smooth as glass
calm complacncy
the pond lies quietly
undisturbed
silent
splash
water ripple chaos
pebble disruptor
crud and rude
myopic
promises launched
accusations spat
some embrace
some irritate
disruption
silence lost
ripples call
pebble drops
to blog bottom
mud sludge
mud once sleeping
wake to voice
confusion hastes
aware now
speak
mirky unclarity
wild vocality
the pond boils
disturbed
loud
This is my truth. We float here in anticipation of the future of America united we stand. Um, united we stand. With the election our quiet pond became disturbed. Ripples from all angles began to form as the pebbles were tossed out with ignorance and anger. Many made their voices heard stripping bare; a protest. Many yelled back for a new way. And yet, more shied in their safe zones in the mud. Yet, the pebbles kept dropping to the bottom of the pond to wake the voiceless, to bring up the ugly truths, to unite those who once thought were solo. Our pond of America, the United States of America, is stirred up. It is mirky and muddy. It is unclear. My folks, it is my truth that this is a good thing. It is unsettling, unclear, yet prudent. We are not aware of pain or joy if we don't call out. So now the silent mud is awake. Be awake. Listen. Share. Meditate. And love your neighbor. We are united as we are humans. Let us be the models of compassion and honor in the face of uncertainty.
Thursday, December 22, 2016
Thursday, November 24, 2016
Thanksgiving Blessings
When I wake in the morning, I peer out a slit of a second story window to the north east. The sky is pale pink or coral as it silhouettes three trees. I have measured these trees growth in the twelve years I have inhabited this space by the levels of blind panels their tips touch. One is the first to turn golden in the late summer signaling fall is on its way. It is also the first to begin to leaf. I can predict with mild accuracy the weather of the day. Today, is sunny and windy. Gusts of wind bends the spruce like a wobbly soldier. The movement of the three trees in the subtle light is mediative.
Yesterday morning during yoga my instructor, John, asked us to write something we were thankful for on a post-it-note and put it under our mat as our intention for our practice. "Now, there is your family, your job, your house, the food you eat. Let us now think about something smaller that you might over look; something in your life as simply as your breath."
It didn't take me long to start writing about my hands and feet. Movement. I am thankful for movement. Holding my paintbrush can be painful after an hour. So I switch to my left hand or a bigger brush and see what I can get done in the remaining studio time for the day. Some days, I push myself beyond pain being inspired to create with the realization I will have trouble making dinner and holding my fork. Same with my right foot. I use my left for my sewing machine pedal and have developed nearly equal cadence control in free-motion quilting. Driving is tiring and my ankle can begin to cramp. Consequently, I hold the break with my left assisting something I learned to do when I stopped nose-up a steep hill and when I drove a Jeep Cherokee as the brake was so stiff. I reflect that four years ago after my craniotomy my right appendages could have been paralyzed. How would our, my family's, lives have changed? What would have become of my art? I couldn't drive my children to their music lessons and the swimming pool. And, not being able to climb stairs, I wouldn't be looking out a second-story window at sunrise-trees swaying in the wind on this Thanksgiving Day. But, I am. I am.
Take a moment today to meditate on a moment you take for granted. Find thanks in the everyday, the ordinary, the sublime. As Americans, we have this annual day to slow down, gather our family, our friends, our peers, our enemies and be thankful. Everyone has goodness in them and a place on this Earth. We are here in this very place, this country, this state, this city, this home because we arrived here; this very space we exsist. Our neighbor belongs here. Those who anger us belong here. Today, follow the compassion of the First Peoples to the wayward aliens who washed up on the Atlantic coast in their wood ships hundreds of years ago. Find compassion as love begets love. Move. Move however you can. Push yourself to go beyond your fears and trepidations and be thankful. Allmen.
Yesterday morning during yoga my instructor, John, asked us to write something we were thankful for on a post-it-note and put it under our mat as our intention for our practice. "Now, there is your family, your job, your house, the food you eat. Let us now think about something smaller that you might over look; something in your life as simply as your breath."
