~The Creativity Chronicles~

Begin Again (Again)

2012-02-18T23:34:00.001-06:00

"When she realized what her situation in the world was and would probably always be she threw away every assumption she had learned and began at zero. First off, she cut her hair. That was one thing she didn't want to think about anymore. Then she tackled the problem of trying to decide how she wanted to live and what was valuable to her. When am I happy and when am I sad and what is the difference? What do I need to know to stay alive? What is true in the world? Her mind traveled crooked streets and aimless goat paths, arriving sometimes at profundity, other times at the revelations of a three-year-old. Throughout this fresh, if common, pursuit of knowledge, one conviction crowned her efforts: since death held no terrors for her (she spoke often to the dead), she knew there was nothing to fear." ~ Toni Morrison's Song of Solomon

30 Days of August: Inspiration Day 1

2011-08-01T20:41:00.011-05:00

This performance!!

♫ Happiness hit her like a train on a track/Coming toward her/Stuck still/No turning back/The dog days are over/The dog days are done/The horses are coming/So you better run/Run fast for your mother/fast for your father/Run for your children/for your sisters and brothers/Leave all your love and your longing behind/You can't carry it with you if you want to survive/The dog days are over. ♫

2011

2011-01-01T17:59:00.001-06:00

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer." ~ Zora Neale Hurston

Found Words

2010-11-23T08:24:00.003-06:00

From www.abeautifulrevolution.com

Believe you and I sing tiny and wise

2010-11-16T21:38:00.003-06:00

Glen Uig
by Richard Hugo

Believe in this couple this day who come
to picnic in the Faery Glen. They pay rain
no matter, or wind. They spread their picnic
under a gale-stunted rowan. Believe they grew tired
of giants and heroes and know they believe
in wise tiny creatures who live under the rocks.

Believe these odd mounds, the geologic joke
played by those wise tiny creatures far from
the world's pitiful demands: make money, stay sane.
Believe the couple, by now soaked to the skin,
sing their day as if dry, as if sheltered inside
Castle Ewen. Be glad Castle Ewen's only a rock
that looks like a castle. Be glad for no real king.

These wise tiny creatures, you'd better believe,
have lived through it all: the Viking occupation,
clan torturing clan, the Clearances, the World War
II bomber gone down, a fiery boom
on Beinn Edra. They saw it from here. They heard
the sobs of last century's crofters trail off below
where every day the Conon sets out determined for Uig.
They remember the Viking who wandered off course,
under the hazelnut tree hating aloud all he'd done.

Some days dance in the bracken. Some days go out
wide and warm on bad roads to collect the dispossessed
and offer them homes. Some days celebrate addicts
sweet in their dreams and hope to share with them
a personal spectrum. The loch here's only a pond,
the monster is in it small as a wren.

Believe the couple who have finished their picnic
and make wet love in the grass, the tiny wise creatures
cheering them on. Believe in milestones, the day
you left home forever and the cold open way
a world wouldn't let you come in. Believe you
and I are that couple. Believe you and I sing tiny
and wise and could if we had to eat stone and go on.

Rain

2010-11-15T20:08:00.001-06:00

10/10/10

2010-10-10T18:56:00.001-05:00

"Not only is another world possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." ~ Arundhati Roy

Found Words: Earth & Stars

2010-06-02T18:45:00.006-05:00

"Be humble for you are made of earth. Be noble for you are made of stars."

~ Eastern European proverb

Quotable

2010-05-31T22:46:00.003-05:00

"There's another kind of love, Amanda. One that gives you the courage to be better than you are, not less than you are. One that makes you feel that anything is possible. I want you to know that you can have that. I want you to hold out for it. I want you to know that you deserve it."

~Adrienne Willis (Diane Lane) in Nights in Rodanthe

Found Words: On Magic

2010-05-31T21:43:00.006-05:00

"Yes, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians. Oh, most everybody else didn't realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by the silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present, and into the future. You probably did too; you just don't recall it. See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put in the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God's sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they'd allowed to wither in themselves.

"After you go so far away from it, though, you can't really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, it's because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. They come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they're left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you listen to a train passing on a track at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of moments, you have stepped into the magic realm.

"That's what I believe."

~from "Boy's Life" by Robert R. McCammon

Found Words: On Beauty

2010-05-27T06:16:00.004-05:00

"At some point in life the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough." ~Toni Morrison

Animated Alter Egos (or "Numbuh 5 seeking Numbuh 1 for Friendship & Adventure, Maybe More" ;o)

2010-05-26T11:04:00.019-05:00

"La-la-la-la-la" . . .

Once upon a time, that was my themesong, my soundtrack; I was all about the "la-la-la-la-la."

Yes, dear reader, I was a slightly less sarcastic Ms. Morgendorfer; definitely kinder, gentler, but, nonetheless, a "dialed down Daria," my brother, the shrink, has said.

But that was yesterday.

Today I choose Abigail Lincoln/Numbuh 5 of KND (Codename: The Kids Next Door) as my animated alter ego, the ani-me I aspire to be.

Why? Besides the fact that we have the exact same taste in hats and ice cream treats? Because, in addition to my own loving-kind self, I'd like to be more like her when I grow up (or, um, back down): funny, brave, unselfconsciously laid back, unapologetically smart. She LIVES Life as nothing less than a daring adventure; she LIVES Life as nothing less than her very own rare self.

AND . . . She gets to hang out with Nigel Uno/Numbuh 1; he's more than a little dreamy, dontcha think?

So think about it: if you were an animated/cartoon character, which one would you be? Why? Seemingly unserious questions, I know, but as for the answers . . . Maybe they can give us some semi-serious insight when we get to those inevitable "who we are vs who we want to be" crossroads. And, hey, every little bit of direction helps, even if the way forward leads us into the Hundred Acre Wood and through the Looking Glass.

Courage.

Quotable

2010-05-23T18:56:00.009-05:00

"Sometimes I wonder about my life. I lead a small life - well, valuable, but small - and sometimes I wonder, do I do it because I like it, or because I haven't been brave? So much of what I see reminds me of something I read in a book, when shouldn't it be the other way around? I don't really want an answer. I just want to send this cosmic question out into the void. So good night, dear void."

~Kathleen Kelly (Meg Ryan) writing to NY152/Joe Fox (Tom Hanks) in You've Got Mail

Where the Wild Words Are

2010-05-16T21:48:00.003-05:00

"I've learned not to worry about love

but to honor its coming with my whole heart."

~Alice Walker

On the Road

2010-05-12T18:56:00.007-05:00

He was a truck driver, my late stepfather*. Very much a character, something of a philosopher, Mel loved the open road. And my mother. He used to try to get her to ride along with him on his interstate runs. My mother, like her daughter after her, was a teacher (now retired); she had the summers off, but she never went along for the ride. She’s just one of those people who feels most at home in the world close to Home.

As for my mother’s daughter, I would have been up in that cab before the final bell rang. Because I am one of those folks who feels most at home in the world, and most myself in the world, when I’m on the road.

********

“She had gone on a real trip, and now she was different. She got out of bed and lit the lamp to look in the mirror. There was her face, plain brown eyes, three braids . . . She looked for a long time and suddenly a shiver ran through her.

‘I’m me,’ she whispered.

She didn’t know quite what she meant, but on the other hand she knew exactly what she meant.

‘I’m me. I’m not their daughter. I’m not Nel. I’m me. Me.’

Each time she said ‘me’ there was a gathering in her like power, like joy . . .”

********

When I first read that passage in Toni Morrison’s Sula, I knew just how the little girl, who’d gone on her first trip away from her home, a fictionalized Lorain, OH, to New Orleans, felt; that sudden realization of how big the world might be that comes from being away from everything you know, that sudden breathtaking sense of your own me-ness that comes from being away from everyone who knows you.

I’ve written here and elsewhere about the soul-deep pleasure of being known, how knowing that we’re known can affirm us and allow us to move in the world more fully ourselves. But when we’re away from our known world and ourselves unknown . . . there’s just something about that, something potentially wonder-full.

When I was very small, nearly brand new, if I became fretful and impossible to comfort, my parents would just put me in the car and drive me around for a while. I think that many little ones are soothed that way. I wonder, though, if that early bliss of being in motion made its way down deep into my psyche. Because oh-how I love being on the road! The setting out on a trip is a trip for me; I move into some altered consciousness that comes only when I’m moving in and through “The In-Between” . . . neither here nor there, but betwixt and between.

I had my first conscious experience of “The In-Between,” my first remembered headrush of me-ness, in my early 20s. Just out of college, a roadtrip with a friend, bound for Nashville. I remember feeling almost lightheaded as we pulled away from the city where we lived onto the interstate. With each mile we traveled, I remember feeling as though something heavy was falling away; I felt as though I were shedding my skin. No, it wasn't my skin at all, but some full body costume, armored, that I didn't even realize I was wearing, that more or less resembled me, but wasn’t.

Somewhere out on I-65, I felt, for what seemed like the first time since childhood, my own elemental me-ness. And, yes, it felt like a gathering, like power, like joy.

It felt like . . . I felt like . . . me.

Summer 2010. My own Mel hasn’t turned up yet, but there’s the open road. It’s there, waiting. And it's that season; I think I’ll just see where it takes me . . .

"We're gonna spin through the stars/Our arms wide as the sky/We gonna ride the blue all the way to the end of the world."

2010-05-10T18:59:00.014-05:00

Dream Diving.

I think that's what I called it in one of the first posts that I ever wrote for "Hope Floats." Dream diving, my notion of it anyway, is in part about trying to remember what once upon a time inspired you and trying to notice what inspires you now. It's about paying attention to what moves you.

For the past several months, one of the things that unfailingly moves me is this video. I really like the song, but it's the video for the Dave Matthews Band's "You & Me" that makes me almost deliriously happy.

There was a photography exhibit a decade or more ago called "I Dream a World"; as this video goes on, it starts to bear a striking resemblance to what the world I dream of looks like.

Both as a cultural studies prof and a would-be creativity maven, I give it an A+ in concept and execution. And as "just me"? I think it's just beautiful.

And, yes, the fact that I fully believe that I could meet My Someone, "He Who Must Be Stuck In Traffic" (sigh), at a Dave Matthews Band concert while they're singing this very song may have a little something to do with it. ;0)

(Note: You might let it fully load (press pause and watch the little line travel across the bottom), but then, -->> and ENJOY.)

Found Words: "Necessary As Water"

2010-05-10T01:03:00.016-05:00

I am writing these words as a route map
an artifact for survival…

History is not kind to us
we restitch it with living
past memory forward
into desire
into the panic articulation
of want without having
or even the promise of getting.

And I dream of our coming together
encircled driven
not only by love
but by lust for a working tomorrow
the flights of this journey
mapless uncertain
and necessary as water.

~Audre Lorde~

"On My Way Out I Passed Over You and the Verrazano Bridge"

The Becoming: Act I, Scene 1

2010-05-07T09:32:00.037-05:00

"It takes courage to grow up and become who your really are."

~e.e. cummings

A little clay tablet with that quote has been sitting on my dresser for several months now. It catches my eye at some point every day, as it is meant to do, and, for just a beat, I wonder: "have I become who I was really supposed to grow up to be?"

