search for the picture to snap? The painting to create? The story to tell? Is that why the Stanford professors just had to start another business when the first, second, and third didn't quite work? Are they afraid they will miss something important if they do not take the risk?
Somewhere or other, with people who are driven to create, to explore, the risks of missing something outweigh safety. I don't think that would necessarily be the right thing for every person to do, but perhaps it is what drives some of us. I don't get a rush from the risk itself; I get the rush from the process and then something indescribable when it works. I don't like the uncertainty, actually. I hate it; but I need to do it anyway. It has little to do with courage, though. I simply love to fly.
Not an original thought among any I wrote today, but they are the thoughts that get in my way, and the thoughts that take me home ... and the thoughts that allow me to fly.
What about you? what are your demons and what thoughts are the sails that catch the wind for you?
Oops. I had best at least get my shower taken! Have a wonderful couple of days? (well. More than that, but it will be tomorrow night before I get back.) Editing will not do for today, and I hope that I read about your demons and what you do to shut them the hell up.
Showered, dressed, and studying my Mendel. I had to turn my painting to the wall, so that I am not distracted. Bye for now.
Writer's Block Is Painter's Block
I have been blocked at the painting table this last week. I have been dreaming paintings for weeks, but the moment I sat down to paint after the week of storm chaos, nothing.
I sat with my taped down paper, all my beautiful brushes, my tissue papers, everything out for me to use and... nothing.
The demon voices from childhood clamored instead, in their original forms and in the "grown up" permutations.
"You? An artist? Your sister was the artist, not you." This voice is the counterpart to the "You? A writer? Daddy wrote the book. You haven't published a goddamned word, except for that Stanford stuff. Advertising, really. Just schlock."
Clever voices, those. You all know enough of my family to be able to figure out how those got there. And here is one of my favorites, interchangeable for singing, song-writing, regular writing AND painting. I call her Mom's 'Demon for All Seasons.'
"You just like the sound of it. I am an Artist. A Writer. I am apart from the rest of you somehow. Who do you think you are? You're not such a much, any more than anyone else. Do something real with your life. Something practical. If you won't be a teacher, get into banking, or something that will pay the bills. An artist. Save that for the weekends."
That one is the age old WASP voice of New England. Modesty is THE virtue above all virtues, followed closely by practicality.
And there is the one that goes, "You know you'll screw it up. You haven't really screwed something up in a while, so this one is going to fail. Really. Why even bother?" And I sit there, with a loaded brush, poised, terrified to put it onto the paper.
Yes. Terrified. And what will happen anyway if I "screw it up?" Yes. The earth WILL swallow me whole and spit me out as unfit. Even the earth will find me objectionable. Yup. And the painting will be so awful it will confirm the other demon voices and I will never paint anything someone will want; I will never paint another painting I like; I will run out of money because I never paint another painting that is anything; I will have a shopping cart and sleep in a cardboard box and wind up having to use a surf board with wheels to get around.
And I get so engrossed with that bizarre image that the paint dries on the brush and I start laughing and give up for the day.
That was a game Jessie and I used to play when she got into her own "I'm a loser because I cannot write this paper perfectly" mode. We'd play, "What's the worst that can happen?"
And Jessie and I would build this elaborately ridiculous story of how her life would be over, she'd lose her friends, all of her family would reject her and--Jessie liked this--we would spit at her when she entered the room, and she would become homeless and die. This usually got her writing just so she could "Get it over with and be homeless and done with it all." (And she rarely got lower than a B+, much to her brother's disgust.)
Only with me, I would simply start laughing and then remember Jess and tear up and then walk away.
We also have the "Your ideas suck and who the HELL wants to read your drivel or see your torn paper scribbles?"
Any of these voices sound familiarly inane? And toxic?