It didn't take me long to start writing about my hands and feet. Movement. I am thankful for movement. Holding my paintbrush can be painful after an hour. So I switch to my left hand or a bigger brush and see what I can get done in the remaining studio time for the day. Some days, I push myself beyond pain being inspired to create with the realization I will have trouble making dinner and holding my fork. Same with my right foot. I use my left for my sewing machine pedal and have developed nearly equal cadence control in free-motion quilting. Driving is tiring and my ankle can begin to cramp. Consequently, I hold the break with my left assisting something I learned to do when I stopped nose-up a steep hill and when I drove a Jeep Cherokee as the brake was so stiff. I reflect that four years ago after my craniotomy my right appendages could have been paralyzed. How would our, my family's, lives have changed? What would have become of my art? I couldn't drive my children to their music lessons and the swimming pool. And, not being able to climb stairs, I wouldn't be looking out a second-story window at sunrise-trees swaying in the wind on this Thanksgiving Day. But, I am. I am.
Take a moment today to meditate on a moment you take for granted. Find thanks in the everyday, the ordinary, the sublime. As Americans, we have this annual day to slow down, gather our family, our friends, our peers, our enemies and be thankful. Everyone has goodness in them and a place on this Earth. We are here in this very place, this country, this state, this city, this home because we arrived here; this very space we exsist. Our neighbor belongs here. Those who anger us belong here. Today, follow the compassion of the First Peoples to the wayward aliens who washed up on the Atlantic coast in their wood ships hundreds of years ago. Find compassion as love begets love. Move. Move however you can. Push yourself to go beyond your fears and trepidations and be thankful. Allmen.
Saturday, December 26, 2015
The Hangover, December 26
It is quiet in the house. As I sit here enjoying, I sip my chia tea and savor the cinnamon roll my dad gave me in response to my exclamation I was longing for one like Mom used to make. Sounds of the Season has changed into the Solid Gold Oldies. The tunes make me swing and dance as I remember the words from my days as little and helping my family cleaning the house every Saturday. I liked dusting because I could redecorate as I went through the house.
With every object or piece of furniture, there are memories. I sit here in the middle of my house and am pressed with the stuff around me. Bubble wrap, curly ribbon, empty envelopes, sacks of new things, and baby-dolls my daughter took the in-laws are all mark the giving that precedes this day. They are remains of giving and celebration. Happy. Fulfilled.
My mind wonders to Mary. Exhausted. She probably looked upon her pink faced bundle knowing the he was something special. The morning after his birth, she was surrounded with physical and energetic gifts to reflect the gift he is to become. She is grateful. Yet, the overwhelming, the questioning, the complicated feelings of new mother must fall heavy in her heart. What next?
I am absolutely positivity that my overwhelmed feeling of what to do with all this new stuff pales in comparison to Mary's. I am graciously empathetic. I hold tight, to the quiet after the storm of joy and giving. I fold these memories of joyful community in a box I will store I my heart. I can visit the box at will.
I will start today by picking up the remains of the past two days with joy and rememberance. My friends vary in their following the belief of Jesus as the Son of God being born during the Winter Solstice. However, it is this time of year that the folks all over the world have celebrations of community and giving. Whatever your faith path, I hope you take in the goodness of this time. Be joyful of the gifts you receive and thankful for the gifts you have given others. Smile at yourself as you go through the celebration season hangover. Fill up your little box, wrap it in color and light. Hold it in your heart as a gift to be opened whenever you feel the dark. Namasta.
With every object or piece of furniture, there are memories. I sit here in the middle of my house and am pressed with the stuff around me. Bubble wrap, curly ribbon, empty envelopes, sacks of new things, and baby-dolls my daughter took the in-laws are all mark the giving that precedes this day. They are remains of giving and celebration. Happy. Fulfilled.
My mind wonders to Mary. Exhausted. She probably looked upon her pink faced bundle knowing the he was something special. The morning after his birth, she was surrounded with physical and energetic gifts to reflect the gift he is to become. She is grateful. Yet, the overwhelming, the questioning, the complicated feelings of new mother must fall heavy in her heart. What next?
I am absolutely positivity that my overwhelmed feeling of what to do with all this new stuff pales in comparison to Mary's. I am graciously empathetic. I hold tight, to the quiet after the storm of joy and giving. I fold these memories of joyful community in a box I will store I my heart. I can visit the box at will.
I will start today by picking up the remains of the past two days with joy and rememberance. My friends vary in their following the belief of Jesus as the Son of God being born during the Winter Solstice. However, it is this time of year that the folks all over the world have celebrations of community and giving. Whatever your faith path, I hope you take in the goodness of this time. Be joyful of the gifts you receive and thankful for the gifts you have given others. Smile at yourself as you go through the celebration season hangover. Fill up your little box, wrap it in color and light. Hold it in your heart as a gift to be opened whenever you feel the dark. Namasta.
