Dreams, wow, what a subject. I just read an incredible novel in which a father asks his young son what would happen if he went to the Sahara desert and moved one grain of sand, and in their conversation the boy realizes that he would have changed the desert, the world and, in fact, the universe. Clearly, we can make more fulfilling, interesting and ultimately important choices than moving one grain of sand. But it’s not so much the grain of sand that we individually choose to move, but the collective effort of our fellow travellers on this Earth. The more good we do, the more good we inspire, whether it’s inspiring people to fight injustice, help the homeless, feed the hungry, or just be better parents and raise children who will also do their part, however small, to make the world a better place, we are moving our grain of sand.
I live a mile from the street on which I grew up. Did I dream of other things, other places, other works. Yes, absolutely, but our adult lives are what dreams turn into when confronted with the inexorable forces of reality. And reality requires us to constantly adjust our priorities. My childhood dreams did not include the sacrifices I would make, would want to make, as a parent, did not include the eventual realization that Michigan, cold, economically depressed, culturally rather insignificant, is my home, and that, ultimately, home would be a very high priority for me.
As I hit middle age (or as it hits me), I have also realized that some dreams do o.k. on ice. I’m thawing out some of my childhood ambitions as time and circumstances allow, pursuing more appealing intellectual and creative pursuits than changing diapers. It is said that life is a journey, not a destination, and it is a journey on which we carry our dreams, passing through different places in the process of our dreams, defining, redefining, searching, reprioritizing, and reconsidering exactly which grain of sand we want to move on any given day.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Wednesday, April 22, 2009
Kiss a Holy Man
The holy man sits under a tree
in the desert
of these here United States of America
Open to the stars
the drops of rain
the beating of
ancient drums
while the next generation
sees only the dirt
in which they stand
shuffling their feet
as if in motion
The ghosts of America
past and present
gesture vainly
mutely and invisibly
for attention
Thinking of tomorrow
with eyes on the dirt
forgetting
that we put a man on the moon
forgetting the moon
forgetting the sky
forgetting the horizons
Greedy for our
next dose
of the dream,
we fail to acheive
the dream state
In sleep
we still see dirt
We let the
boxes of idiots
dream incompetently
for us
Our hands
our hearts
our heads are good
but dying the death
of the unrealized
Open your eyes
and see inside
Close them and see
what should be
Assemble good hands
and hearts and heads
Assemble a dream
Open the factory
the farm
where dreams can be made
or grown
Send the holy men
the ghosts of America
the dreamers
the healers
the lunatics
the genuine crazies
into the schools
Play a tune of more
for the children
Instruct them not
in the history of the dream
but in the process
The mind that can be
a vampire,
a werewolf
an Indian princess,
can travel to
Jerusalem and back
on a flying horse.
The rider can go
to all the hatching grounds
where the shells of eggs
long since hatched
lie mixed with fertile
whole eggs
capsules of potential
a river of possibilities
Close your eyes
Look for the dream
Go down to the river
and bathe in it
break some eggs
Shake the hand of
your local holy man
Let the waters
seep into every opening
Follow the flow
into the dream
into the future
inside
and into the
furthest reaches
Close your eyes
open your doors
feel each other's fantasies
feed each other's fantasies
water them and
set them in the sun
and see where we grow
See where we go
See the lines
between the states
blur and begin
to vanish
Live on both sides
of those lines
Let go
hold on
hug everyone
hear everyone
Listen to that
holy guy
Laugh and love
and raft the river
and open the doors
between hearts
Make one heart
many dreams
many tongues
Turn on the
possibility factory
Give the workers
the job
of assembling tomorrow.
With thanks to my favorite currently local holy man.
in the desert
of these here United States of America
Open to the stars
the drops of rain
the beating of
ancient drums
while the next generation
sees only the dirt
in which they stand
shuffling their feet
as if in motion
The ghosts of America
past and present
gesture vainly
mutely and invisibly
for attention
Thinking of tomorrow
with eyes on the dirt
forgetting
that we put a man on the moon
forgetting the moon
forgetting the sky
forgetting the horizons
Greedy for our
next dose
of the dream,
we fail to acheive
the dream state
In sleep
we still see dirt
We let the
boxes of idiots
dream incompetently
for us
Our hands
our hearts
our heads are good
but dying the death
of the unrealized
Open your eyes
and see inside
Close them and see
what should be
Assemble good hands
and hearts and heads
Assemble a dream
Open the factory
the farm
where dreams can be made
or grown
Send the holy men
the ghosts of America
the dreamers
the healers
the lunatics
the genuine crazies
into the schools
Play a tune of more
for the children
Instruct them not
in the history of the dream
but in the process
The mind that can be
a vampire,
a werewolf
an Indian princess,
can travel to
Jerusalem and back
on a flying horse.