The search for answers begins, as all such searches must, not in the wide world, but closer to home, as close to our own one true heart as it's possible to get.

I look at pictures of myself as a child. And, as I gaze into my own eyes, I feel such a sense of tenderness and, well, wonder: "this beautiful little girl, this is me?" What's more unexpected is the fierce rush of protectiveness that almost overwhelms me; it's as if this child is my own, and I want desperately to protect her . . . and her dreams.

It's an overused phrase, I know, but there's no more true way to put it: I was a painfully shy child. But somehow, when my first grade class started making plans for our class play, I found myself, much to my teachers' and my own surprise, raising my hand to play a role.

True, this act of daring may have had a little something to do with the fact that Rodney, the cutest, funniest, most fabulous boy in our class, my big crush that year (yes, I was a first grade flame dame ;0), was playing the lead. But it had more to do with the fact that, when rehearsals started, I really couldn't bear just sitting at my little desk, in the outer circle, watching the other kids on the "stage" (which was really just the area where we usually had our reading circles). No, I wanted, needed, to enter into that space of imagination, to be a part of the make believe. I knew, soul deep and to the bone, that I could do it: I could be one of the ones making Magic.

There are those moments when, not even having been aware that you're sleeping, you suddenly wake up!; you become more conscious, more alive in the world and in your own life. When I think about that first grade play, I think of it as my first waking moment.

Years later, in my college Intro to Theatre class, I would learn about what's called "the willing suspension of disbelief," that state audience members in a theatre must be willing to enter into once the curtain goes up; they allow themselves to believe in the "reality" of what happens on the stage. At least until the play ends, the curtain drops, and the actors emerge from their roles to take their final bows.

And in return for this suspension, this temporary surrender of our knowing? I heard an actor say once about good theatre, that it alters the air, changing/charging molecules, so that when we, as audience members, emerge from that space, we feel ourselves somehow rearranged.

Ever since that moment in the first grade, with that first willful suspension of that so-shy part of myself, that lovely alchemy that can transform everything and everyone present has drawn me. And while I'm content, even happy, in almost every way in the every day to make a life for myself in the outlying areas, I remember well the times I've spent at centerstage when/where I found myself all rearranged . . . into my own, most true self.

So, have you and I become who we were really meant to be? Maybe if we keep looking into our own eyes, we can still find, really and truly see, our own true selves. Then we can ask one, possibly terrifying, question, the question that can help us along our way from here to her*: "how far do I have to go to get to you?"

A Rewind; or Beginning Again (aka "Now where was I?")

2010-05-04T08:58:00.008-05:00

"Pieces of Me [You've Never Seen]." That's what I'd call my autobiographical multimedia art installation.

If possible, it would be set in a garden, a kind of unkempt, Secret Garden kind of garden. With a lake and lots trees. And butterflies.

There would be music in the air: "Grey Street" by the Dave Matthews Band, "Drops of Jupiter" by Train, "Video" by India.Arie, Dionne Farris's "Hopeless" and "Blackbird"; I'd have to make sure that the "Grey Street" version was one that includes my favorite lines: "There's a stranger speaks outside her door/Says 'take what you can from your dreams/Make them as real as anything/It would take the work out of the courage.'" All the tracks from Tori's Little Earthquakes and Emily and Amy's Rites of Passage (with "Closer I Am to Fine" thrown in for good measure), too.

Clips from the movies "The Mirror Has Two Faces" and "The Truth about Cats & Dogs," the one where Noelle says to Dr. Abby Barnes "Disappointment doesn't kill" and Abby says back to her "No, rejection kills; disappointment only maims." ;0).

What else?

The books Harriet the Spy, A Wrinkle in Time, and Lisa Bright and Dark.

Text from Toni Morrison's Sula, specifically the line "And like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous." Oh, and from Morrison's Song of Solomon, "If you surrender to the air, you can ride it."

I'd include my poems "Everyday Saviors" and "Legacy" and the face mug and pinch built ceramics I made in art class last spring. Pages torn from two decades of journals.

I'd have my favorite picture of myself at 9 months old, making a face at my father while my mother looks on (taken in Japan, where I was born).

The cartouche with my name spelled in Egyptian hieroglyphics, a gift from my First Love, during our most recent, and final, waltz.

Somewhere in the garden, the lady in brown would be performing the opening piece from ntozake shange's choreopoem, "for colored girls . . .": "somebody/anybody, sing a black girl's song//sing her song of life/she's been closed in silence so long/she doesn't know the sound/of her own voice/her infinite beauty."

The video for Natalie Merchant's "Kind and Generous" would be projected on a screen. I try to dwell in gratitude.

There would be postcards from Italy, notes written home while I traveled by train through Tuscany.

A photograph of my grandmother; more than anything, I am her granddaughter.

Pictures of my nieces and nephews and godchildren, some of my favorite people.

Stills from the movies "Benny & Joon," "Under the Tuscan Sun," "Before Sunset" and "Amelie," some of my favorite films . . .

Candlelight reflecting through honey; I love the quality of light during late afternoon, the golden hour, just before sunset.

And seashells, of course, because I love the ocean.

What would your "Me" collage look like? Sound like? Feel like? And what would you know about yourself after you'd collected all those pieces of you? What would the world know? And, after all that self revelation, what would They still not know? What is it that They can never know?

Maybe it's our struggle with our own Infinite Unknowability, though its likely the source of our beauty, our soulfulness, our sacredness, that serves as a wellspring for our creativity. In the face of our own mystery, isn't the force that drives us to create really a testimony to, a revelation of the fathomless depths of our desire to be known?

Motherwit; or Hope: Variations on a Theme

2010-04-11T14:11:00.009-05:00

My mother and I were just laughing on the phone a little while ago about a piece of advice she gave me when I was in my early 20s and terribly prone to getting mired in my friends' often Melrose Place-like melodramas:

"You need to get a life and live it!"

When I tell people that my mother told me this, they are often taken aback. As for me, I think it's probably one of the best pieces of advice I never took.

I've been thinking about this bit of motherwit quite a bit lately, and my seeming inability to follow it in any sustained fashion. While I go flinging myself into other people's lives, caring more than is good for them or me (smell that? codependence), I tiptoe around the edges of my own life like a passerby, a witness, yes, but one reluctant to get involved.

So, what do you do when, even when it's not a matter of some "casting agent" assigning you the role of, at best, The Understudy, at worst, nothing more than a stand-in for some other dame, you find yourself so insistent about casting yourself in the role of supporting player in other people's stories -- like J. Alfred, merely an attendant lady, "one that will do to swell a progress, start a scene or two/Advise the Prince; no doubt an easy tool/Deferential, glad to be of use" -- that nobody can even imagine casting you as the Leading Lady?

Least of all you.

Maya Angelou, the mother of all motherwit, says "when you know better, then you do better." But that's so much easier said than done. We think there's nothing truer than that old aphorism that reminds us that "insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different results," but I think there's something even more true in human nature that makes us think "this time, it will be different; this time I won't be second string; this time I'll be in the starting lineup." And, then, when you find yourself on the bench, again, or in the wings, again, you feel a little foolish for having hoped, again. Odds are it wasn't even quite the same kind of cockeyed optimistic hope as the first time around, but you were hoping, for something else, something different, something new. It was Hope or, leastways, a variation on the theme.

"My mission in life is not merely to survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some humor, and some style." ~Maya Angelou

This Little Light of Mine

2010-03-06T13:48:00.004-06:00

"I will work in my own way,
according to the light that is in me."

Lydia Maria Child (1802 - 1880)
women's rights activist, novelist, journalist

********

"My hands are small I know
But they're not yours, they are my own,
They're not yours, they are my own,
And I am never broken.
In the end, only kindness matters."

Jewel, singer/songwriter, poet

Rites of Passage, Sad Songs, and Busted Stuff

2010-01-28T22:22:00.012-06:00

We were talking about the songs. This evening, in the kitchen, glasses of Moscato wine in hand, while stirring the stirfry, we talked of the songs, the whole albums, that had saved us. The music that made us, if not whole, then less certain that all of Life had turned unholy. Later, I'd think of Elton's "Sad Songs," the soundtrack to the seemingly interminable unraveling of my parents' marriage and, with it, Life as I had known it.

"Guess there are times when we all need to share a little pain/And ironing out the rough spots/Is the hardest part when memories remain/And it feels so good to hurt so bad/And suffer just enough to sing the blues/If someone else is suffering enough to write it down/When every single word makes sense/Then it's easier to have those songs around./So turn em on/Turn on the sad songs/When all hope is gone/Why don't you tune in and turn em on./When all hope is gone/You know sad songs say so much."

Then, in grad school, when I had no idea where I was, why I was, who I was, it was the Indigo Girls, Rites of Passage in high rotation, their "Virginia Woolf" who was "on a kind of a telephone line through time/the voice on the other end [that came] like a long lost friend/so I know I'm alright/Life will come and Life will go/Still I know I'm alright/Cause I just got a letter to my soul/When my whole life is on the tip of my tongue/ Empty pages for the no longer young/The apathy of time laughs in my face/You say 'every life has its place.'"

Tori's Little Earthquakes? Her "Crucify"? It is still where I seek solace when I'm tortured to the point of breaking; when "my heart is sick of being in chains," it takes me there and brings me back. A little bit defiant, no longer defeated.

It is a rare thing to find a song that heals your heart. Rarer still to find one that sings it. "Grey Street" from Busted Stuff is that for me: my truest truth, set to music.

Grey Street

Oh look at how she listens,
She says nothing of what she thinks,
She just goes stumbling through her memories,
Staring out on to Grey Street.
She thinks, "Hey, how did I come to this?"
I dream myself a thousand times around the world
But I can't get out of this place."
There's an emptiness inside her
And she'll do anything to fill it in
But all the colors mix together - to grey
And it breaks her heart.

How she wishes it was different,
She prays to God most every night,
And though she swears it doesn't listen
There's still a hope in her it might.
She says "I pray, oh, But they fall on deaf ears.
Am I supposed to take it on myself?
To get out of this place?"
Oh, there's a loneliness inside her
And she'll do anything to fill it in;
And though it's red blood bleeding from her now
It feels like cold blue ice in her heart;
When all the colors mix together - to grey
And it breaks her heart.

There's a stranger speaks outside her door
Says "take what you can from your dreams;
Make them as real as anything
Oh it'd take the work out of the courage."
But she says "Please
There's a crazy man that's creeping outside my door,
I live on the corner of Grey Street
and the end of the world."

Oh there's an emptiness inside her
And she'll do anything to fill it in
And though it's red blood bleeding from her now
It's more like cold blue ice in her heart
She feels like kicking out all the windows
And setting fire to this life;
She could change everything about her
Using colors bold and bright
But all the colors mix together - to grey
And it breaks her heart
It breaks her heart
To Grey

~My favorite live performance of "Grey Street"~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gZyQjQclmH0

Something to do with Dreams

2010-01-23T14:49:00.012-06:00

It is a gray Saturday in the middle of winter. This season, even in the South, is ripe for wrapping up and turning in(ward). I surround myself in a purple shawl, sit at my dining room table, listen to my neighbor's windchimes. Near me, a tea cup on a saucer. I wish there was tea in it, even lukewarm. With"lukewarm," the words of a Gwendolyn Brooks poem, "kitchenette building," half remembered, begin to dance around the edges of my mind. I seek them out. Ah, yes . . .