Okay, so I do know that you simply have to keep showing up at the blank paper, no matter what. I have done that with my writing--whether it's with the work I do offline or my blog. I have looked at the blinking cursor for so long that I've written songs to its beat. Bad songs, but songs, nonetheless. In my head, where I cannot possibly see them as productive work. God forbid I should actually admit to myself that writing songs, good or bad, is showing up at the page! After all, my intent was to work on that poem I thought of when I was cleaning the kitchen, NOT some song that no one will ever sing because it is so pathetic.
Finally, we get to "You are almost sixty. Who on this EARTH will care what a sixty year old, overweight woman who walks like the Hunchback of Notre Dame has to say or paint? Where on earth do you get OFF even trying at this late stage? You are no one." Yeah. That one is my favorite.
Light through the Wall of Voices
Only finally, I hear Julia Cameron talking to me. I was lucky enough to do a workshop with her several years back. I see her and hear her voice. "If you wait to start, then you'll be even older than you are now, so why not start?" Sometimes she words it differently, but always the point is the same. So you feel you are too old to start now, so you are going to wait even longer to do what you love? And is the only reason you do this to make money? NO. I have no idea whether I can make a dime more. And I'll certainly have no idea if I do not produce anything.
I write because it is the only way I can process my life EVER. I started my first journal when I was twelve. It wasn't a diary. It was a journal, and it's where I first wrote that poem about the old man and his shack, with the eagle. Since that time, I filled more than forty journals. I tend not to have journals per se any more. I have random musings in a folder on my desk top, and a beautiful handmade "journal" by my bed for snippets when I awaken in the morning. But writing was a habit I developed long ago. And when I peek into a really old journal I see drawings, too...
When I get to the voices I've acquired through the years that are NOT demons, I feel the change inside. I feel something fomenting. First it is anger and all those pathetic tapes that run no matter how hard I try to silence them. And I start telling each one off. You may laugh at me in this, but it is the only way I know how to ditch them. They will never shut up permanently--they are ingrained. However, I have learned how to get them to shut up long enough for me to find my groove again. And once I start, I am very glad I live alone, because I do it aloud.
I scream at them. "Jean Ellen would be HAPPY that I am painting! And Dad would LOVE it that I wrote for Stanford. How DARE you tell me that was schlock. It was good work. It was wonderful work and IT WAS WRITING MY BEST! I can be an artist if I want to be!"
Oh, yes. God forbid I do anything quietly or rationally. Did I ever mention that when I went off to college, I thought I would be an actress? Big surprise there, right? I address them all. That happened Friday morning. I was just plain ANGRY.
The Transformation begins
And Friday night I lugged a formless, nameless painting --the one I began on my retreat -- upstairs. I did not work on the one I thought I would begin. I worked on one where all I knew is that it kind of looks like choppy water. I said aloud, "PLAY with it, for God's sake. Don't worry about what it is, what it may be, just play with it. Screw the voices. To hell with anything but the process. JUST PLAY." I stomped my foot, which, of course, hurt, but when you are six, you don't care whether or not it hurts. If you are mad, you're mad. Stomping is what you do, at least, if you are six-year-old Jetty.
So I played. And then it began to look like the Lake on a choppy day, the way it did when I'd gaze, unfocused, down from the picture window in the cottage, the one by the giant field stone fireplace my grandpa built--on the daybed, tucked there under the window, with the enormous wood box at its head, the old record player in its beautiful wood encasing at the foot. The room always smelled like pine. Sometimes I would open the wood box top and just smell. I'd climb onto the wood box, crouching, and leap from the box onto the daybed, making sure my feet never touched the floor so that the alligator under the bed could not get me; a cheetah pouncing. Then I'd lie on my stomach and slither up to the window, lean on my elbows that rested on the sill, push my nose against the glass and stare. I was a hissing cobra, and my elbows and head were the hood. But finally I would simply lose myself, seeing nothing but the water, dancing. White caps and sparkles and every shade of blue. Sometimes a maple leaf would drift in my line of sight, and I would blink.
And Grandpa would bring me back home with his laugh, having witnessed my transmutations.
