the wings of the morning

Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or whither shall I flee from thy presence?

Friday, January 27, 2006

AD-D

(Artist Date-Date)
I've just returned from my second artist date. I went to hear the local community chorus sing Rachmaninoff's "All-Night Vigil." The whole town must have turned out. The concert was held in a big old Catholic church with fabulous acoustics, and it was literally standing room only. I had to park blocks away. I have a couple of sort-of friends in the group, but the main reason it occured to me to check it out, beyond the obvious artist date potential, was that "singing choral music" came up on the list of twenty things I enjoy, something I hadn't done in ten years, and I've been thinking of joining this group.

They were wonderful. The piece is completely a capella, which is so lovely; I was reminded what an enchanting instrument the human voice is. I chose the piano as my favorite instrument in the "Detective Work" excercise this week, but now that I think about it, I was taking the question too literally - the voice is my favorite by far. Listening to this large group reminded me how heavenly it was to sing in such a context, especially (believe it or not) in some of my high school experiences. I got the opportunity to sing in large district and all-state choirs, and there were moments when I felt we were all being lifted right off the risers by angel wings we didn't know we had. I was lifted, anyway. Anyone remember those cheaply pressed LPs they used to sell to all the parents? We'd sign up and pay in advance, and a month or six weeks later a stiff record album that was likely designed to withstand only a handful of playings would arrive in the mail. I not only still have the record from my first district chorus experience, I still listen to it. I have included a couple of the songs on mixes, so I can hear them again and again without wearing out the fragile, brittle whatever-the-heck-they-used. That concert was one of my all-time best musical experiences.

And tonight reminded me of it. A little. Enough. I've been singing S H music for the past eleven years, and there the only dynamic is LOUD. This is part of the great fun of singing S H, but tonight I was reminded how exciting double forte can be when it's used sparingly, as one startlingly gorgeous color standing out in a rich tapestry of hues. And speaking of color, I decided while listening that part of the reason I love Russian composers so much is that they write music that somehow features more of the dark, rich, nuanced colors I love so. It was all blood red, deep deep teal, earthen brown and vibrant gold tonight. And when the chorus exploded into one of those stunning double fortes, it was like a volcano of light erupting into the gothic arches. You know the part toward the end of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," after his heart grows three sizes, when he finds the strength of ten Grinches, plus two? Remember how the sky behind him looks as he lifts the sled with the ginormous sack over his head, as Max dangles happily from a runner? It sounded like that.

Guess it's time to join the chorus, huh? Huh-DOE-EY.

I had another artist date this week, too. Somewhat impromptu. I've been thinking that going to the bead store downtown would be a good one, but it's-a-pain-to-park-and-I-didn't-want-to-spend-money-and-I-didn't-want-to-
be-around-the-other-bead-store-patrons-and-the-staff-and-- who knows why else I was resisting going. The universe tricked me into it by making the only available tickets for the chorus concert be at a bookstore downtown. I looked at a book about trees while I was in there that was really neat, but I was paid up for an hour in the garage... and I needed a replacement dangly tine for a favorite pair of earrings; I had a reason to go to the bead store which had been on my list of things to take care of for, like, a year. I sighed and headed over.

When I first entered the store a song was playing on the overhead that I have only heard in one other context: while driving my old boss (the one who rashly fired me for no good reason two days before Christmas) to and from business meetings. She had this irritating mix of irritating songs that she'd play on endless loop in the car. This song was the most... irritating. I felt my shoulders tense. But I recognized right away that that gave my old boss and that unfortunate work situation power over me in a way, power that I really didn't need to give away, especially since I am SO FRIGGIN' HAPPY about not working. I closed my eyes for a second and I sent her a little blessing, which is the only way I know to get free of anything and everything. I felt much better.

The perky staff member I approached told me they didn't carry the replacement earring part I needed, but the next song on the PA was one I had strongly positive associations with. It's on the Cold Mountain soundtrack, which I got to sing on as an S H singer. It was by Allison Krauss, whom I had sung with on stage several times, including at the Academy Awards, as part of that experience. As an S H singer, not a performer. Believe me, there's a difference. But obviously, these were wonderful and special experiences. This week is about recovering a sense of power, right? Well, this seemed to be happening right there in the bead store. I had been sychronicitied into being there, and they didn't have what I needed, but I'd just been sent a pair of blessings in a span of about three minutes, so I stayed. Happily.

