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.

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.

Mopping Up Summer

     As I shake out the sisal mat at the sliding door to the back door, the sand, the pebbles, the wood clips, the bits of leaves and dead insect bodies flood me with memories.  In.  Out.  In.  Out.  Shut the door!  The kids two, three, four, sometimes six flying in and out in wet swim suits and fingers pressed against their lips signaling not to tell the other guys where they are.  Spies, fairies, dragons, Legos dude running from the Kragle, and princesses just letting it go visited this house.
     This was the summer of exploration.  In the creases between, pioneer day camp, cabin time, Girl Scout camp, Lake Powell, more cabin time, and trips to the pool,  they kids learned to play.  This was the first summer for me as a mom that I intentionally had weeks of unstructured free time, un-mommed free time.  Wow, free time?  Yes, free.  Do what you want as long as you check in and tell me where you are.  Interestingly enough, it was quite a chore to get them out the door.  But, once there, they realized it is pretty awesome.  Fortunately, Son found a new buddy a bit down the street.  And, Daughter discovered the telephone so she could arrange overnights.
       I really enjoyed being the mom at the house with the sprinkler in the back and jelly sandwiches.  Unfortunately, after several spills and debacles with the juices, this house only provided water for the rest of the summer.  Never mind this inconvenience, the other house had juice boxes.  I loved watching the kids, mine and our guests, discover things on their own.  All the while I thought about the wonderful things I did when I was their age.
      I lived in Texas north of Dallas and had lots of different friends.  There was the twins.  Everyone went their house to play Barbie.  They had a Dream Mansion of three floors and all the furniture.  Their dad let us use all his bi-fold record album covers to make walls for more buildings so we had a city.  I remember the day they moved.  Their room was cleared out and Karen was desperately looking for one of her Barbie rings.  I found the tiny thing near the vacant imprint of the Dream House.
     A few houses down the twins, both way up a steep hill from me, lived a girl with a boat.  We'd get to spend the night in there and pretend we were lost a sea.  But, one night her mom asked me if I had the go "pee." Finding this word and others offensive in their crudeness, I stopped staying the night there.  There was also some girls who had an RV parked in their driveway all summer.  We used to make PlayDuh hamburgers and play drive up window with other kids roaming around the hood.
    Roaming, that is what I remember the most fondly.  Moving out of the city a little further north on I35, we were in farmland.  I befriended a gal who lived on one.  What an adventure we had teasing the cows and building a fort with pallets and carpet squares her dad dragged over for us.  We also went exploring on a creek near my house.  Creating altered personalities as Rambette and Conette (from the movies Rambo and Conan the Barbarian because they were the strongest characters we could come up with.)  we got all kinds of muddy chasing our "bad guys."  Yes, might I add, we were still climbing fences and walking along the creek when we were 12.
     Tonight, the eve of the first day of school, my kiddos, one almost 9 and the other almost 10.5, must retire their wings and capes and join the soldiers of learning.  The good intentioned mom that I am, bed time was seven, 7:30, okay fine, 8.  "Just one more Lego to finish the motel," they plea.  "Wait, I have to build a bed so my guy can go to bed.  Wait, I need to.... No I didn't brush my teeth.  Fine."  The stall tactics commence.  Quickly following comes the fears.  "What am I going to wear?  Will they like me?  Will I have friends?  What am I going to do at recess because I don't like sitting around talking like the other girls.  What if I am weird? Too loud? Not loud enough?  What if.......?"
    Sigh, a hug, and all I can say is, "This doesn't all have to be figured out tonight or even tomorrow.  Just be the authentic you and you will find the people who want to be with that you."
    "But what if I don't find that person and I am all alone?" she questions.
    I can only hold her and say, "I know. I know. I have been there."
    Wringing out my mop, I watch the brown water drip into the drain.  I ponder the beauty of the age of innocence.  The freedom to be who one is exactly as they need to be at that moment.  The summer of freedom of schedules and judgement.  A couple of weeks to be truly who they are.  I watch the evidence of barefoot prints, well played in the mud and grass, wash away in the dirty water.  I smile at memory of the garage door slamming shut announcing the presence of an explorer and his team seeking a beverage.  With a stone in my throat, I think about all of the other moms out there consoling their children to sleep as they mourn the aberrant loss of the freedom to be authentic.  It will be okay, you will fit in.  I just know it.  How could it be any other way as you are so awesome, child.

Mantra on Learning

I was going to go to bed. But, it turns out that I have something swirling in my head.  It needs to be flushed out.the morning started off lovely.  Once I got tired kids out the door, everything seemed to line up.  We were going to be on time.  The guy down the street with the motorized snow mower thingy saw us and continued to clear the walk at adjacent neighbors.  Did I say we received eight inches over night?  As we rounded the corner, we bump into Kate and her son armed with a snow shovel.  She clears a path through the four foot mound of dirty removed snow opening up a clear walk into school.
        I volunteer to administer spelling tests on Fridays.  This is a quite enjoyable time as I have gotten to know each kids over the past two years.  And today was most enjoyable as the lowest score was 14/16 with most receiving a perfect one hundred perception.  They were so happy and jovial laughing at my sentences for faultier and abler.  And, my explanation of why the mad hatter was madder then a barefoot kindergartener in the snow may sparked some interest in reading Alice and Wonderland.  (madder was the spelling word.)
       As I exit the school, I stop to talk about a book I passed on to my former art student and works in the front office.  I can't believe she is going to be a mom soon!  We banter over professors we had at CSU and mall over how hard abstract painting class was.  I explained how it wasn't until a year after graduation, on my own, new job, new apartment in a new city and sitting in front of a new blank canvas that I learned I could actually paint things that weren't realistic, aka abstract.
      Duh dah dum, on the walk home, inspired by the intellectual conversation about art that my brain is horrible starving for, a mantra pops in my head.  I find it repeats over and over through out my afternoon.  In my studio, I tackle a complex problem with a painting I wanted to toss into he trash just yesterday.  Things just seem to fall into place as I listen to Katie Perry's new album.  All through the grey afternoon as I fuss with my lighting of my ten by ten room and dream of the studio I will have in my next life, the mantra repeats.
       It's Friday.  We have no plans.  Life is so much more relaxing with no plans.  Son tackles new weavings on the Rainbow Loom by watching You Tube videos and Daughter plays mommy it her dolls explaining to me the characteristics of each and how well the sleep.  She arranges them in the door way of my studio making sure they are cozy for their naps while I concentrate on painting straight lines.  I move into other unconventional techniques on this stubborn painting and Daughter's humming becomes a questioning watchfulness.  She is intrigued and sakes me what and why I am doing what I am doing.  I reply,
                           "The best thing about learning the rules
                             is knowing how to break the rule."
She spoke her questions and quieted in her contemplation.  Grabbing my drying pallet, she starts work on an old painting of messy swirls she had made when she was four.  She claims that she likes to do whatever she wants and following rules is what she doesn't like about art in school.
         "I just want to paint green whirligigs like this, " Daughter says as she shows me the green swirls on the red mess of paint.  
         "Yes, that is understandable," I reply.  "That is what you should be doing, exploring.  However, there will be a time when you need and want to learn the rules so that you can make you exploring extraordinary."
                             "The best thing about learning the rules
                             is knowing how to break the rule."