Tuesday, April 21, 2015
TGIF. Thank God I'm Forty
When my husband came home from work, he asked me how my last day in my thirties went. Shrug. "About the same as the day before except I did have MLD." After explaining the MLD was Manual Lymph Drainage massage therapy to relieve the pain and swelling in my arm and other blocked node areas, I continued prepping dinner.
Truth is I didn't really think about it. Woopy, am turning fourty. (Sarcasm) Social norms proclaim one should be inundated with black and silver gifts proclaiming you are on top of some hill and there is nowhere to go but down. What does that mean really? I thought we were supposed to prime with age like a vintage wine.
The last six years of my thirties was a verticle ascent. I had to dodge boulders and even got smashed in the head it a big one that resulted in surgery. It's there. It happened. Six years ago, age 33, I wasn't too sure I'd make 40. Six months. Okay, you made that. Awesome. A year, check. Okay, let's set our eyes on five years. Oops, boulder falling, dodged it. Another year, check. Crud here comes another. And another. Wait, did you say five years. Sweet. Let's do another year. A couple of rock slides but no major pieces missing. Six years ago I said I was going to be fourty. Your smiles were twisted with hope and doubt. "Blay on," I yelled. You watched my ascent with eyes of fear and amazement while keeping my ropes taut. I kept my focus on the next finger hold trying not to look down.
I am standing here and honestly a little scared. I made forty. I beat the statistics. Now, what? Society says I have hit the top; that all my parts will start falling off like antique bicycle rolling down a cobblestone path. I can choose a challenge of rock hopping mountain bike trails or an easy descent on my fat-tire cruiser. I just got all my parts in place on my life-bike, and my tires filled with air. You know what? It isn't the easy way, but I am going to acend this hill. New goal, grand children. Let's see if my kids are anything like their parents they will be about thirty when they become parents. So twenty years from now...I will be seventy. That sounds good.
I arranged what I hope will be a fun filled, belly busting with laughter, and awesome GF/CF cupcakes consuming bowling party for a few friends and their families this following Saturday. I am pretty excited to have an excuse to throw myself a big party. Happy dance. Thank God I am fourty. No seriously, thank him/her. Amen.
Wednesday, March 4, 2015
Do your best! Do your best! Do your Best!
Public Announcement from the Soapbox of the Midnight Housewife.
Colorado children are about to embark on a two month journey of state testing in all grade levels 3-11. I believe many other states are performing similar testing programs. Ours is called PARCC. If you have a student, you are well aware of the impending testing.
I have heard from parents, teachers, and all kinds of folks much complaining and adjetation. I have heard may children stressed out to the point of crying. My nine year old is so afraid of the typing element and failing just because he can't think what to write and how to type at the same time. Yes, he has had typing in computer lab when his class should have been doing paint and draw programs.
Here is my message. STOP FREAKING OUT IN FRONT OF THE CHILDREN. By sharing all your burdens, unhappiness, and anger we are creating negative feelings in these already anxious students and pave the path for failure. I don't mean failing the test. I mean failing themselves.
HELP them by not sharing your feeling. Rather LISTEN TO THEIRS.
Let them know that EVERYONE IS IN THE SAME BOAT. Ask them how many kids in their own class is confident at typing. My 9 year old said "one maybe two." I would guess this is the stats for most classrooms with a slight increase per grade level.
Share that the only thing they need to do is DO THEIR BEST. Play some card games or trivia games encouraging them to do their best even though you might know a little more then them. Help them feel good about trying their best even if they don't win. Then draw the connection with tests.
Let them know this is really not about them but the global performance of the state. Whether true or not, it takes the pressure off of feeling like they are allone.
And last and definitely not least, HONOR YOUR TEACHERS. They are doing all they can and more to Shepard the kiddos to do their best with less stress. All the while teaching the curriculum their charges need to move to the next level in school in a dozen subjects. It is an awesome task to do.
Moan and grown in the privacy of adults.
FOSTER DOING "YOUR BEST" IN YOUR CHILDREN.
Afterall, if you didn't like the rules in soccer, you wouldn't whine and complain to your child and then throw him out on the field and expect him to do his best to score a goal with his team mates, would you?