************************

Kitchenette Building

We are things of dry hours and the involuntary plan,
Grayed in, and gray. "Dream" makes a giddy sound, not strong
Like "rent," "feeding a wife," "satisfying a man."

But could a dream sent up through onion fumes,
Its white and violet, fight with fried potatoes
And yesterday's garbage ripening in the hall,
Flutter, or sing an aria down these rooms,

Even if we were willing to let it in,
Had time to warm it, keep it very clean,
Anticipate a message, let it begin?

We wonder. But not well! not for a minute!
Since Number Five is out of the bathroom now,
We think of lukewarm water, hope to get in it.

~Gwendolyn Brooks

************************

So, it seems, I am in a Brooksian mood, "grayed in, and gray." Yesterday, a friend and colleague was moved from the hospital to home hospice care. It was his birthday. I was dispatched to his home with a letter, crafted a few months earlier than it is usually, informing him that he's been promoted to full professor. It was what he'd worked so hard for, and as I read the letter to him and his wife, while their little girl twirled through the room, I was struck by . . . what?

I've paused here. What was it, in that moment, that I felt, as she rubbed his face with one hand and held his hand with the other, as his just moments before oh-so weary eyes lit up? Many things, many thoughts, even more feelings. And they all seemed to converge, threatening a cacophany. But then, they simply canceled one another out. Until there was nothing in my mind at all. Only a deep and abiding quiet.

Now, today, I try to remember the moment of convergence, before the stillness; what were those scattered notes in want of a composition? I wonder, but not well, and only for a minute . . .

It had something to do with dreams. And time. And what, two weeks ago, I thought the Rivers knew. And what I know now. What I now know. About Dreams. And Time.

And "somedays."

~ For R. Y.: The Professor ~

"Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there someday." ~Winnie the Pooh

2010-01-10T16:06:00.010-06:00

If I were to make a multimedia collage/installation entitled "Me," here's what it would consist of . . .

If possible, it would be in a garden, a kind of unkempt, Englishy, Secret Garden kind of garden, with lots of butterflies.

And there would be music, "Drops of Jupiter" by Train, "Video" by India.Arie, Dionne Farris's "Hopeless" and "Blackbird," and "Grey Street" by Dave Matthews Band; I'd have to make sure this last one was a version that includes my favorite lines: "There's a stranger speaks outside her door/Says 'take what you can from your dreams/Make them as real as anything/It would take the work out of the courage.'" All the tracks from Tori's Little Earthquakes and Emily and Amy's Rites of Passage (with "Closer I Am to Fine" thrown in for good measure).

Clips from the movies "The Mirror Has Two Faces" and "The Truth about Cats & Dogs," the one where Noelle says to Dr. Abby Barnes "Disappointment doesn't kill" and Abby says back to her "No, rejection kills; disappointment only maims." ;0).

What else?

The books Harriet the Spy, A Wrinkle in Time, and Lisa Bright and Dark.

Text from Toni Morrison's Sula, specifically the line "And like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous." Oh, and from Morrison's Song of Solomon, "If you surrender to the air, you can ride it."

I'd include my poems "Everyday Saviors" and "Legacy" and the face mug and pinch built ceramics I made in art class last spring. Pages torn from two decades of journals.

I'd have my favorite picture of myself at 9 months old, making a face at my father while my mother looks on (taken in Japan, where I was born).

The cartouche with my name spelled in Egyptian hieroglyphics, a gift from my First Love, during our most recent, and final, waltz.

Somewhere in the garden, the lady in brown would be performing the opening piece from ntozake shange's choreopoem, "for colored girls . . ."

The video for Natalie Merchant's "Kind and Generous" would be projected on a screen in another corner. I try to dwell in gratitude.

There would be postcards from Italy, my soul's home.

A photograph of my grandmother; more than anything, I am her granddaughter.

Pictures of my nieces and nephews and godchildren, some of my favorite people . . .

Stills from the movies "Benny & Joon," "Under the Tuscan Sun," "Before Sunset" and "Amelie," some of my favorite films . . .

Candlelight reflecting through honey; I love the quality of light during late afternoon, the golden hour, just before sunset.

And seashells, of course, because I love the ocean.

What would your "Me" collage look like? Sound like? Feel like? And what would you know about yourself after you'd collected all those pieces of you? What would the world know? And, after all that self revelation, what would They still not know? What is it that They can never know?

Maybe it's our struggle with our own Infinite Unknowability, though its likely the source of our beauty, our soulfulness, our sacredness, that serves as a wellspring for our creativity. In the face of our own mystery, isn't the force that drives us to create really a testimony to, a revelation of the fathomless depths of our desire to be known?

The Best of/Biggest in/Favorites of 2009

2009-12-31T22:03:00.037-06:00

"At some point in life, the world's beauty becomes enough. You don't need to photograph, paint, or even remember it. It is enough." ~Toni Morrison

Favorite New Arrival: WWS (April 2009)

Favorite Return: MEF (March 2009)

Favorite Travels: Jacksonville, FL & Omega Institute, NY (Summer 2009)

Favorite New TV Show: "Glee" (Summer/Fall 2009)

Favorite New Hobby: Blogging! (July - December 2009)

Favorite Reads: Lori Tharps's Kinky Gazpacho & Jane Ganahl's Naked on the Page

Favorite New Songs: Needtobreathe's "Something Beautiful," Kings of Leon "Use Somebody"

Biggest Goal Achieved: Tenure (Spring 2009)

Favorite New Goal: Becoming the Family Wizard (TBA)

Biggest Blessing: Besides the kindness of strangers? The health and relative happiness of the people I love.

[And to you, Dear Reader, best wishes for a big, bright, beautiful New Year. Peace.

2009: Status Updates (Part II)

2009-12-31T20:24:00.008-06:00

"Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise." ~Alice Walker

5/12/09
Hopes you won't think less of her, but, while she SHOULD be crafting a summer reading list made up of titles she missed while running the tenure track (like Morrison's Mercy), all she really wants to do is curl up with some of her pop fiction favorites: Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Postcards from the Edge, High Fidelity . . .

5/11/09
Turning in, but offers the following highlights of the day: laughing with my sister on the phone, reading a smart, well crafted seminar paper; enjoying a chocolate covered graham cracker cookie (okay, two); listening to Bob Marley & The Wailers sing "Could You Be Loved" . . .

5/5/09
Looks forward to semester's end, to grades going in, and to the change of seasons. (Link: "Summertime")

5/3/09
Happily humming --okay, singing-- the opening song from "Pippin!" Do you know it? "Join us: leave your fields to flower." Junior year high school, my first audition: I got mad, nostalgic love for it.

5/1/09
Chair dancin' to a cool cover of "As" . . . kinda groovy video, too. (Link: "As")

5/1/09
Being still, reflecting on April as the coolest month (tenure granted, WWS arrives), welcoming in the month of May (maypole optional), and listening to Joan Armatrading sing "Willow' over and over and -- you get the idea. Next on the one-word title playlist: Me'Shell NdegeOcello's "Beautiful," Dionne Farris's "Hopeless" . . .

2009: The Year in Status Updates (Part I)

2009-12-21T17:58:00.017-06:00

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."
Zora Neale Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God

12/21/09

Wonders if it's possible to fight like a banshee by proxy. Just a thought. In the meantime, she continues her project of a decade: cultivating her edge.

12/17/09
Finds that in the wee small hours, while J. Alfred sings his song elsewhere, it's Janie, the titular "she" of Alice Walker's "Saving the Life That Is Your Own" sheroic poem, who comes out walking after midnight with me.

A woman, unless she submits

is neither a mule,

nor a queen,

though like a mule she may suffer,

and like a queen,

pace the floor.

11/20/09

Believes wholeheartedly and to the bone, that when you wake up with with words from "Prufrock" wandering about in your mind, there can be but one solution: Nina Simone, "It Be's That Way Sometime."

"Don't let the problems of this world/drive you slowly out of your mind./Just smile, look at the problem/and say it be's that way sometime."

11/19/09

Having become a member of the Tribe Insomniac, roams the room in the wee small hours, the items of her too many "To Do" lists slipping endlessly through the fingers of her mind, the beads of a rosary. Praying for May.

11/18/09

Feels a little bit sad, a little bit silly when her attempts to be engaging and friendly are coolly received, nee rejected. It's not easy being green, no?

07/01/09

Is at sleepaway camp in lovely upstate NY. Living in a co-ed dorm (um . . .), eating vegetarian (eggplant curry over basmati rice, mmmm), hiking (hating it), learning tai chi (likin' it), making new friends (lovin' em) . . . and singing, at long last, "hello mudda, hello fatha."

06/24/09

Feels the need to quote one of her touchstone films, "The Truth about Cats & Dogs":

Noelle (Uma Thurman): Disappointment doesn't kill.

Dr. Abby Barnes (Janeane Garafalo): Right. Rejection kills. Disappointment only maims.

(This message brought to you by the letters "grrr" and "hsss.")

06/23/09

Is back from Texas and had a great time rolling along the hightway with The Sister and hanging out with The Dad talking, looking over his book manuscript . . . oh, and discussing our plans for (literary) world domination. ;0)

06/19/09

Has traveled from Alabama (hot) to TX (hella hot . . . reputedly) to vist The Dad for Father's Day. She's thinking there's some sippin' lemonade by the pool in her future.

06/17/09

Thinks you should always be aware of your choices.

06/15/09

Would like to politely inquire: do you know where your towel is? (Note: A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference)

06/11/09*

While pondering what Hurston called "that oldest human longing -- "self revelation" -- this week, found herself slow dancing through Ralph Angel's Neither World:

. . . and the mad twilight

alone at last! Where it's easy to reveal nothing

and no one depends on our wanting to be known.

06/10/09

Offers these midweek words of wisdom: "She kept trying to be a good sport, but finally . . . she began to whine at the man sitting beside her about how infuriating her journey had been thus far. It turned out this man worked for the Dalai Lama, and he told her that they believed that when everything is going wrong, it's because something big and lovely is trying to be born, and that this something needs for you to be distracted so that it can be born as perfectly as possible." ~from Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies

06/04/09

Consults Their Eyes as I-Ching and finds the sage, zen like wisdom of Janie Crawford stands the time: "It jus be's that way sometimes."

06/05/09*

"Rolling in big solitary raindrops/in drops like teeth/in big thick drops of marmalade & blood/rolling in big raindrops/the water falls like a sword in drops/like a tearing river of glass/it falls biting/striking the axis of symmetry, sticking to the seams of the soul/breaking abandoned things, drenching the dark." ~Pablo Neruda's "Agua Sexual"

05/31/09

Just wrapped two days of aunting: Saturday with the Funky Fresh Spongebob Crew, creating art (i.e. cutting up pieces of paper (what's up with the Pre-K's and their scissors fetish)), making Happy Meals runs, and practicing walking with a little guy clinging to my leg . . .