The rider can go
to all the hatching grounds
where the shells of eggs
long since hatched
lie mixed with fertile
whole eggs
capsules of potential
a river of possibilities
Close your eyes
Look for the dream
Go down to the river
and bathe in it
break some eggs
Shake the hand of
your local holy man
Let the waters
seep into every opening
Follow the flow
into the dream
into the future
inside
and into the
furthest reaches
Close your eyes
open your doors
feel each other's fantasies
feed each other's fantasies
water them and
set them in the sun
and see where we grow
See where we go
See the lines
between the states
blur and begin
to vanish
Live on both sides
of those lines
Let go
hold on
hug everyone
hear everyone
Listen to that
holy guy
Laugh and love
and raft the river
and open the doors
between hearts
Make one heart
many dreams
many tongues
Turn on the
possibility factory
Give the workers
the job
of assembling tomorrow.
With thanks to my favorite currently local holy man.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
A Woman's Heart
I grew up, as I like to say, the oldest of three boys. Raised by my father to be no different, my feminity perceived, I think, as a weakness that made him fearful for me, he denied it to himself. Sensing some safety there, I think, I denied it to myself. So, after living somewhat comfortably in the company of males most of my life, I am surprised to find that simply, and obviously, I have the tender heart of a woman.
I don't really know if it is different from a man's heart because it's the only one I have. But I do know that it is close to the surface, touched by all that touches me, tender, open, and yet, fierce and full of fire, full of yearnings, full of questions. I do know that if you touch me, I'll feel it in my heart, and that it may be beautiful and it may cause pain, but I will feel it.
This sudden epiphany leads me to consider all of my connections with the people in my life, past, present and future. To open up is to take a chance on pain. To close myself to avoid pain is to bury my soul in a premature grave, marked with my least favorite words: "I can't." What I know about myself is that I can. I can take chances; a woman's heart is resillient. We love in order to give, to feel, to be felt, perceived, realized, to realize ourselves, to connect to other hearts and feel the heat of those essential, vital connections, to be human, to be a woman, to be alive.
A woman's heart is a precious thing. I haven't always known how to protect it, or even that I should, that its' nature is to be open and vulnerable, though I did, I think, sense the resillience and the strength. It doesn't break. But my bones have never broken, and I'm not about to jump off the roof of my house to see how much they can take. Nor will I or should I do that with my heart. It comes equipped with a light to shine on those who I might allow to touch it, and I do and need to use that light to illuminate my path. The wisdom revealed in that light guides me through the choices I make on my journey.
It makes me cautious, but it is what allows me to remain open for the business of life, the business of the heart, open to my fellow travellers, open to the knowledge that some of them will walk with me always, and some can only stay on the same road for part of the journey. And I can know and welcome both, knowing that only time will tell me which is which, and that whatever pain comes from parting ways, the value of even companions who only touch us briefly is greater. And I know with that same heart that I will look for the good, find it, enjoy it, and survive whatever inevitable pain comes with being open to it.
I don't really know if it is different from a man's heart because it's the only one I have. But I do know that it is close to the surface, touched by all that touches me, tender, open, and yet, fierce and full of fire, full of yearnings, full of questions. I do know that if you touch me, I'll feel it in my heart, and that it may be beautiful and it may cause pain, but I will feel it.
This sudden epiphany leads me to consider all of my connections with the people in my life, past, present and future. To open up is to take a chance on pain. To close myself to avoid pain is to bury my soul in a premature grave, marked with my least favorite words: "I can't." What I know about myself is that I can. I can take chances; a woman's heart is resillient. We love in order to give, to feel, to be felt, perceived, realized, to realize ourselves, to connect to other hearts and feel the heat of those essential, vital connections, to be human, to be a woman, to be alive.
A woman's heart is a precious thing. I haven't always known how to protect it, or even that I should, that its' nature is to be open and vulnerable, though I did, I think, sense the resillience and the strength. It doesn't break. But my bones have never broken, and I'm not about to jump off the roof of my house to see how much they can take. Nor will I or should I do that with my heart. It comes equipped with a light to shine on those who I might allow to touch it, and I do and need to use that light to illuminate my path. The wisdom revealed in that light guides me through the choices I make on my journey.