And so I began painting nothing but water. I collaged long lengths of tissue with the flat side down, curves and bumps on top, in every shade of blue I could make.
When I was done for the evening, I stood my lake against the oak desk that was at the cottage, too. The one Grandpa did his paper work at, by the one light, in the evenings. If I peeked in after bedtime, opening the swinging door from the bedroom hall, I would see him bent over papers.
"Jet. Aren't you supposed to be in bed?" I would see an eyebrow raise and I would giggle and run to my room again.
I played last night, too. And again, for just a little while this morning--long enough to get that darker blue just so, there, toward the top, to balance something or other that I cannot name.
But now I have to shower and get ready to go tutor my nephew. He is working on an essay about the difference between Lao Tzu and Confucius. And then he needs help understanding Mendel's Principles and how to make and use a Punnett Square. And he wants to get the jump on mitosis...
My brain will hurt by the time I get home on Monday, so I will leave my playground upstairs for now, so that I can use it and recover.
But here's my point. I am working on a painting for real again! And I like it. And maybe no one else in the world will like it, too, when I am done, but it does not matter. And that's the point, isn't it? Today I will be doing something that matters for and WITH my nephew. We manage to have fun in the misery of it all! I love science, which is why I loved my work for Stanford. All of it is real.
Life's a gamble most of the time, isn't it? Every day it is a 30-70 shot whether or not my legs will work. The odds are in my favor, but as the day progresses, the odds shift drastically. Yet I get up. I show up and I make them work. I'm not so sure that my painting and my writing are so very different. I have a friend who asked me why I bother trying so hard to keep walking, since I cannot do the things that are FUN--hiking, going to art shows and museums, taking a trip to New York and things like that.
I walk because I can. I walk because I can still take care of myself as long as I keep on walking. I'll do other things for fun and take the trips inside my head. And I don't know what I might miss if I STOPPED walking just because it's hard.
What will I miss if I stop writing just because I don't know whether or not other people will want to read what I write, let alone pay money for it? And what will I miss if I stop painting? I remembered my grandpa again. He lived for me as I painted. I had not thought of those days in a long, long time. I can smell the cottage again. All from playing with my papers and paint. What will I be missing if I do not try to paint the autumn leaf that will drift into my view, there, over the blues of that water? What will I remember when I paint a few sparkles there, among the white caps?
I don't know. It isn't worth the risk, the not trying. Isn't that why we do what we do? Isn't that why we search for the picture to snap? The painting to create? The story to tell? Is that why the Stanford professors just had to start another business when the first, second, and third didn't quite work? Are they afraid they will miss something important if they do not take the risk?
Somewhere or other, with people who are driven to create, to explore, the risks of missing something outweigh safety. I don't think that would necessarily be the right thing for every person to do, but perhaps it is what drives some of us. I don't get a rush from the risk itself; I get the rush from the process and then something indescribable when it works. I don't like the uncertainty, actually. I hate it; but I need to do it anyway. It has little to do with courage, though. I simply love to fly.
Not an original thought among any I wrote today, but they are the thoughts that get in my way, and the thoughts that take me home ... and the thoughts that allow me to fly.
What about you? what are your demons and what thoughts are the sails that catch the wind for you?
Oops. I had best at least get my shower taken! Have a wonderful couple of days? (well. More than that, but it will be tomorrow night before I get back.) Editing will not do for today, and I hope that I read about your demons and what you do to shut them the hell up.
Showered, dressed, and studying my Mendel. I had to turn my painting to the wall, so that I am not distracted. Bye for now.
Monday, August 22, 2011
The Studio is Set Up
Last night I dreamed another painting and I can't wait to start it this weekend. I have some things to tend to first, drat it all. It had to do with the South of France and a dream I have had for about five years. When I am panicking about the future, when I feel alone, I dream this dream of a big yellow house. It is probably best described as a Victorian farmhouse, with a deep wrap around porch. The trim is white. I am almost always in the kitchen, the sunroom hallway leading to the old barn, which is now a four car garage with a studio above it, or in the sun room. There is a country kitchen with two ovens and a huge table that seats eight without the leaf.