05/29/09

Was enjoying a loud Lilith Fair meets SugarWater drive, all dames, then, "what's this?!" She stumbled across The Blue Disk, her full on fella smix; mmmm, the cheesy goodness! From Brian McKnight's "Crazy Love" and, that's right, Tim McGraw's "She's My Kind of Rain," . . .

05/28/09

Finds Mama Day soothes when she's out of sorts: "It's the season for butterflies . . . Some years we get more than others, depending upon the wind and the amount of rain that spring. This year there's so many it's bound to be remembered as the summer when the woods bled gold."

05/24/09

Just returned from Jacksonville where she slept on Sesame Street sheets, picked seashells in the rain, hung out with one her dearest friends, and -- most wonder-full -- met her brand new godson. We've twinkled with one another, and it's official: it's a love thing.

05/17/09

Has it on good authority that wisdom and whimsy are not mutually exclusive terms. So perhaps what my sister says is true, too: being funny, kind, clevah, AND, at times, in certain situations, a bit of a flibbertygibbit -- hopelessly, hilariously so -- is [,while challenging, also charming].

05/15/09

Speaking of Rahkie, my 4-year-old nephew and King of My Heart: He was just doing his little dance for me, and now he's hanging out in the crook of my arm, holding my hand and asking "can me and you go somewhere, Auntie?" Unless Alicia Keys is in the running, I'm his "goilfwiend." I'm a lucky girl.

Favorite Posted Clips: "I Will Be Your Witness" (from Shall We Dance) & "Rolling in big, solitary raindrops" (from Amelie):

A Winter Blue Sky

2009-12-12T03:42:00.045-06:00

One day this week, while gazing out my window, I asked a friend over the phone if the sun was shining where he was; his answer struck me as somehow poetic. "Yes," he said, "the sun is shining." "But," he added,

"It's a winter blue sky."

I heard the words repeating themselves from my own lips,"a winter blue sky." Ah, yes; I knew just what he meant.

Winter. My narrative's thematic thread, my composition's bass line, at least for the moment. I've always liked the phrase "the long, dark tea time of the soul," appreciated the existential sentiment of it. But it's never quite rung true for me, almost, but not quite, perhaps because "tea time," for me, is just the stuff of Masterpiece Theatre reveries. Now, talk to me about a long, dark wintertime of the soul, then you'd be speaking my language, existentially speaking.

Maybe it's just that it's so cold here, colder than usual, it seems. And it seems the seasons changed all of a sudden. In the wee small hours of the morning, I not only feel the cold, I sense it, a palpable presence, not a little menacing, slipping around just outside the doors and windows, rattling the panes and the metal of the mailbox, trying to get in, although uninvited.

I watch for my breath on the exhale. I turn up the heat. I huddle beneath the covers with my heating pad. But then the clock blinks at me in the dark, all red-eyed indifference: 3 a.m. And bracing myself, I get up.

I have joined the Tribe Insomniac, roaming the rooms of my flat with the moments of my yesterdays, todays and tomorrows passing through the nervous fingers of my mind like worry beads. I read somewhere that if all the night-roaming women joined together, we could rule the world. I would rather sleep.

But I do have company. The music that seems mid-night's natural accompaniment, one song after another, comes to me, my internal DJ riffing on a theme, composing, seamlessly and sure, the soundtrack for a winter's night.

Oh, I've just now remembered! I am remembering, just now. A memory, like the dream that you've forgotten that comes to mind the next day, suddenly, in a flash, fully formed, into consciousness. Just now, as I write this, I am remembering . . . last evening, someone quietly singing "Adam's Song" for me, singing the words "it's time to face the dawn head on./When there's something in the wind, when the days go getting shorter/And the nights run cold and clear down here." A winter's night lullaby, it must have struck the first chord of this composition.

And upon my waking, Lilith's daughters take up where "Adam's Song" left off. Susanna wakes me with "Hazy Shade of Winter," giving way to Heart and "These Dreams" and Tori singing "Winter." But then, when my psyche's playlist pauses, just for a moment, I find it's long enough for me to slip in and cue up the hymn-like loveliness of Ingrid Michaelson "Snowfall," less heartbroken than longing, heard for the first time only hours ago:

I want a snowfall kind of love,
The kind of love that quiets the world.
I want a snowfall kind of love,
Cause I'm a snowfall kind of girl.

And I am. Born deep in the depths of December, in the waning days of the year, in the waxing days of winter; born exactly at midday, while my mother slept in twilight. On a Saturday, deep in the depths of December, exactly at mid-day, I arrived into a cool, quiet world,while my mother slept. With snowcapped Mount Fuji looming, a watchful winter sentinel, in the distance, I arrived. Born under a winter blue sky.

So, while I may long for Spring, I suppose I am Winter's own child, a snowfall kind of girl.

Some hours later now. Still winter, but winter stilled. The cold, quieted, like an Ansel Adams winterscape, its fierceness giving way to a deep, spacious calm.

I am quieted, too. The worry beads are stilled. And under this winter's night sky, I'll sleep.

Of Little Red Bags & Other Exit Strategies

2009-12-09T12:23:00.012-06:00

I deployed the little red bag on Sunday.

I've been working every single day, weekends, too, since October 1st. Two and half months into this grueling season, after having put in a full day on Saturday and Sunday, I had what one character in a Morrison novel experienced as an existential "uh-uh, no." Sitting in an oh-so long, very slowly moving fast food drive-thru line, I heard the not often heard, but unmistakable command: "Go. Just go. Now." So, once I'd made it to the window, picked up the grown up version of a Happy Meal, I hit the highway.

The little red bag made that possible.

The Little Red Bag. It travels around with me, sitting fairly innocuously on the backseat of my car. But it contains a toothbrush, duplicates of the toiletries I keep in my house, a couple of changes of clothes, and . . . freedom.

I found I needed this particular brand of freedom while I was doing hard time in graduate school more than a decade ago. After a particularly brutal graduate seminar or engagement with a faculty member or a bad day in the classroom as an apprentice prof, I decided that what I needed to do some days was leave. Just get in my car. Just go.

And the little red bag was born.

In truth, it hasn't always been a little red bag. That's the quasi-stylish, grown up version of what may well have started out as a tote bag from some conference or another. But the spirit of the LRB has been consistent. It's the "I know like I know like I know that I know" spirit that speaks from somewhere down deep inside, where some elemental Truth lies, that brings to consciousness the knowing: "I am lost; here in this moment, I am lost, and I have to leave, right now, to find myself again."

And off I'd go.

The motion, the sense of breaking free of the city, of that life, of that self that seemed so unlike me, was the first part. The destination? Home, with a capital-H. To the Ocean, just in time for the golden hour. Wherever it was that I knew (like I knew that knew) that I could be found again.

That bag is solace. I can be elsewhere when "here" is inhospitable, humiliating, even hostile. Elsewhere. Where I will be safe and cared for in some deep and abiding way. Even if it's by me, myself.

On Sunday, though, it was by my sister, she who is also my sisterfriend. I turned up on her doorstep, little red bag in hand, and she took me in with a hug and a delicious homecooked meal. (And a companion to watch the cooly surreal "Alice" on the Syfy channel.)

On Sunday, my sister was Home; I found sanctuary and a semblance of my self.

I'm back now, in My Life, where "worn and weary to the bone" is, unfortunately, a phrase I sometimes find myself using daily. But in my car, every now and then, I'll glance in my rearview mirror and catch a glimpse of red. And I know like I know that I know: I can always go. And that knowing, well, it keeps me going.

Of Love Songs & Leading Ladies

2009-12-02T08:09:00.009-06:00

Funny the things you think of in your first waking moments. For days now, I've had bits of Eliot's "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" meandering through my mind as I wake. One morning it was the mermaids -- "I do not think they will sing to me." Another day, it was the "butt ends of my days," the coffee spoons, and, of course, ah, yes!, the peach. Do I dare . . . ?

This morning, quite unexpectedly, J. Alfred made the acquaintance of Iris from the film "The Holiday." May I say theirs was a "meet cute"? Iconic literary figure of the early 20th century and chick flick character of the early 21st century, yes, but these two, they have much in common.

Thwarted. Somehow, in some form or fashion, that is their signal quality. They're both painfully, poignantly, and quite often by their own hand, but, too, through no great fault of their own, thwarted. Trying, haplessly, at time, hopelessly, to find their way through landscapes where people come and, alas, they go. Trying to make sense of the senseless, the "that is not what I meant at all/that is not it at all," and, as Eliot put it in one of my favorite poetic passages, all those "tedious arguments of insidious intent."

But most insidious of all? Their own notions about who they are and where they fit, not just in the world, but in the narratives of their own lives. That was the thing that drew them together in my first conscious thought of the day. That is to say, that's what drew us, we three, together.

It was Iris who spoke first.

The elderly filmmaker tells her "in the movies, we have leading ladies and we have the best friend. You, I can tell, are the Leading Lady, but for some reason, you're behaving like the Best Friend."

And she responds, and this is what I heard as I woke, "You're supposed to be the Leading Lady in your own life, for God's sake!"

Blame it on my day job, because then J. Alfred began to sing his sad song in response,

"No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;

Am an attendant lord, one that will do

To swell a progress, start a scene or two,

Advise the prince, no doubt, an easy tool,

Deferrential, glad to be of use,

Politic, cautious, and meticulous;

Full of high sentence, but a bit obtuse;

at time, indeed, almost ridiculous --

Almost, at times, the Fool."

The third one in this conversation? That would be me. I have yet to speak. (Unless this counts ;0). But I'll be thinking about It: about Iris and J. Alfred; about Love Songs and Leading Ladies; about that damned peach! About What It All Means.

And I'll keep you posted.

What is a poem?

2009-11-17T10:15:00.007-06:00

While meandering through the blogosphere, I came across this wonderful patch of words . . .

"You know that kid in your class you like to pick on? The one you call “Booger” or “Cot-Wetter”? The one who has no grasp of the fundamentals of dodge ball?
The one who stares? The one who talks constantly of the birdness of birds and the greenness of grass? The one who knows what “fey” means? That kid has a rich, inner life. He/she sees shit. He/she hears shit. Even now that kid is endeavoring to master the verbs and adjectives that you so wantonly cast aside for jacks and rope skipping; he/she is gathering up all the beauty locked deep inside him/her, beauty that may seem unbeautiful and ludicrous to you, kid, but trust me, beauty it is. And one day, not too long from now, he/she is going to unleash that beauty, unbridled and bright, onto the pages of obscure literary journals and into the ears of frequently dispassionate listeners all across this wide land of ours. He/she may even unleash a blog. That unleashing is called poetry, or a poem, or a blog. A poem is an essential function of humanity. A poem is the saving grace of our loveless culture. A poem is what keeps the Divine Right of Kings from being true. So, don’t be too hard on that kid. There are perfect flowers waving behind his/her vacant eyes. A well-placed knock to the head could ruin all that."

~Poet Tim Earley on how he would explain what a poem is to a seven year old~

How do you spell "artist"?