Turns out they have cool toys there, too. Classic toys. I picked out a paddle ball game with a nice, thick, unwarped paddle and a high-quality, wrapped (replacable!) rubber string. For less than three dollars. Then there was the classic tin kaleidoscope, beautiful outside and in, for seven. I picked up some wire for whenever I did find a replacement tine for my special earring. And oh, what the heck - make it a spool. I like making earrings too. Haven't done that in awhile. I found some gorgeous huge shell hoop earrings that are going to make my ensembles sing this summer. For less than ten dollars. Happy songs continued to play. And THEN... then, it hit me: I didn't need to replace the lost tine with the exact same part. There were five dangling tines per earring in that pair, which of course I was wearing, to be safe. Maybe there was some other little dangly thing that would balance them again but would make them special. I looked at all the little dangly things I could find, and settled on a tiny butter knife, just the right size. It's like one of those hidden pictures in Highlights magazine - it's not immediately noticeable, but like a happy little secret to stumble on. Like a wink. Of course I love the earrings even more now; they're one-of-a-kind.

Oh, and I got back to my car that day at Exactly the time on my parking slip. And tonight as I left the concert, my finicky magical trick dashboard lights were lit. The end.

Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Tasks Part Deux - the interesting years

Before I get started on tasks again, let me just say that yes, voice in my gut, I am aware that doing tasks and writing about it here is a form of avoidance at the moment. Wasn't there something in the reading this week about being sure to hang out with other artists who do the work, and not so much with those who only want to talk about doing the work or about why they're not doing the work? Which one am I at the moment? I really don't know. I played my piano yesterday. I went outside today. There were a couple of small synchronicities involving horses, which have come up in the AW work a couple of times recently. I plan to read my meaningful Anne Lamott book this afternoon, and possibly cut my hair in some wildly creative fashion. But I am not really here. I am "showing up at the page" in the morning (though even longer after I awake these last two days), but I do not feel accessible to the Creator. (For the record, and in the interest of full disclosure.)

Task 4
Habits. Oy. Three overt rotten ones:
Pulling my hair out strand by strand. I do this automatically when I feel stressed or conflicted. There's a name for the problem and I've had it since I was six, so part of me likes to think I might as well keep doing it since there's no hope. But I don't actually believe that. I'm blessed to have very thick hair genetically speaking, so I don't look at first glance like many of my fellow sufferers/practitioners, although if I saw me in the grocery store I would know why certain areas seem grayer and fuzzier than others. It must be a blessing that the problem is not obvious, but its concealability only makes it more problematic in a way, since it's easier to ignore that way.

This, even though when I do sit down to write a song or to some other creative, soul-intensive project, I spend as much energy on my hair as I do on the work. I space out, I glaze over, I go away. Even as I admit I want to do something creative and I act on the impulse, I create a barrier to my own spirit's expression, a hurdle of indifference and disengagement. So the payoff must be that I do less to feel conflicted about. Remember, I got the message that being smart in any way beyond getting good grades - in any way that actually involves thinking, that is -, or expressing my truth, or applying talent in any interesting manner - which might make someone else feel inferior, obviously - was baaaad. So I do less creative work in order to avoid having to deal with the emotional consequences and the behavioral flare-ups.

I sometimes overeat, but lately I am allowing myself the payoff, which is easy earthly comfort, without much self-critical fuss.

My rottenest overt habit is outright self-harm. I don't want to talk about that anymore except to say that the payoff is staying the same. And that I've actually been easing up on myself lately. I know this program wasn't designed to support recovery from that type of problem, but this is what seems to stand between me and my creative self-expression, and I'm going to apply ADs, tasks and morning pages liberally to whatever wounds I find unhealed.

A subtler rotten habit is not getting dressed in the morning. It keeps me in that "What's the use?" state. In the introduction, Cameron says "What's the use" is fear, and fear means you are secretly in despair. So put your fears on the page. Put anything on the page. That's what I'm doing here, my cybercircle-mates.

I think not getting dressed is related to another subtler bad habit: not going out. I say I want to go out and do things, but when it comes around to it I end up staying in more often than not. If I don't go out, I don't have to deal with other people and their reactions to me. I also miss out on an awful lot of life.