End soapbox rant.
GO TEAM AWESOME ACHIEVERS
Tuesday, August 26, 2014
Living Forward
I pass a rose so beautiful in its placement in the shy sunlight of the morn. Yellow with red tips. I feel a loss, a spur of anxiety, I don't have my phone. I can't take a picture, pooh. Soon I pass the wash out with sunflowers growing straight out from the flooded waters. Where is my phone?! I have to get this and share it. Everyone ought to see it. Yes, this moment needs to be captured and shared....
Go back about fifteen minutes, I had grabbed my iPod and headphones when I was heading out for the morning run. Run. The iPod didn't work even though I swear I had recently charged it. Shoulder shrug, it is about 10 years old or something, maybe it is shot. So I walk. I speed walk because I don't have the tempo of Lady Gaga to keep my knees pumping. This is not a bad idea as it does allow me to notice what I am passing. Beautiful roses, sunflowers with their toes submerged in the water and geese flying Vs to the South. For a moment, I am irritate that I don't have a camera so I can share the beauty.
Oh, wait, it is my beauty, it is my moment, I don't need to share it. I am the only one here at this moment noticing and that is complete and perfect. As I continue my 3 mile walk around the Dry Creek greenway up to Lager Reservoir, past four schools, and a new city park, I think about the "why" of my agitation that I had no electrical devices in my presence.
Recently, I have been involved in many conversations and exposed to research and ideas of the effect of electronics in our world. School has started up and there is a blossoming of irritated messages of social media about switching over to electronics for reading, text books, math, testing, and other assignments. In my opinion after studying how the brain works through research, art teacher education, and my own brain surgery recovery, I concur that children do not learn as well from electronic devices. I know that most children, especially those favoring their right brain functions like space and intuition, learn by feeling, touching, doing. Typing in a "symbol" or two to make a word is NOT the same as drawing a "symbol" to make a word.
During an evening gathering with good friends Homa, Kristin, and Maureen, we discussed this topic in great detail. We came to a consensus that books and writing needed to remain and continue to be the primary source of learning in the schools especially for the elementary children. "Let me just ask this," I say,"is it possible that our children learning from the beginning of their lives to use technology in they're learning necessary for the Human race? Is it important for them to adopt and therefore learn differently then we did for their generations that follow them?"
Think about it. Most of my friends are between the ages of 35-45. We are the X-generation. In general, computers were these mysterious boxes that were placed in rows in a converted room near the library in our high school. Personally, I wasn't really sold on the need for a personal computer to take to college. Eventually, I found that typing my reports on my MacClassic in my dorm room was much better then the computer labs other folks had to haul resources and binders of notes through snow covered walk ways. However, I did have to seek the EEs who might be able to get these precious items off my disc and print on their printers. And, email! What the heck? You, Colorado State University, are giving me this sequence of letters, and I am supposed to figure out how to "log on" daily to get memos. Whatever.
Flash forward twenty years, and I find myself composing conversations I need to have in my head for the next moment I can pull out my phone and text someone. And, lets not even mention the hour every night we are glued to our devices checking the junk mail folders to make sure we didn't miss a coupon, following the news, and wishing happy birthday on Facebook to people we last saw 20 years ago. According to my office-worker husband and friends, they are bombarded by hundreds of thousands of emails a day. Communications that used to be held in the office or on an international phone conference, are now being held at the dinner table in front of little Hansel and Gretel. Yes, it is awesome I can speak to my phone and get information I need or dial a friend. Well, that is if "HE" can take requests at that current location and moment.
Life has moved forward. l have been studying "life" for as long as I can remember. Why am I me? I know there is something here with me, a Being without the Human body. What is going on? How is this important to us as a globe of Beings in Human bodies? My quest for global understanding began in junior high as I watched Indian TV at my friend Radhika Kannan, now Danesh, with her grandmother as I stopped by her house on the walk home from school. I learned about her rituals of body care and ornamentation as she got ready for a dance performance( She still teaches dance at Alarippu Dance School, California.) In high school there was my best friend Lisa Gouchnaurer (now Wagner) with her Japanese mother who parented completely different then my mother and had served awesome dinners. Then there was Kirk Akahoshi who was, at the time, the smartest person I knew. No, I don't mean math, for that I have no clue. I mean he was a thinker, a ponderer, someone else wondering about global and personal concepts. We'd go out to dinner and talk about how French eat rabbit, Buddhism, Christianity, and how things are really all just about the same when you get down to the nuts and bolts, or yin and yang, that hold us all together. College was Dave... hum, what was his last name? I know he got married to a Hawaiian helicopter pilot on the same day in 2000, as I did. Mitchell, I think. We both read the Celestine Prohpcies by James Redfield and "book clubbed" them with a couple of other folks. And Chad, the archeologist, who spent most of his time on dig sites in Wyoming and South Dakota. He tutored me in geology as memorizing minerial names is not my strong point. With his knowledge of how this stone and sediment layer became this way and therefore got its name, made sense.