2009-11-12T06:31:00.005-06:00

Sunday morning. My niece and nephews have spent the night, but somehow, despite the presence of a 4 year old and a 6 and 7 year old, the house is quiet when I wake. I pass my brother in the hall.

"Hey, what's going on?" I ask, clearly querying him on the absence of giggling, shrieking, and so forth.

"The kids are up front; they're drawing," he replies.

Just then, I hear one of their sweet voices, sometimes I can't quite distingush them, one from the other, ask a question of his grandmother.

"How do you spell 'artist'?"

A moment later, an offering to me, for my ever growing, much treasured Auntie's Collection. It is a drawing of a pumpkin --Halloween's just passed -- a very good one, drawn in my favorite color, purple. My 7-year-old nephew it was, I now see, the one asking the question; he is the one making the offering, something for my refrigerator or wall, yes, but also, as always, for my heart.

And, too, for my soul, for this ongoing contemplation of mine: how to lay claim to, reclaim for one's self, one's authentic creative self. The little ones know, before they forget. And sure enough, he has offered me an answer. Just there, across the bottom, he has signed it, quite simply but resolutely, as is his way.

"Elijah the Artist"

A Friend of Mind

2009-11-04T17:08:00.005-06:00

~The monthly Morrison post (part 2)~

"She is a friend of mind. She gather me, man. The pieces I am, she gather them and give them back to me in all the right order. It's good, you know, when you got a woman who is a friend of your mind." ~from Beloved

A Someone Like the Dreamer

2009-11-04T08:30:00.017-06:00

~The monthly Morrison post (part 1)~ Call & Response: "Home Be the Temple of My Heart"

"They were solitary little girls whose loneliness was so profound it intoxcated them and sent them stumbling into Technicolored visions that always included a presence, a someone, who, quite like the dreamer, shared the delight of the dream. They found in each other's eyes the intimacy they were longing for . . . [Her sisterfriend] was the one person who had wanted nothing from her, who had accepted all aspects of her. [She] was the first person who had been real to her, whose name she knew, who had seen as she had the slant of life." ~from Sula

Home be the temple of my heart.

2009-10-31T22:18:00.025-05:00

There is a little purple notebook that floats about in the dark recesses of my bag, its pages the repository of all manner of scribblings, from the ridiculous to the sublime: random lyrics half heard in a coffeehouse, bits of poetry, directions, addresses, my "to do or not to do" lists.

Two days ago, I opened the little purple notebook and turned to these words, written quite legibly, but still somehow inscrutably, in my own hand:

Home be the temple of my heart.

I wrote the words sometime this past summer, during my stay at the Omega Institute, after a conversation with my camp friend, K, I think. I haven't been able to find them elsewhere. Then again, they are, unto themselves, enough.

Home be the temple of my heart.

I realized later, after I'd driven from my home in the college town where I teach, Home, with a capital-H, to the house where I did the better part of my growing up, that these words, stumbled across in the afternoon, were a part of some other conversation or consideration or half conscious contemplation that had started earlier in the day, that morning, when the first words to a song I hadn't heard in some time, came to me, unbidden, in the last moment of a dream or the first moment of my waking.

"All of my life I've been searching for someone to find me."

These words, the opening line of a seldom heard song from a little regarded soundtrack of a film that, while not memorable, had its moments, one of them this song, "You Are My Home."

I'll confess, 10 years ago or so when I first heard the song, I heard it solely for the romantic anthem it was no doubt intended to be. And I swooned.

I'm older now. Maybe my heart, still sometimes wily and wild, is also wiser. Because when I hear the song "You Are My Home," although there's still that girl inside who swoons at some romantic ideal of love, there's also the woman, one who loves here in The Real, one who is most moved by the simple, sure knowing that the words "you are my home" can also bear witness to, serve as no greater testimony to, the so rare gift of true friendship.

It isn't easy to find our tribe, our kindred. It's such a big world. But it happens. Usually in an instant. A flash of recognition. Something down deep exhales, sighs. You are my kind. And I am no longer in exile, alone, stranded in a foreign land. You speak my language. You understand. I can sing the song of myself! Knowing, deep down and to the bone, that you'll sing it with me. Such solace. Sweet sanctuary. Something sacred. You have found me. And I am saved.

Because I am home. Because you are my Friend. And my home.

Ah, so; there it is then. That something rare, that something sacred. A sense of sanctuary. My friend, my home. And my heart. Home be the temple of my heart.

~for Calliope, Claudia (m.e.), and Chuck (c.f.)~

A Preview of Life's Coming Attractions

2009-10-23T14:09:00.034-05:00

Choreography by Mia Michaels (dance)

I Dream a World (photography)

Enchanted April (film)

Indigo Girls' Rites of Passage (music)

Griffin & Sabine: An Extraordinary Correspondence (book/art)

The screen is more than blank; it is black.

The fan, it whirrrrrs away, but there, on the table, the laptop sits otherwise silent. So silent this morning. This morning, no response.

To the Geek Squad? Perhaps.

Perhaps because I have named my Gateway, Greta, she simply wants to be alone. For a bit. Not so much a fallow season, as we humans should allow ourselves, but a quiet moment. A pause.

So, for the moment, I must pause, too. I close my eyes, "look" behind my lids for those things I'd hoped to share. Inspirations. They will come; I will write. But in the meantime, above and below, previews . . . Hope Floats, the Coming Attractions.

"If you surrender to the air, you can ride it."

2009-10-20T22:42:00.015-05:00

"And just outside my window, people are learning to fly." ~journal excerpt, Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, NY, Summer 2009

Earlier, I'd made my way across the muddy meadow where the tent was pitched to watch the lessons with K., an artist from near Austin and my first Omega friend. We'd "recognized" each other across the baggage claim area while waiting for the shuttle to pick us up to take us to the campus. She was taking a course called "Memoir as Bewilderment" and I, having dissuaded myself from the experience of laying myself bare in that very class, was doing a weeklong tai chi training in hopes that, at long last, I might develop a practice, even teach.

But in that Present Moment, I simply wanted to move back into a body that I'd all but abandoned for the professorial life of the mind. As I prepared to move into Act II, I knew I needed to feel Body/Mind/Soul whole . . . centered, grounded.

"I'm afraid of heights," K. told me. "So you're thinking about doing it," I'd said, more than asked. We both nodded, looking up and holding our breath, as some new someone reached out for the trapeze, and swung out into the air.

"And just outside my window, people are learning to fly." When I wrote those words, caught off guard by the sweet serendipity of the trapeze being so near, it was the metaphor of flight that most moved me. Right below that line, I wrote what is possibly my favorite in all of literature, the last line of Toni Morrison's novel Song of Solomon.

"If you surrender to the air, you can ride it."

Now, several weeks later, it's another passage from Morrison, from the novel Sula, that comes to me when I reflect back on the trapeze, its lessons about flight, and the process of recovery . . . of creativity, of authenticity, of self.

"But the free fall, oh no, that required -- demanded -- invention: a thing to do with the wings, a way of holding the legs and most of all a full surrender to the downward flight if they wished to taste their tongues or stay alive."

That day in the muddy meadow while K. and I and others watched, and, later, as I peered through the leaves of the trees from my room, I all but missed it, entranced by the metaphor and magic . . . The paces the students were put through on the ground had everything to do with how to catch AND how to release, when to crossover AND when to stay; these new aerialists (and one of us, yes, my friend from Texas, would eventually join their number), with safety belts, lines, and net securely in place, were learning how to fly . . . and how to fall.

Even though I'm still making sense of this for the purposes of my own Second Act, here's the thing that I know for sure: whether they took flight or fell, they risked the free fall, daring to surrender to the air; to a person, they seemed the richer for the ride. And, we, their witnesses, applauding them for their audacity, found ourselves breathless, both from the vicarious thrill of the wind against our cheeks and the now waking dream of trying our own wings.

Poets, Artists, and Mad(wo)men

2009-10-18T08:46:00.015-05:00

"Much madness is divinest sense," Emily Dickinson wrote. Those words make me think about this film, Benny & Joon, one of my favorites, rented over and over again for years, until I finally bought it earlier this year.

I remember the first time I was a part of a conversation about madness and creativity. I was a high school senior, poetry editor of our literary journal. The staff was sitting around in the classroom where we were based -- we did a lot of that, sitting around, waiting for the art to come -- when someone asked Ms. Phillips, our advisor, why so many artists and writers were, let's just say, unwell.

I remember I came out of my 6th period trance to listen to her response, but I have never been able to remember what she said.

I think the question was the thing.

Recently, my brother, the therapist (and, yes, the 16-year-old diagnostician of the "Artist Interrupted" post), told me that one of his fellow counselors was in New Mexico at a conference entitled "Madness & Creativity." I immediately wanted to go or, more metaphysically, to be her or to at least talk to her immediately upon her return.

That question, again: why are so many creative people either somewhat "odd," a little "unwell," or a whole lot "mad"?

Many of the creative people I know are negotiating landscapes that are both shadow and light. I am among them, a creative soul who is not unfamiliar with the shadowlands.

Why? Is the same brain chemistry that creates the artistic temperment the one that makes us mad? Is the way we see and feel the world, intensely, deeply, what sends us toward the shadows? Physiology or Psychology? Cause & Effect? Which comes first, the artist or the madman?

While it illuminates some of the shadows, this beautiful film is infused with light, but a certain quality of light: that late afternoon, just before evening, golden hour light, some rare, poignant convergence of liquid honey and candlelight. It doesn't necessarily answer "that question," but it serves as testimony and affirmation. And, because it does, it both breaks my heart and heals it.

Revelatory Words

2009-10-15T22:57:00.002-05:00

"In a way, her strangeness, her naiveté, her craving for the other half of her equation was the consequence of an idle imagination. Had she paints, or clay, or knew the discipline of the dance, or strings, had she anything to engage her tremendous curiosity and her gift for metaphor, she might have exchanged the restlessness and preoccupation with whim for an activity that provided her with all she yearned for.

And like any artist with no art form, she became dangerous."

~Toni Morrison's Sula

Succulent Wild Woman

2009-10-14T23:37:00.015-05:00

For the rest of the month of October, I'll be sharing some of the books, music, and films that have inspired me creatively. I begin with a work that, when I think of the wellsprings sourcing my adult creative life, immediately comes to mind; it's the one that somehow came to me when I was most in need of a creative revival.

When I discovered this book in the late 90s, it felt like a balm for my parched spirit. Too many years in graduate school, dispassionatley toiling away in the critical fields of academe, had left my world colorless, dry. I was longing for something soulful, something that felt full up to overflowing with Life . . . big, vibrant, messy, alive Life.

Sark's book, this bright, beautiful piece of book art, was what I was longing for, and I carried it around with me for months, like a child's security blanket, like a shield, like some sacred text.

The opening pages, an invocation, a call to . . .

Invent your life over if it doesn't feel juicy
Discover your own goodness
Cradle your wounded places like precious babies
Marry yourself and promise never to leave you
Be rare, eccentric, and original

Succulent Wild Woman is an invitation to "dance with your wonder-full self." For more than a decade, it has gently encouraged me to answer the call to a fuller, more authentic life. To dare to be rare, eccentric, and original. Succulent. Sometimes Wild. A Woman, fully realized.