Hmmm. Subtler bad habit number three is multitasking. I half look at catalogues while half watching tv. I jump up from the dinner table to add an item to my shopping list. I eat and surf. If I want to do a thing, why not focus on that one thing? Sometimes it seems my hidden objective most of the time is to avoid giving my full attention to anything.

Phew! Made it through the habits task, more or less in one piece. It doesn't seem so bad now that I've written it out. If you're avoiding this one, I have to say - I recommend it. Ahh.

The friend tasks are befuddling to me, so I should probably do them. At some point. Maybe. Okay... I don't tend to hang out with lots of people. I always have a couple or a few special folks that I'm in touch with, and I tend to stay in touch with "my people," as I think of them, forever - though sometimes years may elapse between connections. In general I tend to prefer special relationships with a few dear ones with whom I meet, say, quarterly, to having buddies to get together with on weekends. My chosen dear ones tend to be supportive. I don't think I've ever been enabled, though I'm aware that I used to enable others many many moons ago. Glad I knocked that shit off early. I know I can't talk with every one about everything, and that's usually okay. I don't know that I feel nurtured by all of them, but that may be because I generally don't let people even try. There's a social circle I'm an honorary member of through my husband and brother, and they are very nice to me, though the girls in that group tell me I'm a bit intense and my presence can be unsettling (which I've heard before), so things get weird occasionally. I often find it's my responsibility to look after others' needs, or at least to avoid their tender spots. Actually, in the tasks for last week, when I made the graph of different aspects of life I felt a little weak in the friends department. I just don't call people all that much. This week, partly because of this befuddling task, I went out and saw some friends at a social singing thing I sometimes do and sometimes avoid, and I made plans for dinner with someone else. Okay, okay - I'll call another. Criminy.

Task 8:
Five people I admire:

The owner/operator of the Tire Warehouse franchise in a nearby town. He always has two inspiring messages on the marquis sign out front, one on each side, and never anything about tire specials or the like. His customer service is impeccable. He seems genuinely happy to meet and talk to everyone who goes into his shop.

A former boss of mine, one of the kindest people I've ever met, and one of the best listeners. Always acted with integrity. Always.

A mother I know with three teenagers, one with cerebral palsy, whose kids adore her, mind her, and let her know where they are and when they'll be home. Her patience with and love and gratitude for the disabled child is boundless and inspiring, yet she manages to set limits and look after herself, too.

My late grandfather, who was always patient, kind, enthusiastic, and engaged with his family.

The guy I saw on tv in a courtroom offering forgiveness to a serial murderer during his turn to "say his piece" as a victim's family member. He said he didn't know how the man could do what he did, but since Jesus forgave, so did he. The murderer, who had apparently remained stony-faced throughout hours of others' emotional statements, began to cry only then.

Five people I secretly admire? That's an odd question. As I think about it, though, I guess I do know what it means. I outwardly admire the pure-hearted Melanie Wilkeses of the world, but I can only be supportive of the fierce Scarlett O'Haras from a bit of a distance. When I get up near them, their ego-strength seems grating and wrong-minded. Yet that kind of strength is absolutely necessary for some of what the world requires. (I can't think of any nonfictional examples.) I guess I also secretly admire figures like Oprah Winfrey and Steven Speilberg. I find their work unsubtle, and I don't prefer that things be spelled out quite so overtly, but they're doing their best to use their power for good. That's cool. I secretly admire truly eccentic people I meet around. They seem so bold, so utterly unconcerned with other people's ideas or impressions. I admire the geeky folks that go to Star Trek conventions and dress up their dogs and children as Klingons for the same reason. I wish I had the courage it would take to go to work in a Federation uniform.

Five dead people I wish I'd met: Jesus, Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Elizabeth Freeman, Anne Hutchinson. Dead people I'd like to hang out with: Okay, here I see no difference. Same list. Traits to look for in my friends: Lovingkindness, free thinking, independence, peace-mongering, personal responsibility, intelligence, creative problem-solving, and willingness to stand up, to stand out, and to confront ignorance and status quo. While I'm at it, I'll look for ways to unreservedly admire the ego-strength of my friends. These five people all had some big ol'... reserves of spunk (wink) and courage.