It makes me cautious, but it is what allows me to remain open for the business of life, the business of the heart, open to my fellow travellers, open to the knowledge that some of them will walk with me always, and some can only stay on the same road for part of the journey. And I can know and welcome both, knowing that only time will tell me which is which, and that whatever pain comes from parting ways, the value of even companions who only touch us briefly is greater. And I know with that same heart that I will look for the good, find it, enjoy it, and survive whatever inevitable pain comes with being open to it.
Monday, April 13, 2009
The Secret Lives of Doves
I've often given my doves credit for no more intelligence than a chicken, and probably less. They move around relatively little, fly rarely, really just kind of stand around pecking at stuff on the floor. Pokie once spent days staring at a wall.
I wonder if she was really speculating about the nature of the shadows cast on the wall and her perception of the items that cast those shadows based on understanding them as shadows. It almost seems more likely than one of God's creatures being so uncurious that it stands and doesn't even realize that it's staring at a wall, and that there are more interesting things behind it. Maybe the dove is considering its' own nature deeply, in which case, facing the wall or not is entirely irrelevant.
You would think that if they consider their own nature, and recognize themselves as essentially birds, they would express that by flying more. Maybe their thoughts go deeper than that. Maybe they are considering their place in the cosmos, and the futility of flapping their delicate mortal little wings.
Maybe my doves are depressed, immobilized by existential angst.
Maybe they are so full of joy that standing still and moving are all one for them, equally joyful expressions of their beings.
Maybe they fear to attract the attention of the parrots with their keen curiousity and sharp beaks. Maybe they can't stand the bright light of curiousity that the parrots throw into their existence. It embues their every move. They are novelty junkies, forever trying to figure out how things work, including how to best operate me for their own ends.
It's Hamlet meets the Terminator.
It might be fun to add a few more beaks to the mix.
I wonder if she was really speculating about the nature of the shadows cast on the wall and her perception of the items that cast those shadows based on understanding them as shadows. It almost seems more likely than one of God's creatures being so uncurious that it stands and doesn't even realize that it's staring at a wall, and that there are more interesting things behind it. Maybe the dove is considering its' own nature deeply, in which case, facing the wall or not is entirely irrelevant.
You would think that if they consider their own nature, and recognize themselves as essentially birds, they would express that by flying more. Maybe their thoughts go deeper than that. Maybe they are considering their place in the cosmos, and the futility of flapping their delicate mortal little wings.
Maybe my doves are depressed, immobilized by existential angst.
Maybe they are so full of joy that standing still and moving are all one for them, equally joyful expressions of their beings.
Maybe they fear to attract the attention of the parrots with their keen curiousity and sharp beaks. Maybe they can't stand the bright light of curiousity that the parrots throw into their existence. It embues their every move. They are novelty junkies, forever trying to figure out how things work, including how to best operate me for their own ends.
It's Hamlet meets the Terminator.
It might be fun to add a few more beaks to the mix.
Monday, April 6, 2009
@$%&ing Snow
The snow was the icing on the cake of my decomposing sanity. It’s a little hard to remain sane when your creative and energetic seven year old has trouble falling asleep one night, outlasts your consciousness, decides to do an art project, can’t read, and ends up decorating your bathroom with puffy fabric paint. Of course, it would be easier if you weren’t just the tail end of a divorce, and in the middle of the breakup with your boyfriend. Then it fucking snows. It’s April for God’s sake! What the?
I used to have the perfect life. I thought, anyway, that it would be perfect if my husband wasn’t in it at all. Small thing. Turns out that the process of getting from there to here did not erase him as if he was a pencil sketch in the background of my life. It just made him into a dark smudge, and those do not go away.
Then comes this guy, all full of music, and love, and light. How do you not just go right for that? Maybe it’s like in Poltergeist: “Don’t go into the light.” How did I think I could do that and not have major and adverse consequences? For a bright gal, I’m pretty stupid sometimes. And I’m still just trying to figure out what went wrong. It’s like I got flattened by a truck and then it backed up. Except that nobody’s showing up with an ambulance, and I gotta get up off the pavement and go make sure everyone eats some protein with dinner and wears a coat (cuz it’s snowing in fucking April for God’s sake!).