And, in the process of inspiring me to create, it has given me permission to dance.

"You need chaos in your soul to give birth to a dancing star." ~Nietzsche

2009-10-13T20:46:00.021-05:00

"So what's feeding your dreams these days? what keeps your creative passion alive?"

A few mornings ago, I found myself reading these words, my own, in an email message that I sent out earlier this year to a photographer whose work I came upon and admired. I wanted to continue the "conversation" that started when I saw him images. So I wrote him.

"After you cross over into your mid/late 30s, it's harder to say "I want to be an artist." Folks think 'humph . . . dreamer.' On good days I can think right back 'damn right and proud of it!' Other days I have to find myself some company, other creative folks who are living their passion, doing their art. And I reach out, hoping they don't mind, might enjoy rapping a little about creativity and art and life."

I was about to delete it -- there was no response, no creative exchange -- but then I paused to read what I wrote and realized that, even though there was no response, the words, my words, were worthy to be written.

"I woke up this morning thinking about Gordon Parks. How he said photography was his weapon of choice . . . love that!"

Those words were worthy to be written. And so it follows, my words are worthy to be written, even if I'm the only one reading.

"Isn't it something how photography can make people more human and real, especially to folks who would ordinarily turn away? Making the invisible visible is a form of magic."

The photograph is worthy to be taken.

And the painting is worthy to be painted.

The music to be played.

The song to be sung.

Even if we think we're the only one who will read it/see it/hear it . . .

We can choose to write it/shoot it/paint it/play it/sing it . . . anyway.

When we do, each in our own rare way, aren't we sourced by chaos and, too, something akin to magic? to alchemy?

And, look, there be our dancing star.

There be Grace.

Everyday Saviors

2009-10-10T09:43:00.014-05:00

Everyday Saviors: A Haiku Series
Dedicated to The Boys of Summer

~ On the occasion of C.L.'s 40th Birthday ~

Thanks for the wings, dear friend. Much Love!

Everyday Saviors: Haiku I

2009-10-10T09:22:00.009-05:00

"Toi"

The first starlit night on Earth!

Alabama sky.

Years 'fore the last known star fell.

Everyday Saviors: Haiku II

2009-10-10T08:27:00.021-05:00

"Wings"

Make "Messiah" of a man?

Sooner or later,

Yes, you will crucify him.

2.
Choir sings: "Some glad morning,

when this life's over,
I'm going to fly away."

3.
Once was Savior, Heaven sent.
Then, down from that cross,
Now: his hand, mine. This world. We.

Everyday Saviors: Haiku III

2009-10-09T19:19:00.010-05:00

"Untitled"

ManChild: moon marked, lion heart;

Indigo blue soul.

You're sun-kissed shadows and grace.

"I Miss the Mountains"

2009-10-03T13:49:00.004-05:00

From the Tony Award winning musical Next to Normal.

"I Miss the Mountains"

DIANA

There was a time when I flew higher/Was a time the wild girl running free would be me/Now I see her, feel the fire/Now I know she needs me there to share/I'm nowhere.

All these blank and tranquil years/Seems they've dried up all my tears/And while she runs free and fast/Seems my wild days are past.

But I miss the mountains/I miss the dizzy heights/All the manic magic days/And the dark depressing nights/I miss the mountains/I miss the highs and lows/All the climbing, all the falling/All the while the wild wind blows/Stinging you with snow/And soaking you with rain/I miss the mountains/I miss the pain.

Mountains make you crazy/Here it's safe and sound/My mind is somewhere hazy/My feet are on the ground/Everything is balanced here/And on an even keel/Everything is perfect/Nothing's real/Nothing's real.

And I miss the mountains/I miss lowly climb/Wandering through the wilderness/And spending all my time/Where the air is clear and cuts you like a knife/I miss the mountains/I, I miss the mountains/I miss my life/I miss my life.

Artist Interrupted

2009-10-01T00:14:00.012-05:00

It was during one of my weekend visits home from college. A 19-year-old sophomore at the time, I was immersed in my studies in literature and magazine journalism and quietly, or so I thought, dreaming dreams of a "Big, Bright Future."

My younger brother, who would go on to become a therapist, was a 16-year-old high school senior taking his first psychology class. Unbeknownst to me, I was to be his first case study. (Such is the way of little brothers, no?)

We were all, the whole family, having lunch at some fast food restaurant, when he cleared his throat, looked across the table at me, and, as deadpan earnest as could be, made the following pronouncement.

"Well, I've figured you out. You're manic depressive with delusions of grandeur."

Apparently, it sounded right to the rest of the family and, quite frankly, to me, too. Folks of color have an expression: "not without laughter." So we did. And then, as we are also wont to do, we kept on keeping on.

All these years later, every now and then, someone will say, "remember when D. diagnosed you with delusions of grandeur?" And there is still laughter. But the laughter now is out of nostalgia. Not because it sounds right to them.

Nor to me.

Why wasn't I oh-so offended when my brother offered his professional 16-year-old opinion? Why doesn't that long ago pronouncement still ring true? And why does the fact that it doesn't make me more than a little sad?

It's simple really. What else was he describing if not my creative temperment? What else was he doing but acknowledging that I was an Artist?

I remember well the year, maybe even the moment, I realized that my brother's words no longer held. By then, I was a graduate student in my mid-20s, teaching college freshmen and sophomores. A former student had invited me to have lunch with her and her friend. During lunch they were telling me about their Plans to not just start a magazine, but to launch a magazine that would anchor a whole multimedia enterprise.

And, even as I enthusiastically asked questions about their plans and listened, I was thinking "So young. Beautifully so. And such Big Dreams! I remember those."

As I walked back toward my office, a hush seemed to have fallen over everything. I remember being unable to really look at anything or anyone around me, so I was looking down (for some reason, I remember there was a chalking, a pre-quarter century endeavor, for some event or another).

And it came to me, the actual words that ran through my mind, that I would say aloud to my therapist at my next session:

"I've lost my Delusions of Grandeur."

I felt bereft in that moment of realization, dazed, even ill. Even though I still had goals, those capital-D Dreams? Those Delusions? They'd served as the source of some secret sense I had that, even though I hadn't been brave enough to major in Theatre or Dance or Creative Writing (oldest child, sensible to a fault), still somehow, in the words of an old Travis Tritt song (that I still have on cassingle): I was going to be somebody someday.

And I am. As far as the world is concerned, and certainly my family and friends, I'm somebody. I'm just not the somebody I think I planned to be. Before I lost my Delusions of Grandeur.

Change of Seasons

2009-09-22T13:41:00.005-05:00

Returning to Our Regularly Scheduled Programming . . .

~Please Stay Tuned!~

Sliding Doors

2009-09-22T09:55:00.009-05:00

A Meditation

(and, yes, a quietly provocative little film starring

the lovely Gwyneth Paltrow ;0)

Say What You Need to Say

2009-09-22T09:22:00.033-05:00

"It's better to say too much/Than never to say what you need to say.

Even if your hands are shakin'/And your faith is broken/

Do it with a heart wide open.

Say what you need to say."

The Wanting

2009-09-20T16:49:00.004-05:00

. . . is the hardest part.

But, Lest We Forget . . .

2009-09-20T16:02:00.015-05:00

. . . The Getting? It can be awfully, but wonder-fully, messy!

That Truth

2009-09-19T20:03:00.006-05:00

"[This man] knows the truth of you, and he is dazzled by that truth."

One moment I was breathing, heart beating, and then I heard those words. My breath caught, heart stopped, and I felt tears well up for a moment in my eyes.

It was such a small, quiet moment: the season premiere of a show I watch had the inimitable Cyndi Lauper as a guest star, playing a psychic named Avalon, who, in reading one of the lead character's cards, spoke those words, "he knows the truth of you, and he is dazzled by that truth."

Just a moment, a bit of dialogue. But everything went still.

That's it, isn't it? The heart of the matter? The reason for art, for poetry, music . . . for love? To express the truth of who we are, yes, but also to have that truth known.

To have that truth accepted?! Even celebrated?! To know that someone knows the truth of who we are and is dazzled by it . . .

THAT truth . . . it would illuminate the world.

The Pieces

2009-09-08T20:03:00.008-05:00

From Nick & Nora's Infinite Playlist ('08)

Nora: That reminds me of this part of Judaism that I really like. It's called Tikkun Olam. It says the world's been broken into pieces, and it's everybody's job to find them and put them back together again.

Nick: Well, maybe we're the pieces. You know? Maybe we're not supposed to find the pieces; maybe we are the pieces.

Dear Abby: On Disappointment

2009-09-07T19:26:00.018-05:00

In keeping with the themes of the last post, one of the best bits of dialogue from one of my Favorite Films of All Times (FFoAT), The Truth about Cats & Dogs.

Abby: I was staring at him, and he was just so uninterested in staring back at me. I don't want that kind of disappointment.

Noelle: Disappointment doesn't kill.

Abby: Right. Rejection kills. Disappointment only maims.

AMEN.

BUT, in a blatant misappropriation of the words of F. Scott, in one of my FNoAT, Gatsby, "we beat on, boats against the current."

Disappointed . . .

Rejected . . .

In our Art . . .

With all our Hearts . . .

We beat on.

Everybody Plays the Fool

2009-09-05T13:36:00.014-05:00

"Everybody plays the fool . . . sometimes."

That song's been running through my head for a while now, the soundtrack to a Battle Royal between my Heart and my Head. It feels like a battle to the death, but, then again, doesn't it always when those two go at it?

Don't we always think we'll never survive IT: the blow to the heart if we go for IT, and it doesn't turn out the way we've been dreaming? We think THIS time, it will do us in; we'll come out not just bruised, but broken. Irrevocably.

So we start to do a bit of risk management. Trying to minimize the risk of disappointment. Of rejection. Of playing the fool. Through whatever means necessary: subterfuge; smoke & mirrors and misdirection; a wink & a smile.

Sleight of hand . . . sleight of heart.

And we manage to fool some of the people some of the time. But we can rarely ever fool ourselves. The head must make concessions to the heart -- unwillingly, but oh, the heart can be both wily and wild -- until we know, and we know that we know.

One of the things that we know down deep, deep down and to the bone, is that to be true -- in Life, in Art, in Love -- you must risk feeling a fool, seeming a fool, playing the fool, BEING a fool.

But, what if, after so many years of being in the corner, quietly resigned to wearing the dunce's cap, what if, in the immortal words of Luther, you just don't want to be a fool, ever again?

Can you be authentic?

Can you be an artist?

Can you love with an open heart?

Go Ask Alice: On Becoming Authentic

2009-08-31T22:05:00.008-05:00

"Be Nobody's Darling"

Be nobody's darling;
Be an outcast.
Take the contradictions
Of your life
And wrap around
You like a shawl,
To parry stones
To keep you warm.

Watch the people succumb
To madness
With ample cheer;
Let them look askance at you
And you askance reply.

Be an outcast;
Be pleased to walk alone
(Uncool)
Or line the crowded
River beds
With other impetuous Fools.
Make a merry gathering
On the bank
Where thousands perished
For brave hurt words
They said.