Books, web-video media, Oprah Winfrey (yes, she has been pivotal in pointing fingers at wonderful thinkers and writers of our time) and continuous conversation with my brilliant mom, Christine Broers, added spindles to my wheels of conciousness. All these spindles in my complex, jumbled up noggin is filtered and stitched together during my yoga practice. Meditation during this practice is pivotal for working it all out and finding connections. The Knowing. I just know.
The other day, my mother set me a You Tube link of Gregg Braden (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=whKrENfkMEM) Woo, did this getting me thinking. No, Knowing. All of the spindles started to find permanent homes in my wheel. After two hours of listening while I was painting, I just wanted to jump up and say, "YES, that was totally what I was thinking. Now, I get it." Do be aware that if you choose to listen to the talk it may not speak to you in the same way as me journey to here is not the same as yours. The one nugget I prescribe you contemplate is to live forward with wonder and love.
How does this all relate to the anxiety over not capturing that moment that was mine, personal, only for me, and sharing it on my cell phone camera? I have begun the think of how technology has made a difference in my life. And, how it effects my children who have known it since they were conceived. Let's think about their children. Lets think about the children born after 2050. Doesn't it take seven generations for things to change. Let us face it. If we are talking about electronics, it is here currently shaping us Humans in ways we had not known before. Or, have we?
I, for one, vow to follow my heart solo more. Loose my tight grasp on what has happened and what used to work in education and wonder with curiosity what is happening now. I vow to let go of the fear; the fear that it is not the same as it is not. I will live forward fearless. Live forward from the heart.
Go back about fifteen minutes, I had grabbed my iPod and headphones when I was heading out for the morning run. Run. The iPod didn't work even though I swear I had recently charged it. Shoulder shrug, it is about 10 years old or something, maybe it is shot. So I walk. I speed walk because I don't have the tempo of Lady Gaga to keep my knees pumping. This is not a bad idea as it does allow me to notice what I am passing. Beautiful roses, sunflowers with their toes submerged in the water and geese flying Vs to the South. For a moment, I am irritate that I don't have a camera so I can share the beauty.
Oh, wait, it is my beauty, it is my moment, I don't need to share it. I am the only one here at this moment noticing and that is complete and perfect. As I continue my 3 mile walk around the Dry Creek greenway up to Lager Reservoir, past four schools, and a new city park, I think about the "why" of my agitation that I had no electrical devices in my presence.
Recently, I have been involved in many conversations and exposed to research and ideas of the effect of electronics in our world. School has started up and there is a blossoming of irritated messages of social media about switching over to electronics for reading, text books, math, testing, and other assignments. In my opinion after studying how the brain works through research, art teacher education, and my own brain surgery recovery, I concur that children do not learn as well from electronic devices. I know that most children, especially those favoring their right brain functions like space and intuition, learn by feeling, touching, doing. Typing in a "symbol" or two to make a word is NOT the same as drawing a "symbol" to make a word.
During an evening gathering with good friends Homa, Kristin, and Maureen, we discussed this topic in great detail. We came to a consensus that books and writing needed to remain and continue to be the primary source of learning in the schools especially for the elementary children. "Let me just ask this," I say,"is it possible that our children learning from the beginning of their lives to use technology in they're learning necessary for the Human race? Is it important for them to adopt and therefore learn differently then we did for their generations that follow them?"
Think about it. Most of my friends are between the ages of 35-45. We are the X-generation. In general, computers were these mysterious boxes that were placed in rows in a converted room near the library in our high school. Personally, I wasn't really sold on the need for a personal computer to take to college. Eventually, I found that typing my reports on my MacClassic in my dorm room was much better then the computer labs other folks had to haul resources and binders of notes through snow covered walk ways. However, I did have to seek the EEs who might be able to get these precious items off my disc and print on their printers. And, email! What the heck? You, Colorado State University, are giving me this sequence of letters, and I am supposed to figure out how to "log on" daily to get memos. Whatever.