I’m bleeding, and it’s not anyone’s problem but my own. No husband, no boyfriend, no father, no sister, no brother at the moment. My mom tries, but it took ten years of therapy to come to terms with her, and she’s still stretching pretty hard and lovingly just to come to terms with me. My friends are the greatest. Not a day has gone by that someone’s not been there for me when I needed them. They’re all so gentle with me, like I may break. Or maybe I think that just because I wish I could. I want to break. I want to stop functioning, just for awhile, just to recharge my battery. I’m so tired. I just want to lay down in front of the fire and just stop and just heal, and just get back to being me, the me who wasn’t always tired.
And my lovely friends still believe in my strength, even though the evidence of its’ failure is right before their eyes. There are things that even I can’t do. It’s a brick wall. I recognize it because I’ve hit lots of them before. People talk about being on the edge. There’s no edge, just brick walls. You hit them and you stop and you’re stuck. Going over the edge would be hugely better than just being stuck with your nose up to a brick wall.
Falling, freedom, suspended in air, suspended in everyone else’s life, yet alive, aware, healing with time stopped around me. That would be tits. Or if I could continue to hold my own feelings in suspended animation so that I could keep on getting on with the huge mountain of business at hand, and then deal with them later, when things were a little easier. Well, later turns out to be now, and now is not a hell of a lot easier than earlier. And I wonder when, and, shit, if, it’s ever going to be easier.
Not that I look back because the back way was totally impossible. Just one long year after another staring at the same brick wall. Hearing my kids growing up around me, yet unable to really see anything but that goddamned wall. So, I guess I am making progress. This is not easy, it’s amazingly, mind-blowingly, painfully difficult. But it’s a hell of a lot better than impossible.
But this fucking snow has put me right back to the edge of impossible, and I feel like I have to come all that way all over again. And my girls, I just want to see them happy, see them whole and feeling normal and comfortable and safe. I want them to be happy people. I just want to love them into happiness while everything crumbles around us, just cocoon them in sweet denial and make everything o.k. Speaking of impossible. And I’m just so tired.
Every day I feel like I can’t push on this big rock any more (that’s what I got in trade for my brick wall, the rock), but every day I do any way. And, miraculously, it’s actually going somewhere. I don’t really know where, but I imagine the wind blowing through my hair as I blow by that brick wall into the unknown. And that’s great, except it’s not happening fast enough to produce any wind. I’m impatient. I don’t know how to not try to move forward, to just go with it. It feels like I have to make so many things happen.
So, today, I’m taking a mental health day. It’s not the first and for sure it ain’t gonna be the last, but I think I’m taking less of them now, except this last couple in a row. You know, the black smudge, the bright light winking out of my life, all the bits of shit I have to deal with, and then, then, shit, this goddamned snow.
I used to have the perfect life. I thought, anyway, that it would be perfect if my husband wasn’t in it at all. Small thing. Turns out that the process of getting from there to here did not erase him as if he was a pencil sketch in the background of my life. It just made him into a dark smudge, and those do not go away.
Then comes this guy, all full of music, and love, and light. How do you not just go right for that? Maybe it’s like in Poltergeist: “Don’t go into the light.” How did I think I could do that and not have major and adverse consequences? For a bright gal, I’m pretty stupid sometimes. And I’m still just trying to figure out what went wrong. It’s like I got flattened by a truck and then it backed up. Except that nobody’s showing up with an ambulance, and I gotta get up off the pavement and go make sure everyone eats some protein with dinner and wears a coat (cuz it’s snowing in fucking April for God’s sake!).
I’m bleeding, and it’s not anyone’s problem but my own. No husband, no boyfriend, no father, no sister, no brother at the moment. My mom tries, but it took ten years of therapy to come to terms with her, and she’s still stretching pretty hard and lovingly just to come to terms with me. My friends are the greatest. Not a day has gone by that someone’s not been there for me when I needed them. They’re all so gentle with me, like I may break. Or maybe I think that just because I wish I could. I want to break. I want to stop functioning, just for awhile, just to recharge my battery. I’m so tired. I just want to lay down in front of the fire and just stop and just heal, and just get back to being me, the me who wasn’t always tired.
And my lovely friends still believe in my strength, even though the evidence of its’ failure is right before their eyes. There are things that even I can’t do. It’s a brick wall. I recognize it because I’ve hit lots of them before. People talk about being on the edge. There’s no edge, just brick walls. You hit them and you stop and you’re stuck. Going over the edge would be hugely better than just being stuck with your nose up to a brick wall.