The house always smells like oatmeal bread fresh out of the oven; that's my specialty. One winter when I was shut in almost all the time, I learned to bake bread the old-fashioned way. I would make the sponge, and then add my salt, oatmeal, remaining flower, and sometimes finely ground walnuts and pecans. I loved kneading the dough because it gave me an upper body workout. I always made enough for three large loaves. I especially loved punching down the dough.
People say it's a good way to let out aggression, but something in me always thought that putting negative energy in my bread was not a good thing. I try to name people and things I love when I knead and punch the dough. Silly? Probably, but who cares.
Anyway, in my dream, I live with at least three people. Rarely are those people actually in the room with me. Sometimes I hear a guitar in the background. Other times I see a familiar body bent over the flower garden that fills the U made by the corridor, garage/studio, and a wing of the house. Sometimes someone has just come up the gravel driveway and there is the sound of bags of groceries being put on the floor by the front door.
Always, always I am content. I am getting ready for company. I am singing. I am wiping my hands to go out to the garden. I am calling to someone that dinner is ready. Always the dream is in the middle of some activity that represents a full life, one of absolute contentment. I am never aware of whether or not I am romantically involved with anyone--it is irrelevant.
The other night I dreamed my house on a hillside in France, when the sunflowers are in bloom. I looked out at distant rolling hills striped in yellow and azure, and the walls of the room I was in were French blue. There is no other blue like it.
I had not dreamed my yellow house dream in months, so I saw it as a sign that I truly know my next phase of life has begun, and that I see it as good. And that is ironic, because I am coming out of three days of being quite literally bedridden for all but about three hours of the day--broken up hours. Even that didn't matter, once I paid attention to what my body was telling me.
This will come as a surprise, I am sure, but I had pressed myself a tad too much, trying to get everything done, wondering why I could not do what I did at forty-two years old. I'm only fifty-nine and have four more destroyed disks than I had then. What's the problem?
The non-word "duh" keeps springing to mind.
In my dream, however, I looked through a window that had hanging plants at the edges, to these beautiful hills, and one, lone tree that came across the scene from the right. One branch of some delicate small leafed variety, dancing at the edge. And for the life of me, that picture screamed joy to me and I have to find a way to translate it to my paper, don't you think?
Whether the dream is France or Pennsylvania or central Massachussetts, whether it is near a river, a lake, or the midst of the mountains, the house holds a family of women, with an occasional man floating through. The house holds light, and safety, and laughter. And this time the outdoors was the same, and as far as my eyes could see, I saw nothing but harmony, color, and light.
It isn't often we get to feel that way, I don't think. Or perhaps we can, and we forget to hold onto the center of our souls. We drift too far into the static of life, maybe. Or perhaps it's just me.
Regardless, this weekend the paints come out and I will paint my way home inside.
Again.
The house always smells like oatmeal bread fresh out of the oven; that's my specialty. One winter when I was shut in almost all the time, I learned to bake bread the old-fashioned way. I would make the sponge, and then add my salt, oatmeal, remaining flower, and sometimes finely ground walnuts and pecans. I loved kneading the dough because it gave me an upper body workout. I always made enough for three large loaves. I especially loved punching down the dough.
People say it's a good way to let out aggression, but something in me always thought that putting negative energy in my bread was not a good thing. I try to name people and things I love when I knead and punch the dough. Silly? Probably, but who cares.
Anyway, in my dream, I live with at least three people. Rarely are those people actually in the room with me. Sometimes I hear a guitar in the background. Other times I see a familiar body bent over the flower garden that fills the U made by the corridor, garage/studio, and a wing of the house. Sometimes someone has just come up the gravel driveway and there is the sound of bags of groceries being put on the floor by the front door.