It's pretty obvious to me at this point that I also need find a way to be okay with my own ego-strength, and with its less savory but absolutely necessary manifestations. (Lord help me, but I may be a bit more of a Scarlett than a Melanie.) I can subordinate all that stuff to God, if I only listen. It shouldn't be stuffed when it could be used. It needs to be kept available in my tool chest, for the use of the Great Getter-Done-er.

Now I'm thinking of that Marianne Williamson quote, the one that's often attributed to Nelson Mandela. I see it everywhere, but maybe that's because I really need to hear and consider it again and again. I won't assume that you all know it. Here it is, for me and for whoever else it may help, even though I've already posted it elsewhere in this circle:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.

--from "A Return to Love" by Marianne Williamson

Tuesday, January 24, 2006

Week three tasks, part one

Okay, now I'm all hopped up on peanut butter-and-jelly saltines and tea with milk and sugar, because that's what my artist child liked or whatever and I've indulged as instructed. Actually, it's a nice sensation. I let myself eat whatever I want, but to intentionally eat and drink something to please the little girl I used to be feels good. I can tell she appreciates it. Though she's not crazy about the soymilk.

I went to work on the tasks in a notebook, but that felt like more work and less fun, so here I am at the computer again. I'll go with it.

Task 1:
Until I was 9 or 10, I shared a room with my sister with two twin beds, and floral wallpaper on a white background that I used to stare at a lot. I contemplated the repetitive pattern, the ribbons,the stray blossoms not caught in the repeating bouquets, the greens, the colors. Did these blooms all exist in nature? I was not convinced. But to this day I adore floral patterns on a white background. After an unfortunate furnace-cleaning incident involving hot water pouring from the radiators into every room while my family was out for the evening, the wallpaper came down. At my request the room was painted light purple with dark purple trim. My dad ran out of the lighter color, though, so one whole wall was painted Donny Osmond purple. It was hideous, but I told myself I liked it.

Interestingly, while I don't have a room of my own now per se, the bedroom with the most closet space is known as my dressing room. I also work out and do yoga in there. And on the walls is the most depressing baby shit tan floral wallpaper with horrid darker brown vertical stripes. It must come down. My favorite thing in there is the rug, a five foot round deep mossy green wool beauty with a dark gold Art Nouveau fillagree design. Must take care of those walls! The wallpaper brings shame to the rug's family.

Task 2:
Five traits I like in myself as a child. (Ew, I have to compliment myself. Especially my child self. Very hard.) Well, I was very inquisitive. I wanted to know the name of every color and every kind of bird. (One.) When I got to sing at school or in special choruses for kids who could carry a tune, I sang my little heart out. I am a real American patriot, though more like Lenny Bruce than a Fox News personality, and I know it's partly because I was eleven years old at the time of the bicentennial and I took to heart all the songs I got to learn for the gala celebrations. I'm choked up again. (Please God don't let it die.) (That's two.) Hmm. I loved loved loved to eat, and would pretty much devour anything they put in front of me. In the old days when the lunch ladies could coerce kids to eat their vegetables by not letting them go out to recess until their plates were clean, I would happily eat the cabbage or spinach of any kid on my row. (That's three.) I was really kind to kids who needed help and were embarrased about something. I thought I was an adult, but this still counts because my desire to help was genuine even if I didn't always see other kids as peers. And I loved and noticed every sensual pleasure - pj's and clean sheets after a bath, the sound of the AM radio singing thin static-y songs from the kitchen counter or the dashboard, the wind on my face as I swung as high as I could, the lonely smell of woodsmoke from outside on a drizzly day.

Task 3:
Five childhood accomplishments. Cripes now I'm wishing I was working in the notebook instead. 1) I learned to sew despite the fact that my mother was the teacher and she regularly shamed me in front of the whole class. 2) I won the awards for excellence in music and English as I "graduated" junior high (8th grade). 3) I finally did a back dive at swimming lessons after standing on the edge of the pool for what seemed like days considering it. Must have been around nine then. 4) I won an award for my fairy princess costume in the Halloween parade when I was five. I was wearing a pink tulle dress of my mother's from the fifties (with lots of pins in back so it would stay on) and some cardboard wings I begged her to help me make. I insisted on the color - a light moss/seafoam green - and when they were attached to the dress, I figured out that I could flap them a little if I squeezed my shoulder blades together. This I did with furtive but focused purpose as I walked by the judges' stand. I didn't want to appear too eager. (Wish I still knew how to pull that off.) I don't remember what I won. 5) Once when I was standing in the lunch line, a boy I disliked (because I thought he was a jerk) turned around - I don't know what I did to provoke him, maybe nothing at all - but he turned around, looked me right in the eye, wrinkled his face into an expression of sheer repugnance, and said, "You are so queer!" - which at the time meant weird and annoying. Without missing a beat, I started dancing a little in place and singing, "That's the way, uh-huh, uh-huh, I like it, uh-huh, uh-huh!" It was a proud moment and a seminal one. I knew, I mean I really knew, that I did not give a flying fuck what this kid thought of me. I was eleven.