Falling, freedom, suspended in air, suspended in everyone else’s life, yet alive, aware, healing with time stopped around me. That would be tits. Or if I could continue to hold my own feelings in suspended animation so that I could keep on getting on with the huge mountain of business at hand, and then deal with them later, when things were a little easier. Well, later turns out to be now, and now is not a hell of a lot easier than earlier. And I wonder when, and, shit, if, it’s ever going to be easier.
Not that I look back because the back way was totally impossible. Just one long year after another staring at the same brick wall. Hearing my kids growing up around me, yet unable to really see anything but that goddamned wall. So, I guess I am making progress. This is not easy, it’s amazingly, mind-blowingly, painfully difficult. But it’s a hell of a lot better than impossible.
But this fucking snow has put me right back to the edge of impossible, and I feel like I have to come all that way all over again. And my girls, I just want to see them happy, see them whole and feeling normal and comfortable and safe. I want them to be happy people. I just want to love them into happiness while everything crumbles around us, just cocoon them in sweet denial and make everything o.k. Speaking of impossible. And I’m just so tired.
Every day I feel like I can’t push on this big rock any more (that’s what I got in trade for my brick wall, the rock), but every day I do any way. And, miraculously, it’s actually going somewhere. I don’t really know where, but I imagine the wind blowing through my hair as I blow by that brick wall into the unknown. And that’s great, except it’s not happening fast enough to produce any wind. I’m impatient. I don’t know how to not try to move forward, to just go with it. It feels like I have to make so many things happen.
So, today, I’m taking a mental health day. It’s not the first and for sure it ain’t gonna be the last, but I think I’m taking less of them now, except this last couple in a row. You know, the black smudge, the bright light winking out of my life, all the bits of shit I have to deal with, and then, then, shit, this goddamned snow.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Why Does Beth Need Drums?
O.K., here we go again – part II of my endless search for meaning in my own actions. AKA “why does a forty-something housewife from West Bloomfield buy a drum kit?” So, here’s what I think (now, anyway – see Creative Cross training for what I thought last week): going through a divorce is like growing up and finding out who you are all over again. So, I’m going to go through my second adolescence as a teenager with a garage band.
I asked my mom to get me the drum kit (oh yeah, we’ve got the whole shebang – too bad I don’t know how to play the drums, yet) for my birthday. Without missing a beat, she said “no, no drums”. Sheesh, you’d think I was going to play them at her house. That’s where getting divorced beats being a teenager. I’m a grown up. I have my own house, and I can do what I want in it. And that, I think, is the point.
When you’re married, even in a good marriage, you really can’t just do what you want. And that’s o.k. It’s called compromise, and it’s just plain necessary to avoid bloodshed. In a bad marriage, it’s hard to be who you are. I got to the point where I hardly even asked myself the questions. Who do I want to be? What do I want to do when I grow up (again)? Where do I want to live? How do I want to live? What do I want to do in my house? What do I want to eat? Where do I dream of traveling?
Well, it turns out that I want to be a writer, among other things, when I grow up, which I better had fast because I have big time responsibilities. What I like to eat is just about everything. I want to go to China and the Grand Canyon. And I want to have a house that is a place where the girls and I can be ourselves. Not the kind of ourselves where we leave the cap off the toothpaste and belch at the dinner table, but the kind of ourselves where there are no questions we cannot ask.
I need to show my kids how to ask themselves if they want to be President when they grow up. Or a soap opera star? A mom? A pastry chef? A drummer? A horse trainer? An Elvis impersonator? They need to ask. We all need to ask. If you can’t ask yourself what your dreams are, you have no chance of trying to live them, and no chance of finding out who you are. Like Bloody Mary says in South Pacific “You got to have a dream. If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?”
I stopped asking because I already knew that my marriage was going to keep me from exploring my own potential. I wasn’t an important person in this house, even to me. But now, I can be. I have to be. I have to show my kids how to try things, how to see which ones fit, how to enjoy the ones that don’t anyways, how to play to their strengths, how to rely on my strength. Because it’s all coming back now. The strength of the human imagination lies in dreams, the spirit flies in dreams. Having to pay the bills doesn’t kill that. Having to hide in the shadows of your own life to keep the peace does.
So, I’m dreaming. And I’m doing. And I’m trying the drums.
Rock on.
I asked my mom to get me the drum kit (oh yeah, we’ve got the whole shebang – too bad I don’t know how to play the drums, yet) for my birthday. Without missing a beat, she said “no, no drums”. Sheesh, you’d think I was going to play them at her house. That’s where getting divorced beats being a teenager. I’m a grown up. I have my own house, and I can do what I want in it. And that, I think, is the point.