Be nobody's darling;
Be an outcast.
Qualified to live
Among your dead.

Muscle Memory

2009-08-22T23:15:00.010-05:00

I've been thinking a lot recently about the phenomenon of muscle memory: the muscles become so accustomed to a repeated movement/action/activity that they store it, "remember" it, even if the action ceases for some time; when the action is resumed, it is physiologically "familiar" and the muscles, in effect, pick up where they left off, returning much more readily to a high level of performance. At least that's the way I understand it.

Until recently, I'd only ever thought about muscle memory in relation to the physical body, as something having to do with athletes and dancers, maybe musicians.

And, too, as something to coax myself back onto the walking path after a season of stillness. "Yes, it will be hard for a moment, but your body will remember and, before you know it, ease . . . it will come back to you, as natural as breathing."

I've also started thinking about muscle memory as a wonder-full metaphor for creativity; if we allow our creativity regular romps, it becomes less a space of resistance -- that first time back out on the walking path -- and more a source of wellbeing, of ease . . . as natural to us as breathing. When our creativity goes unexpressed, like those muscles we don't use, it atrophies. We have to rehab it. Thus, creative recovery.

********

Now my musings about muscle memory have taken me elsewhere, or maybe actually to the heart of the matter.

The heart is a muscle, isn't it?

And isn't love an exercise, an action . . . something we DO with our hearts?

If the principles of muscle memory hold true of the heart, then the more we love, the more often we love, the better we'd be at it, no?

And if once we love someone, won't the heart remember? Even after a season of silence. In the immortal words of Whitney: "And if somebody loves you/Won't they always love you?"

And if the heart remembers . . . ?

These questions, my worry stone, between thumb and index finger; a breath meditation, inhale/exhale; call-and-response, to whom/from whom . . . a self-contained Socratic exchange, both "teacher" and "student," seeking wisdom.

And some answers. Even to the half asked questions.

The heart? In all its inscrutable silence, still it sighs . . . yes.

(****For S.O.'s past, especially J.D.R., on his 40th Birthday ****)

Portrait of the Artist as a Little Girl (II)

2009-08-16T11:40:00.004-05:00

One of my favorite artists and I are lying side by side, staring up at the white popcorn ceiling above us. We are discussing plans for her first gallery show.

But first I have to explain what a "gallery" is. And a "show." I think "cocktails," "commissions," and "valet parking" will have to wait. She is, after all, only six.

The artist, Aaliyah, is my niece (and, yes, Rocky's sister). A beautiful little left handed creative dervish, she may have gone off to first grade last week, in the fine tradition of six year olds everywhere, with no front teeth to speak of, but she has to show for her summer several new songs of her own composition, a choreographed dance or two, and a drawerful of artwork.

As a visual artist, Aaliyah's work can be intensly colorful and abstract -- a yellow hand floats in a sea of orange or the number 1 appears in a painstakingly painted shade of purple -- or akin to printmaking: words and numbers in some precocious or prescient order. Only time will tell. (I, myself, received many slips of paper this summer with my name followed by a heart and a question mark; I consider them my own personal zen koans, my meditation objects; they also make excellent bookmarks.)

I started the art drawer for her when her creative projects started to overflow from the folder my mother, her grandmother, had given her.

"This drawer is just for my art?" she asked, clearly astonished and beside herself that her creative work warranted a space unto itself. But, of course, it does.

When I was six, there was a moment when my artwork hung in public spaces all around the suburb of Boston where we lived.

Somewhere in my mother's house, perhaps in a drawer, there is a folder, and in that folder there is a flyer, and on that flyer there is an image, a reproduction of a child's painting: a painting of a little girl, wearing a jaunty little beret, standing at an easel painting a little girl walking a dog. It won first place for grades K-3, a place in the local art show, and was displayed in malls and supermarkets throughout our community.

I never saw my painting hanging in those spaces, however. Maybe it was winter, and my young, Southern parents were still trying to figure out how to navigate all that snow and ice. Maybe it was during the period when my father had a broken leg . . . from slipping on a patch of that ice. Or when my mother had two jobs. I don't remember the reason why we didn't go to the art show or venture out to one of the other venues. I just remember that we didn't.

More than three decades later, I'm lying there looking up at the ceiling with another six year old, and I am telling her that her work will be hung on white walls and many people will come to see it. I tell her that they will stand in front of her paintings and say "look how colorful! how beautiful!" And they will want to have one of her pieces to hang it in their very own homes. I tell her that after everyone has had a chance to walk through the gallery and see her art, someone will introduce her: the artist, Aaliyah. And we'll all applaud.

"You'll be there, auntie?" she asks.

"Oh, yes, sweetpea," I say, "I'll be there." I'll be the one telling stories about the artist as a little girl.

And there's a very good chance I'll be wearing a beret.

"If you surrender to the air, you can ride it."

2009-08-12T17:08:00.018-05:00

"And just outside my window, people are learning to fly." ~journal excerpt, Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, NY, Summer 2009

It took me two days to realize that the beautiful white tent, seemingly billowing off at a great distance in a far away field, was actually just behind my cabin. Blame my wonky spatial sense, but it took those two days to realize that, if I looked out the window of my tiny little room just so, just through the topmost branches of the poplars that made it seem as though my lodging for the week was some wonder-full grown-up version of a treehouse, I could see them, taking to the air . . . on the flying trapeze.

Earlier, I'd made my way across the muddy meadow where the tent was pitched to watch the lessons with Kathi, an artist from near Austin and my first Omega friend. We'd "recognized" each other across the baggage claim area while waiting for the shuttle to pick us up to take us to the campus. She was taking a course called "Memoir as Bewilderment" and I, having dissuaded myself from the experience of laying myself bare in that very class, was doing a weeklong tai chi training in hopes that, at long last, I might develop a practice, even teach. But in that Present Moment, I simply wanted to move back into a body that I'd all but abandoned for the professorial life of the mind. As I prepared to move into Act II, I knew I needed to feel Body/Mind/Soul whole . . . centered, grounded.

"I'm afraid of heights," Kathi told me. "So you're thinking about doing it," I'd said, more than asked. We both nodded, looking up and holding our breath, as some new someone reached out for the trapeze, and swung out into the air.

"And just outside my window, people are learning to fly." When I wrote those words, caught off guard by the sweet serendipity of the trapeze being so near, it was the metaphor of flight that most moved me. Right below that line, I wrote what is possibly my favorite in all of literature, the last line of Toni Morrison's novel Song of Solomon.

"If you surrender to the air, you can ride it."

Now, several weeks later, it's another passage from Morrison, from the novel Sula, that comes to me when I reflect back on the trapeze, its lessons about flight, and the process of recovery . . . of creativity, of authenticity, of self.

"But the free fall, oh no, that required -- demanded -- invention: a thing to do with the wings, a way of holding the legs and most of all a full surrender to the downward flight if they wished to taste their tongues or stay alive."

That day in the muddy meadow while Kathi and I and others watched, and, later, as I peered through the leaves of the trees from my room, I all but missed it, entranced by the metaphor and magic . . . The paces the students were put through on the ground had everything to do with how to catch AND how to release, when to crossover AND when to stay; these new aerialists (and one of us, yes, my friend from Texas, would eventually join their number), with safety belts, lines, and net securely in place, were learning how to fly . . . and how to fall.

Even though I'm still making sense of this for the purposes of my own Second Act, here's the thing that I know for sure: whether they took flight or fell, they risked the free fall, daring to surrender to the air; to a person, they seemed the richer for the ride. And, we, their witnesses, applauding them for their audacity, found ourselves breathless, both from the vicarious thrill of the wind against our cheeks and the now waking dream of trying our own wings.

Creativity 101: Failing . . . magnificently!

2009-08-09T20:38:00.001-05:00

She was quieter than the rest of us. Not out of any seeming shyness; no, that didn't seem to be it at all. She was older (in her 70s), and just quietly purposeful, seemingly more mindful of how quickly studio time passed than we were. Intent upon the work at hand. Her beautiful, but hard to place accent heard only as she stopped to ask questions of the teacher.

Then, one day, while we worked with the clay in our Beginning Ceramics class, passing around the mud-like slip that would hold our creations together, turning coils of clay into cups and vases and pitchers, she suddenly started sharing her most amazing life story . . .

Bohemia/Czech Republic/Central Europe, persecution, escape, camps, starvation, hard labor, eventual emigration to the US.

What I never did learn was how she came to be in the little town where we, otherwise worlds apart, were taking this pottery class together through the local Parks & Recreation Association just this past Spring. She was the best of the bunch of us, not a novice for some time, it seemed to me, entering the gallery/studio space with purpose and a plan: bird house, planter, etc. I just wanted to come out with a mug, maybe, and the experience of having been in a real, working artist's studio for several weeks. I wanted access, to feel the clay under my hand -- it was a handbuilding class (i.e. no Demi Moore/Patrick Swayze pottery wheel ala Ghost) -- and to set aside a couple of hours each Wednesday for creativity.

Here's the thing: I am not a kinesthetic learner. At all. There's that box of art supplies from the drawing class that lasted a few weeks, the guitar, and other assorted, discarded, hands-on objects that I just couldn't pick up. Or didn't . . . as in didn't give myself the time and space to get to the "got it!"

That's the other thing: I'm a terrible beginner.

I was 25 before anyone ever even introduced me to the concept of allowing myself to be a beginner. I think there are a lot of oldests and onlies out there who can relate. How is it that, even if no one says it outright, we get the message that we have to be able to do it RIGHT, the FIRST time, or . . . We. Shouldn't. Do. It. At. All.

But, as the year 2009 rolled in, I committed, again, to my creative recovery, signing up for Beginning Ceramics with my friend, Laura. Wednesday mornings, 10-12, bliss! Just BEING in the wonderfully dusty studio space in the back of a gallery watching our unexpectedly dishy teacher demonstrating each of the three handbuilding techniques -- pinching, coiling, and slab work. Absolutely enthralled, just listening: yes, please do tell me, "Teach," about the different kinds of clay, where they come from, the history of pottery since the Early So 'n' So period. Then, yes, I want to know all about all the different cultural contexts in which Face Mugs, our final project, can be found.

I am so very good at the listening. Ever the student, auditory/visual me: yes, talk to me, yes, show me . . . just don't ask me to actually DO anything. Because, I confessed, when I was clearly not bustling about with 10 projects in the works bound for the kiln, I'm not so much good at the doing. Head, yes. Heart, oh-so. But hands . . .

And that is when she looked up, brush pausing in midair over some astonishingly lovely something that she was working on, her face weathered and, now familiar, lovely, too, to look right at me, maybe for the first time, to offer me the words that, along with a singular mug and a couple of little pinch built whatnots, were my greatest takeaways from my six weeks in the class.

********************************************************************************************************************

"Oh, no, my dear," she said, with something uncharacteristically like a twinkle in her eye, "don't be afraid to fail. Just fail magnificently!!"

********************************************************************************************************************

I realized then that there must be soooo much more to her extraordinary story. And, too, that I'd better get on with the failing if I hoped to have a story of my own worth telling.