Favorite childhood foods: Chocolate pudding, boiled cabbage with butter, cafeteria hamburgers, Thin Mints Girl Scout Cookies, raspberry sherbet in the form of something called "Circus Surprise" from the ding-dong cart, and (a bonus item, since I mentioned saltines and tea) watermelon sherbet from Friendly's.

That's enough for now. Maybe I will go play for awhile.

Detective Work, an excercise

1. My favorite childhood toy was a doll I named Anne (my middle name). She was supposed to be a little girl doll - she stood up on her own - but she was actually the size of a toddler. This was great, because old baby clothes I found in the basement fit her. She had a two piece bathing suit, a velvet Christmas dress, a little cardigan and some pink corduroy pants I thought of as her school outfit, tights, and lots of pajamas and other things. Dressing her up was all I cared about - I didn't really make her a person. This might have been an early expression of my love for clothes.

2. My favorite childhood game was swinging on my swingset singing and making up songs. After that it was building forts in the basement or backyard and then hanging out in them. Alone. In all my favorite childhood memories, I am either alone or inwardly enjoying something unshared though others are around.

3. The best movie I ever saw as a kid was an animated after school special about a bird whose species is becoming extinct. He flies for awhile with a flock of another type of bird to avoid being completely alone, but he's still lonely. He eventually with great joy finds a female of his species, and is very happy for awhile. But one day as they rest on a fence, a farmer mistakes them for birds that have been eating his seeds and fires at them, killing the female. My sister and I ran to our rooms and sobbed when it was over. I am crying now. I never got over it. (Interesting, really, and not surprising, how alone I felt in childhood, and how deeply this story of lonliness, alienation and senseless loss rent my heart.)

4. I don't do it much, but I enjoy riding and being around horses.

5. If I could lighten up a little, I'd let myself get more into making love.

6. If it weren't too late, I'd have more lovers.

7. My favorite musical instrument is the piano. Such a range! From bright, sweet and tiny to oceanic, dark and terrifying.

8. The amount of money I spend on treating myself (and my husband) to entertainment each month is about $150, and that's mostly on cable tv and netflix.

9. If I weren't so stingy with my artist, I'd buy her a digital recording device so I could post what I do online.

10. Taking time out for myself is necessary but scary, since I am swimming in time for myself, and I'm learning to use it productively and not harm myself actively or passively. It's not easy. But I suppose jettisoning the guilt about having the time in the first place would go a long way toward progress.

11. I am afraid that if I start dreaming I'll want a different life.

12. I secretly enjoy reading newspaper horoscopes.

13. If I had had a perfect childhood I'd have grown up to be boring and arrogant.

14. If it didn't sound so crazy, I'd write or make a record.

15. My parents think artists are interesting but impractical.

16. My god (my ego's idea of god?) thinks artists are self-indulgent. My God thinks artists are set perfectly on their paths and doing their best to find Love again the only way they know how, like all God's beloved children.

17. What makes me feel weird about this recovery is I'm not sure I deserve it or whether it is still truly available to me, since I've either misused or thrown all my gifts back in the face of the giver for so long. (Blurt conversion: God measures time in the good that is unfolded. It is never too late.)