When you’re married, even in a good marriage, you really can’t just do what you want. And that’s o.k. It’s called compromise, and it’s just plain necessary to avoid bloodshed. In a bad marriage, it’s hard to be who you are. I got to the point where I hardly even asked myself the questions. Who do I want to be? What do I want to do when I grow up (again)? Where do I want to live? How do I want to live? What do I want to do in my house? What do I want to eat? Where do I dream of traveling?
Well, it turns out that I want to be a writer, among other things, when I grow up, which I better had fast because I have big time responsibilities. What I like to eat is just about everything. I want to go to China and the Grand Canyon. And I want to have a house that is a place where the girls and I can be ourselves. Not the kind of ourselves where we leave the cap off the toothpaste and belch at the dinner table, but the kind of ourselves where there are no questions we cannot ask.
I need to show my kids how to ask themselves if they want to be President when they grow up. Or a soap opera star? A mom? A pastry chef? A drummer? A horse trainer? An Elvis impersonator? They need to ask. We all need to ask. If you can’t ask yourself what your dreams are, you have no chance of trying to live them, and no chance of finding out who you are. Like Bloody Mary says in South Pacific “You got to have a dream. If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?”
I stopped asking because I already knew that my marriage was going to keep me from exploring my own potential. I wasn’t an important person in this house, even to me. But now, I can be. I have to be. I have to show my kids how to try things, how to see which ones fit, how to enjoy the ones that don’t anyways, how to play to their strengths, how to rely on my strength. Because it’s all coming back now. The strength of the human imagination lies in dreams, the spirit flies in dreams. Having to pay the bills doesn’t kill that. Having to hide in the shadows of your own life to keep the peace does.
So, I’m dreaming. And I’m doing. And I’m trying the drums.
Rock on.
Mixed Messages
Get it in gear
Jump right in
Hold on
There’s time
there’re other fish in the sea
Step on it
Whoa
I want to get off
Stop the ride please
I want my mommy
I am a rock
Take the day off
Just do it
Take it easy
Hop to
Make the perfect brownie
Lose ten pounds in a week
It’s ok. to cry
Keep a stiff upper lip
America the beautiful
Rugged individualism
chain restaurants
God is love
God is dead
Proceed at your own risk
Keep out
Welcome
Attack Dog on Premises
Follow the yellow brick road
Buy American
I can see the light
Don’t go into the light
The light at the end of the tunnel
may just be the oncoming train.
Jump right in
Hold on
There’s time
there’re other fish in the sea
Step on it
Whoa
I want to get off
Stop the ride please
I want my mommy
I am a rock
Take the day off
Just do it
Take it easy
Hop to
Make the perfect brownie
Lose ten pounds in a week
It’s ok. to cry
Keep a stiff upper lip
America the beautiful
Rugged individualism
chain restaurants
God is love
God is dead
Proceed at your own risk
Keep out
Welcome
Attack Dog on Premises
Follow the yellow brick road
Buy American
I can see the light
Don’t go into the light
The light at the end of the tunnel
may just be the oncoming train.
Creative Cross Training (Fancy Shoes Optional)
I recently purchased a learn to play drums kind of kit from Border's. You might wonder why, if you know me well, why someone whose music teacher strongly encouraged her to pursue visual arts because of certain deficiencies in her musical talent, most notably an almost complete lack of rythm, would want to learn drums.
It's a whim, like glass blowing, beaded embellishment and embroidery, mythology, anthropology, astrology, and many other subjects that I have become temporarily passionate about. My dear ex-husband accused me repeatedly of never sticking with anything. I got the last laugh by not sticking with him. But, what he never got is that I have several core areas in which I like to express myself creatively - writing, metals, painting and drawing and photography. Those I stick with. While recently trying to explain my interest in drumming, although I knew that I wouldn't be exceptionally good at it, I happened to address the subject in the same conversation in which I had mentioned the five years I spent doing triathlons.
For those of you who are not triathletes, or athletes at all, let me briefly explain the concept of cross-training, which is the practice of enhancing ability in one area of athletics, say swimming, by training in another area, say cycling. The juxtoposittion of the subjects of triathlons and drumming led me to the perfect explanation for my whims.They are Creative Crosstraining. In some ways as an artist, everything is creative cross-training. For example, who knows when I might write a scene in a book where my experience with glass blowing might inform the action. Experience drumming may, I'm just guessing, change the way I perceive the rythm of words in writing. Sometimes, creative cross-training adds something definitive to core creative pursuits, such as how my understanding of the history of women in the healing arts has added depth to my creation of a fictional matriarchy. Sometimes it's a more elusive benefit. I think glass blowing, despite my utter lack of success at it, helped me understand the way materials heat up, making me a really good and intuitive solderer. I get the heat.