Always, always I am content. I am getting ready for company. I am singing. I am wiping my hands to go out to the garden. I am calling to someone that dinner is ready. Always the dream is in the middle of some activity that represents a full life, one of absolute contentment. I am never aware of whether or not I am romantically involved with anyone--it is irrelevant.
The other night I dreamed my house on a hillside in France, when the sunflowers are in bloom. I looked out at distant rolling hills striped in yellow and azure, and the walls of the room I was in were French blue. There is no other blue like it.
I had not dreamed my yellow house dream in months, so I saw it as a sign that I truly know my next phase of life has begun, and that I see it as good. And that is ironic, because I am coming out of three days of being quite literally bedridden for all but about three hours of the day--broken up hours. Even that didn't matter, once I paid attention to what my body was telling me.
This will come as a surprise, I am sure, but I had pressed myself a tad too much, trying to get everything done, wondering why I could not do what I did at forty-two years old. I'm only fifty-nine and have four more destroyed disks than I had then. What's the problem?
The non-word "duh" keeps springing to mind.
In my dream, however, I looked through a window that had hanging plants at the edges, to these beautiful hills, and one, lone tree that came across the scene from the right. One branch of some delicate small leafed variety, dancing at the edge. And for the life of me, that picture screamed joy to me and I have to find a way to translate it to my paper, don't you think?
Whether the dream is France or Pennsylvania or central Massachussetts, whether it is near a river, a lake, or the midst of the mountains, the house holds a family of women, with an occasional man floating through. The house holds light, and safety, and laughter. And this time the outdoors was the same, and as far as my eyes could see, I saw nothing but harmony, color, and light.
It isn't often we get to feel that way, I don't think. Or perhaps we can, and we forget to hold onto the center of our souls. We drift too far into the static of life, maybe. Or perhaps it's just me.
Regardless, this weekend the paints come out and I will paint my way home inside.
Again.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
New Painting finished
Water or no water, stress or no stress, I find I have to paint to calm down and reconnect with myself. Sometimes even humor doesn't work for me. Bruce, I trust you and your wife are dancing up a storm. No. Scratch that. NO STORMS!
Anyway, here's another painting.
I realize it may not be to some folks' taste, but that's fine. The yellow shows up brighter on my screen than it does in the picture. If I wanted to take the time I would tone it down--it is more of a pale lemon, like the yellow in the upper right edge and toward the bottom. And everyone's screen looks different, so it doesn't matter. I just kind of like putting my pictures here, too... just to remind myself that when I am not writing, I am still pursuing art and something that satisfies me way down deep where I live. This one is Heaven's Garden 1. Once again, I dreamed the painting and then dreamed another that is all the fire, summer colors of the garden. I'm working on another spring painting that involves daffodils and scilla--I think I will be painting dreamlike scenes for some time.
So. For better or worse, that's what I was working on during the last ten days. I am wishing you all a wonderful Easter weekend, if that's a religious holiday that is important to you. If not? Well, just happy APRIL. Spring for REAL.
Anyway, here's another painting.
I realize it may not be to some folks' taste, but that's fine. The yellow shows up brighter on my screen than it does in the picture. If I wanted to take the time I would tone it down--it is more of a pale lemon, like the yellow in the upper right edge and toward the bottom. And everyone's screen looks different, so it doesn't matter. I just kind of like putting my pictures here, too... just to remind myself that when I am not writing, I am still pursuing art and something that satisfies me way down deep where I live. This one is Heaven's Garden 1. Once again, I dreamed the painting and then dreamed another that is all the fire, summer colors of the garden. I'm working on another spring painting that involves daffodils and scilla--I think I will be painting dreamlike scenes for some time.
So. For better or worse, that's what I was working on during the last ten days. I am wishing you all a wonderful Easter weekend, if that's a religious holiday that is important to you. If not? Well, just happy APRIL. Spring for REAL.
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