18. Learning to trust myself is probably not the issue. Learning to act in my own best interest may be a bit trickier.

19. My most cheer-me up music is one of my own mixes, since it's individual songs that tend to get inside my heart. Here is the track list of the last mix I made, sadly over a year ago, for those of you playing along at home:

Held - Smog
New Hampshire - Sonic Youth
Penetration - The Stooges
Feeling Good - Nina Simone
You Won't Fall - Lori Carson
Five-Way Flashlight - Cordelia's Dad
Hard as a Rock -AC/DC
Love is More than a Feeling - The Darkness
The Gypsy Davy - Cordelia's Dad [This particular song actually came to mind first as my "most cheer-me up music." It consistently makes me dance like a hippie.]
Where They Walk Over St. Teresa - The Loud Family
My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down - The Ramones
Windy - The Association [This is one I used to sing on the swingset.]
La Partenza - Genoese longshormen recorded by Alan Lomax
Bluebird - Bonnie Raitt
Rock Me - Cordelia's Dad

20. My favorite way to dress is in lots of rich textures like suede and (fake, mostly) fur. I like to wear rich, earthy, neutral colors like dark brown and brick red, and I wear a lot of black. My adornments are mostly made of leather, wood, rubber, filligree - stuff that doesn't sparkle - but I also love silver. I feel naked without a pair of substantial boots on. (And a p.s. confession: high-heeled platforms put me in the freakish range height-wise, but I wear them anyway. It feels like I'm occupying a different space than eveyone else, and I can join them if I want, or I can stand up straight and retreat to my mobile aerie.)

I feel a bit hollow lately. It's resistance, I know. I haven't picked up my instruments in two days. All I want to do is eat and lie around, and though I have done my basic structural support activities like morning pages and yoga, and I've managed to attend to household upkeep tasks like laundry and grocery shopping, I know in my heart that even in doing my chores I am avoiding doing anything really brave, like singing or playing or going for a walk to listen. Resistance. All I can manage at the moment is the form. Hope I'm willing to look some content in the face sometime very soon.

In the meantime, more AW tasks coming soon. Maybe they'll shake something loose.

Friday, January 20, 2006

Week Two in Review

I love the pages, and I think they help, so I do them. But I've noticed that I'm in the habit - as a woman of relative leisure - of lying in bed sort of half-awake for awhile, sometimes for perhaps an hour, before I admit I'm up and write my pages. This week I want to try rolling over as soon as I open my eyes once or twice and see if that spices things up at all. The pages are fine, and they often yield interesting personal insights, but I think they could be more interesting if I whip them out while still emerging from some dream. Worth a try.

For my artist date this week I went to the library. I have lived in my town for a year and a half but have not been in, let alone gotten a card. Come to think of it, though I loved the public library in my town growing up I haven't spent a whole lot of quality library time since then. Just a bit here and there. No real exploring... no getting lost in the stacks... no settling in with something interesting and completely unexpected and forgetting the time. But today out of nowhere the words, "the library" popped into my head as I was showering and avoiding thinking about how I didn't have the time to drive out to the special bookstore and how I had no alternative plan for an AD. I love when things pop into my head like that, when the words are clearly and firmly spoken into my inner ear. I always listen, big advice or small. So off I went.

What a deal, a library card. Free free free book and cd borrowing and movie rentals. Why did it take me so long? Well okay - actually, it's a pretty small library, and I was disappointed not to find any little corner with a comfy chair that I could disappear into. Still, I had a great time starting anywhere and just randomly browsing. Many of the books and authors were familiar but not yet read, and it was fun to note the latent potential of their presence on the shelf. A few looked so forlorn, so out of date and and out of place, that I wondered how they ever came to take up residence on the shelf and who ever read them. Those were intriguing, too.

I ended up choosing "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott, the title of which has stuck in my head since a former therapist recommended it perhaps three years ago. (It seems I've seen that title again recently whilst blog-hopping among this group and its branches.) Then I moved to a different area, put my stuff down on the first available surface I saw, turned around, and found myself in the paranormal/spiritual section of nonfiction. ("Coincidence?" says Bill Curtis. I think not.) I picked up Conversations With God, Book 3, because I can't get enough of that stuff (channeled texts are my favorite), and I've been wanting to read it but not wanting to buy any new books. The third and most random book I checked out was a little something called Incest. It's Anais Nin's unexpurgated diary from 1932-1934, during which time she apparently had lots of mad sex with her husband Hugo, her father, and none other than Henry Miller, which I figure counts as synchronicity. The introduction explains somewhat apologetically that Ms. Nin considered the journal her ultimate confidante, and that she "wrote in her diary at white heat, immediately following the events she was describing." I could stand to read something written by a Bohemian frenchwoman in white heat.