"Welcome to my world!"

2009-08-08T10:09:00.000-05:00

These were the first words my 4-year-old nephew spoke to me this morning. Seriously. Grinning up at me, sounding, as usual, for all the world like his friend Elmo, and sweeping his arm in a grand arc, in a kind of Mr. Roarke/Ricardo Montalban on Fantasy Island manner, "good morning, auntie; welcome to my world!"

So, even if I hadn't already planned to write about him and his mohawk as a site of authenticity and a source of inspiration, this slightly (slightly?) meglomaniacal moment would have usurped whatever subject I had in mind.

I call my littlest nephew "Rocky," in part because it sounds like a short form of his name, but mostly because his punk rock ways were in evidence as soon as he could walk. I remember walking behind him when he was maybe a year and a half old, and, even though he was "toddling," he was doing so with swagger. And I said aloud, to no one in particular, "oh, I get it; he's a dude!"

Before he could walk? Well, he'd just roll himself into the other kids, aiming at the back of their knees to knock them down, bring them down to his level. His father, my brother, says that's a wrestling move (ah, genes! that was my brother's high school sport), but I'm pretty sure that, if there were still mosh pits (are there? am I dating myelf?), he'd teach 'em a thing or two.

So, now he's sporting a mohawk. My sister told me about it yesterday, and I got to lay eyes on it last night. It will likely cause a bit of a stir at the church daycare to which he'll be returning on Monday, but . . . It's. Just. So. Rocky.

It took me until my mid-30s to lay claim to something I now consider elementally true to being me: going natural (i.e. locs 'r me). He's 4, and already just so much himself, from his head down to his toes. And even though it has earned him more minutes in the corner than he's racked up days in the world, even in the corner, it's still truly his world. And ain't that a thing of beauty?!

Just like his mohawk.

"Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise."

2009-08-07T05:13:00.000-05:00

When I set off for graduate school at 24, the artist on the staff of the magazine I'd been working for surprised me with a truly lovely watercolor of a road stretching toward the horizon. She asked a staff writer, one she knew to be a earth mother/mentor/kindred spirit of mine, for words that would be suitable, both for the image and for my next chapter. And on this little painting, which I've carried from place to place for all these years, she wrote these words by Alice Walker: "Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise."

I like to think I've made a study, if not an art, of this during my journey since then. Perhaps especially the first part, thinking of it, at least at times, as a Southern black Baptist girl's take on the Buddhist lack of attachment.

But sometimes, oftentimes, I think that my expecting nothing had less to do with acceptance and more to do with the absence of hope.

These days, Walker's words, which I only recently discovered are the opening words of a poem (see comments), remind me of a quote attributed to Einstein: "There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is a miracle."

I often feel dazed and amazed by the world and the people around me, not always in a good way, I'm afraid, but in a way that renders most things a source of wonderment.

Walker has a line in The Color Purple that is, in some circles, in a slightly longer form, often quoted: "Folks is a miracle of affliction."

But they're also so often beautifully flawed. So perfectly imperfect that it will break your heart. Or heal it. Unexpectedly.

And some days, when I've just about forsaken miracles for a "nothing" that Walker never intended, I am surprised by, even saved by, very simply left breathless from the mercy of a smile.*

Many years ago . . .

2009-07-29T19:36:00.001-05:00

. . . never mind how many, a little brown baby was born in Kanagawa-ken, Japan. At 12:07 p.m. I might have written "at noon," but there's beauty in details, isn't there? And, too, that's when this narrative begins.

This little brown baby? She was born while her mother slept. "Twilight sleep" they used to call it, designed to take the "experience" out of the birthing experience, so, as my mother's doctor told her, a woman having her first child wouldn't be dissuaded from having more because of the experience of pain.

(I was well into adulthood before my mother admitted to the forceps.)

The Japanese women were quite taken with this child, I am told; exclamations of "kawaii! kawaii!" (rhymes with Hawaii) followed mother and child everywhere; "kawaii" means "cute" in Japanese (it also means "pond," but I digress). And she was, I was . . . cute. But also quite solemn. So serious. For a recent big birthday -- never mind which one -- my sister had a short reel of film converted to DVD. It shows me at just a few months old being tickled and "whoopsied" up in the air by my father . . . and not cracking so much as a toothless grin.

That's why I love the picture above. I can safely say that this picture in which I seem to be having a little moment of Big Happy in response to something my father is doing on the other side of the camera, this is my favorite picture of myself. Even though, as I have made a point of pondering, I don't really look like me. I mean everybody else's baby pictures look like them, but I can't quite see the me in this little face. Almost, but not quite. But still, I KNOW her somehow . . . and I love this little person fiercely.

And when I look at her sweet face, I think there is nothing I wouldn't do for her to help her fully flower, to blossom into the fullest expression of whoever it is she came into the world to be.

If I could stay in touch with that fierce love . . . oh, the places we, she and I, would go!

********

As I was writing this post, the poem by Dawna Markova that's taped to my desk, comes to mind; it's served me well as I seek to be the best teacher I can be, but maybe it can also serve me in being the best me I can be.

I will not die an unlived life.

I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire.

I choose to inhabit my days,

to allow my living to open me,

to make me less afraid, more accessible,

to loosen my heart until it becomes a wing,

a torch,

a promise.

I choose to risk my significance;

to live so that which came to me as seed goes to the next as blossom

and that which came to me as blossom,

goes on as fruit."

We Wear the Mask

2009-07-27T21:47:00.001-05:00

"We wear the mask that grins and lies/That hides our face and shades our eyes."
~Paul Laurence Dunbar

"Cardboard masks of all the people I have been;
Thrown out, with all the rusted, tangled, dented
goddamned miseries." ~Jann Arden's "Good Mother"

I've been thinking about authenticity a lot lately, about being the truest version of myself -- my self -- that I can be. So I've been looking at old bits of writing, trying to find that wellspring, that vein of truth that can source this creativity that I so want to recover.

Do you know where I found the clearest, most impassioned articulations of self? Not in journals or other pieces of memoirist writing. No, the truest I've been, about who I am, to the bone . . . my personals profiles.

Just today, in fact, looking back at one from years and years ago in an old email account I'd thought was defunct, I realized that I've been saying the same things over and over again, about who I am, who I want to be. Who I want to be with My Someone. This was the closing line in that old profile: "Let's be rare, eccentric, and original together."

Let's see how things have been coming along, shall we . . .

Rare: check

Eccentric: well, only around the house (Note: My profile lists "eccentricity" as one of my interests! How funny! And, dare I say, eccentric. ;0)

Original: hmmm; I'd have to say "not so's anyone would notice."

And "together"? Well, that's for another post.

Although I do wonder: Does the presence of your Someone help empower you to be your own rare, eccentric, and original self? Or can it be a hinderance? I suppose it depends on the people, no? And I have a feeling that the Universe, the Higher Powers That Be, have believed me to be one of those folks for whom the case would be the latter. And, sigh: I am one of the best Supporting Players I know. But Leading Lady?

Well, I think I may just be coming into that season. So, this is me, taking off my mask . . . I'm ready for my close up, Mr. DeMille.

What makes you come alive?

2009-07-24T14:53:00.000-05:00

"Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive." ~Howard Thurman

Storm

2009-07-22T22:19:00.000-05:00

Pretty, isn't it? I love a good storm: all that electric light dancing across the sky, the power and passion rearranging the air around us . . . lightning strike, thunderclap. Amen.

But today, the lights flickered and when it was done, the storm took the spirit of my modem along with it. I am without internet connectivity. And will be for the next few days.

And frankly, I feel a little bit lost. Melodramatic, oh-so, but still, for this 21st century someone, a channel has somehow closed, and I am disconnected, set adrift, lost at sea . . . in a storm.

Inspiration & Affirmation

2009-07-21T17:29:00.001-05:00

As part of my dream diving, I'm keeping track of things that inspire me. Right now, I'm a little obsessed with the choreography of Mia Michaels. She tells the most amazing stories, paints the most extraordinary pictures. Through dance. She's a mad genius.

I want to be like her when I grow up.

Speaking of growing up, there's something that feels so grown up and final, and kind of not in a good way all the time, about getting tenure. But some wonder-full someone said something lovely and amazing to me a hour or so ago that was, as we say, right on time:

"Just because you're tenured doesn't mean you're not an artist."

After I thanked her, I had to write it down. It's like that sometimes: affirmation can come from the most unexpected source and at the most unexpected moment. And it lifts you up.

Chapter 8: In which our heroine . . . umm

2009-07-20T11:40:00.000-05:00

My 21st Century To Do List

1. Travel through Tuscany (check!)

2. Have a memoir worthy affair (ch . . . wait, that'll just have to wait for the memoir ;0)

3. FINISH dissertation (check!)
(So, "earn doctorate," right? Oh, yeah . . . okay, check.)

Also:
Get tenure track job (i.e. the Gold Ring)? Umm, okay.
&
Secure tenure (i.e. the academic's Holy Grail)? Wha . . .? Wait! Too late: check!

And then . . .

Ah, yes, that's what's up: what comes next? As The Oracle would say -- and that's Oprah, not the lady on the Matrix (though she was wicked cool!) -- it's time to dream a new Dream.

Thing is, I have a capital-D Dream; he just hasn't turned up yet. Stuck in traffic, I suppose. Still, sometimes I hear Erykah Badu's "Next Lifetime," and I wonder. Maybe that's why I have this thing for butterflies.

So, in the meantime, I'm doing a little dream diving, recovering some of those dreams that got left along the way. I know they're still here, I can feel them, just below the surface. And rising.

Hope Floats

2009-07-19T11:03:00.002-05:00

So, you know the line in the movie or the book where the woman says "I've dreamed of this day my whole life," meaning her wedding day? I wasn't that girl. I don't remember playing bride or thinking "some day my prince will come." I had crushes, a boyfriend here or there, and a few true loves, but I've never pined for the white dress, the gold bands (or platinum; it looks better against my skin ;0), the "I do's." And certainly not the "as long as we both shall live." Oh, my! If I ever did take that walk, we'd have to go with the much saner promise, "as long as we both shall love."

When I think about what I really, really, really want, what I've been hoping for, it's not a husband; I don't need to be somebody's wife. I want to be somebody's Someone. I want him to be My Someone.

What does that look like? Well, for me . . .

When I was in graduate school, one of the women in my cohort had a boyfriend, David. They lived in this cute little white cottage, had a wondrous vinyl collection (sweet memory: listening to Kate Bush singing "This Woman's Work" at their place one warm summer evening); they threw cool drinks parties (NY'ers, they were). She was hilarous, wicked smart; he was sweet, funny, clearly adored her.

But here's the thing I most remember.

She told me once that David was an early riser; he'd be up -- writing, reading, whatever -- for a couple of hours before she'd even start to stir. What she told me was that he'd come back to bed when he knew she was about to wake up . . . . so that she could wake up in his arms.

That. That's what I want. Someone who deeply loves me, yes, but who also really knows me and really, truly likes me. Just as I am.

Is that -- and, you know, to be a a category gazillion creative force of nature -- too much to hope for?