Flash forward twenty years, and I find myself composing conversations I need to have in my head for the next moment I can pull out my phone and text someone. And, lets not even mention the hour every night we are glued to our devices checking the junk mail folders to make sure we didn't miss a coupon, following the news, and wishing happy birthday on Facebook to people we last saw 20 years ago. According to my office-worker husband and friends, they are bombarded by hundreds of thousands of emails a day. Communications that used to be held in the office or on an international phone conference, are now being held at the dinner table in front of little Hansel and Gretel. Yes, it is awesome I can speak to my phone and get information I need or dial a friend. Well, that is if "HE" can take requests at that current location and moment.
Life has moved forward. l have been studying "life" for as long as I can remember. Why am I me? I know there is something here with me, a Being without the Human body. What is going on? How is this important to us as a globe of Beings in Human bodies? My quest for global understanding began in junior high as I watched Indian TV at my friend Radhika Kannan, now Danesh, with her grandmother as I stopped by her house on the walk home from school. I learned about her rituals of body care and ornamentation as she got ready for a dance performance( She still teaches dance at Alarippu Dance School, California.) In high school there was my best friend Lisa Gouchnaurer (now Wagner) with her Japanese mother who parented completely different then my mother and had served awesome dinners. Then there was Kirk Akahoshi who was, at the time, the smartest person I knew. No, I don't mean math, for that I have no clue. I mean he was a thinker, a ponderer, someone else wondering about global and personal concepts. We'd go out to dinner and talk about how French eat rabbit, Buddhism, Christianity, and how things are really all just about the same when you get down to the nuts and bolts, or yin and yang, that hold us all together. College was Dave... hum, what was his last name? I know he got married to a Hawaiian helicopter pilot on the same day in 2000, as I did. Mitchell, I think. We both read the Celestine Prohpcies by James Redfield and "book clubbed" them with a couple of other folks. And Chad, the archeologist, who spent most of his time on dig sites in Wyoming and South Dakota. He tutored me in geology as memorizing minerial names is not my strong point. With his knowledge of how this stone and sediment layer became this way and therefore got its name, made sense.
Books, web-video media, Oprah Winfrey (yes, she has been pivotal in pointing fingers at wonderful thinkers and writers of our time) and continuous conversation with my brilliant mom, Christine Broers, added spindles to my wheels of conciousness. All these spindles in my complex, jumbled up noggin is filtered and stitched together during my yoga practice. Meditation during this practice is pivotal for working it all out and finding connections. The Knowing. I just know.
The other day, my mother set me a You Tube link of Gregg Braden (https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=whKrENfkMEM) Woo, did this getting me thinking. No, Knowing. All of the spindles started to find permanent homes in my wheel. After two hours of listening while I was painting, I just wanted to jump up and say, "YES, that was totally what I was thinking. Now, I get it." Do be aware that if you choose to listen to the talk it may not speak to you in the same way as me journey to here is not the same as yours. The one nugget I prescribe you contemplate is to live forward with wonder and love.
How does this all relate to the anxiety over not capturing that moment that was mine, personal, only for me, and sharing it on my cell phone camera? I have begun the think of how technology has made a difference in my life. And, how it effects my children who have known it since they were conceived. Let's think about their children. Lets think about the children born after 2050. Doesn't it take seven generations for things to change. Let us face it. If we are talking about electronics, it is here currently shaping us Humans in ways we had not known before. Or, have we?
I, for one, vow to follow my heart solo more. Loose my tight grasp on what has happened and what used to work in education and wonder with curiosity what is happening now. I vow to let go of the fear; the fear that it is not the same as it is not. I will live forward fearless. Live forward from the heart.
Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Contemporary Me
"I wish I had a system for composing paintings, because the way I do it is horribly inefficient. Often I collect materials...and play with it until a composition presents itself. More often then not, the elements just don't "feel" right, or and idea emerges but doesn't quite work and I have to wait a couple. Month eps for the right [inspiration.]"