After I made my selections I sat in the comfiest place I could find, which was a rocking chair in the big window in front. I'd been trying to hold the Anais Nin in such a way that the title might be obscured by my arm or sweater as I browsed. Now after a moment's perusal I had to shut the book because I was convinced that my agitated (read, "aroused") mental state would be energetically apparent to nearby patrons whether or not they could see what I was reading. Phew! God bless the library. God bless America. Fuck the Patriot Act.

I also checked out a cd by Steve Earle called "The Revolution Starts Now." The title track, which I was already familiar with, rocks. Now I can put it on a mix. (Ooh, that would be a good creative project next week.) And lo, it shall be my theme song. I played it first thing when I got home from my date, and it seems very appropos to my recent energy shift:

The revolution starts now
When you rise above your fear
And tear the walls around you down
The revolution starts here...

Yeah the revolution starts now
In your own backyard
In your own hometown
So what you doin' standin' around?
Just follow your heart
The revolution starts now

Robert Frost or Mary Oliver it ain't, but ahh - just the ticket.

Thursday, January 19, 2006

Task-o-rama

My heart hadn't been in the tasks this week, or so I thought. I did a couple on Tuesday, but I'd been distracted at the time and thought the results had been lame. I listed twenty things I enjoy doing, and rather than think up twenty definitive Eliza activities I just sort of let whatever wandered into my thoughts be the next item on the list. It took something like 25 minutes, though like I said I was distracted, and I thought the experience was difficult and unsatisfying. For task 4, I chose two items from the list, made them goals for this week, and promptly forgot about them.

Task 6 this week is to add five more imaginary lives to the list from last week. I didn't choose that task last week, but I took the opportunity to start my imaginary life list that day.

I came up with:

Monk (maybe seven hundred years ago, ardent student and keeper of records of human learning, scribe)

Mystic (but not ascetic - more voracious with regard to earthy pleasures - and subversively, personally provocative, like Gurdjieff)

New Age recording artist (making music more emotionally compelling than a lot or maybe most of what's out there)

Horsewoman (not like Catwoman, just surrounded by horse companions *grin*)

Poet-naturalist hermit (like Thoreau)

I'm not sure I'm well-suited to any of these lives, though they're the ones that intrigue me most from the outside looking in. But there's one on the list I might actually be able to try. 14th century monk, of course! Heh. Okay okay I admit it: I could make New Age recordings if I decided to. That one's attainable (if I don't assume success or even breaking even), and would not require putting my husband on a jettison, or a back burner. Interesting.

I'm not sure I'm well-suited to the life I imagine those recording artists live either, mind you. I bet they don't like South Park, by and large, or AC/DC. I wonder if the label would make me stop wearing big black boots and rubber bracelets when they give me my big New Age recording contract. They probably wouldn't let me call my first record "God Doesn't Care That You Stole That Frisbee." But I digress. In the instructions for the task, Ms. Cameron advises working out small ways to "be" that life now.

So I played my piano today. I consider it a synchronicity that I had it tuned and repaired last month, before I knew I'd be doing the Artist's Way, especially since I hadn't really played for at least a couple of years, you know, with feelin'. And I hadn't done that regularly for a decade. It's recently been sitting there all bright and tuned and un-sticky, eagerly calling out to me like a dog who needs a walk, especially of course since I started the AW. I have ignored its call, rationalizing that I was "not ready."

Not ready for what, I wonder. I mean, I know what that meant in my head but it's really pretty dumb when I dissect it. It's as if I think the guy from Airy-Fairy Records in the ponytail and Jerry Garcia tie is going to show up with pen in hand tomorrow if I play my piano today, and then whatever would I do? I love my big black boots. (And then there's picking out my dress for the Grammys... what a bother!) Oy.

So because I said I'd do this program, and because I wrote "AW task" on my list of things to do today, and because it's not very threatening to just improvise for a half an hour, I did. And it was so cool. I'm glad I set the half-hour time frame, or I would have stopped before it got good. At first all I kept thinking about was how I need to practice, to play more, to develop more skill. It's as if I don't let myself play because I think I don't play well enough. Doesn't that make so much sense. But I kept at it so I wouldn't feel bad about not really trying, thinking about that thing from the book: "God, I will take care of the quantity. You take care of the quality." (That bit really works for me; it makes something click.) By the end of my half hour I was really engaged, and the music was readily flowing. Even my skill seemed to improve - my fingers seemed to know better what to do. I let myself just play with chord progressions that I really love, and I found myself letting the music wash over me. Then I got self-conscious, thinking about how I could actually make recordings if I decided to, and my fingers forgot what to do. But I know I can go back anytime, and I know I will, because I actually want to. And the quality of the music is not my department. Phew!