Sometimes, it's just that simple. It gives us the heat. The change of perspective lights our ignition, flips a switch, inspires us, charges us with a new idea, a new way of looking at art, a new way to combine ideas. It's all part of the essentially inscrutable jumble of forces at work in the creative brain. It feeds the way we see ourselves and the world, clarifies our driving ideals, sharpens our expression, paring away filler and filling it with substance. New experiences wake us up. Standing in the rain could inspire a song. It's not that all the ideas are new. No, most of them were there and the new input is what causes them to coalesce into a coherent expression.
So, climb a tree, climb a rock, listen to rock, listen to the wind, wind up a kid's toy, toy with drums, drum up some new ideas and influences. Integrate something new every day; add to yourself; add to your inner toolbox of ideas, emotions, expressions. Open up widely to all the ways that the world can feed us as artists. Boldly go where you've never gone before. Challenge yourself. Challenge your own creativity to grow. Find all the interesting thoughts that were already lurking in your fertile imagination and bring those seeds into the sunlight. Water them with fresh experiences, and then revel in the smell of the imaginary flowers that grow. It's like the Nike ads say: Just do it. And you don't even need the fancy shoes.
It's a whim, like glass blowing, beaded embellishment and embroidery, mythology, anthropology, astrology, and many other subjects that I have become temporarily passionate about. My dear ex-husband accused me repeatedly of never sticking with anything. I got the last laugh by not sticking with him. But, what he never got is that I have several core areas in which I like to express myself creatively - writing, metals, painting and drawing and photography. Those I stick with. While recently trying to explain my interest in drumming, although I knew that I wouldn't be exceptionally good at it, I happened to address the subject in the same conversation in which I had mentioned the five years I spent doing triathlons.
For those of you who are not triathletes, or athletes at all, let me briefly explain the concept of cross-training, which is the practice of enhancing ability in one area of athletics, say swimming, by training in another area, say cycling. The juxtoposittion of the subjects of triathlons and drumming led me to the perfect explanation for my whims.They are Creative Crosstraining. In some ways as an artist, everything is creative cross-training. For example, who knows when I might write a scene in a book where my experience with glass blowing might inform the action. Experience drumming may, I'm just guessing, change the way I perceive the rythm of words in writing. Sometimes, creative cross-training adds something definitive to core creative pursuits, such as how my understanding of the history of women in the healing arts has added depth to my creation of a fictional matriarchy. Sometimes it's a more elusive benefit. I think glass blowing, despite my utter lack of success at it, helped me understand the way materials heat up, making me a really good and intuitive solderer. I get the heat.
Sometimes, it's just that simple. It gives us the heat. The change of perspective lights our ignition, flips a switch, inspires us, charges us with a new idea, a new way of looking at art, a new way to combine ideas. It's all part of the essentially inscrutable jumble of forces at work in the creative brain. It feeds the way we see ourselves and the world, clarifies our driving ideals, sharpens our expression, paring away filler and filling it with substance. New experiences wake us up. Standing in the rain could inspire a song. It's not that all the ideas are new. No, most of them were there and the new input is what causes them to coalesce into a coherent expression.
So, climb a tree, climb a rock, listen to rock, listen to the wind, wind up a kid's toy, toy with drums, drum up some new ideas and influences. Integrate something new every day; add to yourself; add to your inner toolbox of ideas, emotions, expressions. Open up widely to all the ways that the world can feed us as artists. Boldly go where you've never gone before. Challenge yourself. Challenge your own creativity to grow. Find all the interesting thoughts that were already lurking in your fertile imagination and bring those seeds into the sunlight. Water them with fresh experiences, and then revel in the smell of the imaginary flowers that grow. It's like the Nike ads say: Just do it. And you don't even need the fancy shoes.
Spring
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Friday, March 6, 2009 at 8:48am
I was just driving the kids to school and noticing, not for the first time, how totally filthy my windshield is. I have recently had the same thoughts about the windows of my house and the bird cage, which needs to be completely emptied and taken outside for a power wash with the hose. It's spring cleaning time. Time to shake off the layer of winter grime, freshen up and start over.