~ Eric Wert, artist, as quoted in
Hi Fructose, The Contemporary Art Magazine, Vol. 23
In the spaces between my mothering and housekeeping, I am an artist. The past couple of months I have mauled over the concept of this label. Where are the cracks in my life that I am and artist? Wait, why are these times cracks, just slivers? Should it at least be a fourth of the pizza that is my existence as a human Being? And, what the heck makes me honorable enough to be labelled an artist, or a semi-famous artist as my daughter has introduced me to her fifth grade class?
Sometime last spring, I found I was hungry for more then just a slice of cheese pizza. No, I wanted artichokes, olives and mushrooms. The first step in "owning" the label of artist was to validate this as my job, my career choice, how I make money even though the amount is minute compared to my husband's income. So, I set office hours. For a minimum of three days a week, I work from 1-3. I modeled my hours after those of writter-mothers I read about by finding a time when I am least busy and feel my best (example: the commercial where Tina Fey locks herself in the laundry room so she can write...think they were selling drier sheets??) Though I crave more time many days, two hours seem to be a block of time for many creators that is doable in that it avoids being so incredibly drained from the creation process that you can't get dinner on the table.
Summer changes this rhythm as I care for kids, travel, and grasp at family time while it is still the four of us and no grumpy teens. Yet, I insisted on providing myself with time, studio time. The kids eventually accepted that no means no. That "I need a studio day" meant I'd be pretty grumpy if I didn't get it. And, they realized I did actually stop and make them lunch at noon. Yes, this process of training myself to take my studio time was also beneficial for the kids. They learned to be by themselves, figure out what to do without a coach, and just have their own creative time, often near me in the studio. Wow, imagine that, free range parenting. Of course, I might slide in that we had set an incredible foundation of moral grounding with the structure of common sense and routine.
As we roll into the school year, my days are opened up to silence; just me and the air conditioner. Awe, and yoga. Even though I couldn't attend classes, I continued my practice during the hot months with what I call Lazy Yoga. Some might call it am/pm or sunrise and sunset yoga. None the less, I would not be standing straight without it. With yoga comes meditation. They are partners, twins, a yin yang. Imbedded in the meditations are my images. My images are what I create.
As I move forward to a school year with more office hours, a bigger slice of the pizza I call my life, I gift myself to pick up something and just do it, empty my brain, and follow my intuition. In college, I had a severe ear infection, pneumonia in my mastoid. I know, weird. After being hospitalized for nearly a week, I was released to my mother's care. We stayed in a hotel and had strawberry Belgium waffles every morning. I could not think straight and walking was a real trick. Fortunately, most of my professors allowed the two week absence as the term was nearly completed and I was in awesome standing. One did not. My figure drawing prof insisted I attend or fail the class. So I did. Mom drove me to campus, walked me to class, and insisted I be allowed to sit on an easel horse instead of standing the three hour lab like everyone else. So here I was, strung out on Demerol trying to draw a naked human. Long story short, in my final portfolio of ten drawings shows my growth throughout the term. I can see why artists often do drugs. Yep, I learned to draw what I see, not what I told myself to see. I stopped trying to draw humans and just started drawing what I saw. The Demerol turned off my left brain, the analytical and fear based brain, releasing my right brain to do what it does best.
So I sit in the first few hours of my "work shift," and feeling extremely excited for this coming year. Through the last two years, my brain has been rewired. My brain surgery in 2012, almost took my painting hand. Yes, I was worried about this and that and important stuff like family in the hours before I was contorted and strapped to a table (okay, they put me asleep first but was apparently twisted up and strapped down). I was also really concerned that the right side of my body would be paralyzed. I had called in my artist friends giving them charge to make sure I could still create whether it meant training my left hand to hold the brush or finding acceptance in figure painting abstracts. Graciously, I came out walking...well, in a couple of months after therapy, anyway. And I can paint short times the gift is the surgery was in my left hemisphere. May sound silly, but thank goodness! Like the Demerol, it turned off a few unnecessary cells allowing to the right ones to grow and thrive. Yet, again, I have changed the way I look at my art and the process within which I play.
I am ready to sit down, or stand, at my easel and create. Accepting the title of artist is not always easy no matter the medium one expresses themselves. Yes, I truly believe EVERYONE can learn to draw. I mean you. Stop turning off your brain with the "I can't," just grab a marker and make a mark. An artist has the ability and drive to strengthen the ability to follow their intuition and LET IT GO. <insert Daughter singing Let it Go from the movie, Frozen here> May my office hours commence. I, the artist, am ready and committed to my role.
Amen.
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