I can't help imagining what that felt like for people who lived, a la Little House in the Big Woods, in a dirt floored cabin, without running water, in each others pockets all winter, eating that which had been so carefully laid aside in the summer and fall. They had to discipline their children in ways that we couldn't imagine in order to survive all cooped up together and keep them from any of the numerous potential injuries or deaths that awaited in those conditions without an emergency room or, often, even a doctor nearby. They had to discipline themselves even more strictly, as us poor grown-ups always have to do.
No sloppy sentimental anthropomorphizing of pigs and chickens. They had to look into the eyes of the animals that they raised from babies and killed and know that it was the only way their family would survive the winter. What a luxury to be vegetarians, to choose what we will and will not eat based, not on availability, but moral conviction.
Like princesses, bananas and pineapples are brought to us from afar in January. What luxury. What delicacies. I remember the wide eyes of a friend who came to stay with us from Lithuania many years ago as we loaded him and his meager store of English words into the car for a ski trip to Harbor Springs. Driving into the northern Michigan whiteness, we drove through a fast food restaurant and, minutes after ordering and presenting a minimal ammount of currency, bags of steaming hot food were handed out through the window. Next stop was a grocery store where, in the midst of the icy blue winter cold there were mounds of fresh produce, all very reasonable.
I do think about the footprint we leave on the earth, compared to the footprint of those settlers who lived off what was near. Gasoline spent to bring us fresh produce in the dead of winter, coal burned to heat water for hot winter showers and baths and light on the short cold days and long cold nights. I've been thinking a lot about simplifying, and the idea of opening the windows and letting the cool air of spring and the warm summer air into my house. The ideas of simple spring cleaning, the pleasure of shedding the winter claustrophobic closeness, difficult in my huge modern West Bloomfield home, unimaginable in a small log cabin in the woods, and the winter layer of grime are so tantalizing.
We will shed our winter layers, watch the flowers come up, light a fire in the fire pit, clean up, freshen up, open up, breathe the air and come out of our cave. Last night a warm spring breeze beckoned to me when I went to close the garage door. It said "Come out. Come out." And I did. And I will.
Friday, March 6, 2009 at 8:48am
I was just driving the kids to school and noticing, not for the first time, how totally filthy my windshield is. I have recently had the same thoughts about the windows of my house and the bird cage, which needs to be completely emptied and taken outside for a power wash with the hose. It's spring cleaning time. Time to shake off the layer of winter grime, freshen up and start over.
I can't help imagining what that felt like for people who lived, a la Little House in the Big Woods, in a dirt floored cabin, without running water, in each others pockets all winter, eating that which had been so carefully laid aside in the summer and fall. They had to discipline their children in ways that we couldn't imagine in order to survive all cooped up together and keep them from any of the numerous potential injuries or deaths that awaited in those conditions without an emergency room or, often, even a doctor nearby. They had to discipline themselves even more strictly, as us poor grown-ups always have to do.
No sloppy sentimental anthropomorphizing of pigs and chickens. They had to look into the eyes of the animals that they raised from babies and killed and know that it was the only way their family would survive the winter. What a luxury to be vegetarians, to choose what we will and will not eat based, not on availability, but moral conviction.
Like princesses, bananas and pineapples are brought to us from afar in January. What luxury. What delicacies. I remember the wide eyes of a friend who came to stay with us from Lithuania many years ago as we loaded him and his meager store of English words into the car for a ski trip to Harbor Springs. Driving into the northern Michigan whiteness, we drove through a fast food restaurant and, minutes after ordering and presenting a minimal ammount of currency, bags of steaming hot food were handed out through the window. Next stop was a grocery store where, in the midst of the icy blue winter cold there were mounds of fresh produce, all very reasonable.
I do think about the footprint we leave on the earth, compared to the footprint of those settlers who lived off what was near. Gasoline spent to bring us fresh produce in the dead of winter, coal burned to heat water for hot winter showers and baths and light on the short cold days and long cold nights. I've been thinking a lot about simplifying, and the idea of opening the windows and letting the cool air of spring and the warm summer air into my house. The ideas of simple spring cleaning, the pleasure of shedding the winter claustrophobic closeness, difficult in my huge modern West Bloomfield home, unimaginable in a small log cabin in the woods, and the winter layer of grime are so tantalizing.
We will shed our winter layers, watch the flowers come up, light a fire in the fire pit, clean up, freshen up, open up, breathe the air and come out of our cave. Last night a warm spring breeze beckoned to me when I went to close the garage door. It said "Come out. Come out." And I did. And I will.
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