When I finished playing, I went back to my list of twenty things. It's not so bad! There's a lot here to work with. I'm glad I let it be stream-of-consciousness instead of trying to define myself in twenty activites.

Here's my list:
1. Real tarot readings for myself - long, with notes and incense
2. Long walks in nature
3. Horseback riding
4. Playing and singing w/T and S
5. Eating chocolate pudding
6. Cordelia's Dad shows
7. Reading poetry (or Leonard Cohen lyrics)
8. Eating popcorn with nutritional yeast and spices while watching movies at home
9. Long metaphysical (or just long, great) talks
10. Singing hymns in church
11. Smooching my kiddens on der heads
12. Road trips w/G
13. Choral singing
14. Looking at trees
15. Hanging out by a river or meadow alone with a journal
16. Swimming in a lake
17. Writing songs
18. Playing my songs for people
19. Drawing
20. Looking at and smelling flowers

(I tried to squeeze "riding a bike" on there, but limits are liberating so I'll leave it at twenty.)

I actually wrote (blurted), "Not very imaginative. Perhaps I can do it again another time," at the bottom of the page. Well... nuh-uh! No sir! There's plenty of interest here. I bought some nutritional yeast, and I smell a DVD artist date. Or is that popcorn...? Actually there's a ton of stuff here that could be easily translated into meaningful artist dates, so I shall refer back to it often. And maybe it's time to join the community chorus again. Hmm.

Hurray for just doing it. And for taking notes, in case in hindsight the it you just did turns out to be cooler than you thought.

By the way, the two things I chose to do from the list were to read some poetry or L.C. lyrics and to make one drawing. I can handle that.

Glad

Well, I wish I could say my own creativity was responsible for this, but it's by David Byrne, and I just heard it for the first time. I love this perspective: All good and all happy is so not. Enjoy!

I'm glad I've got skin, I'm glad I've got eyes
I'm glad I got hips, I'm glad I've got thighs
I'm glad I'm allowed to say the things I feel
I'm glad I got hair, glad I got ears
I'm glad I got lungs, I'm glad I got tears
Glad that I never ever know what's real

I'm glad I got lost
I'm glad I'm confused
I'm glad I don't know what I like
I'm glad I got stoned
I'm glad I got high
I'm glad I found out I'm alright

I'm glad when the sex is not so great
I'm glad that I doubt I know what they say
I'm glad when I get my girlfriends' names confused

I'm glad I know how my life will end
I'm glad I don't have no common sense
I'm glad the things are wrong I thought I knew

I'm glad I'm a mess
I'm glad you don't mind
I'm glad you're better than me
I'm glad that I changed
I'm glad I'm not nice
I'm glad it's the way it must be

I'm glad I can't see beyond myself
I'm glad when the conversation ends
It's good when it's bad, I'm glad it's not
worryin' me

--David Byrne

Monday, January 16, 2006

Delight

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music--the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
--Henry Miller


Wow! Encountered this happy gem in the margin of chapter two last night. It's so easy to get caught up in self-reflection or even self-absorption, yet, yes! - there are so many wonderful things I could turn my attention to at those times and be free - free to just be here and happy, and maybe even free to participate and to create, unimpeded by the paralysis of hyperawareness of self.

Forget
myself. What excellent advice! I have noticed how wonderful it feels to be called upon for help when I happen to be feeling unhappy or upset. Focusing my attention on supporting someone else, even if that means just listening, I settle right down. Suddenly, I can home right in on the peace that seemed out of the question moments before. So, hmm... maybe I don't have to wait for the universe to put a needy fellow traveler in my way at those times. Maybe I can just refocus my attention. And maybe I don't have to scold myself to think good thoughts instead, for the good of the world or my spiritual development--maybe I only have to turn my attention to something I love or simply enjoy to get back on track, for my good and for the universal good.

There's something to be said for self-reflection. It's important to notice and to lovingly pay attention to what's happening on the level of self and subjective experience. We need to know what our personal truth is before we can transcend it, I think. Before we can heal. But it seems to me that there's also a very real danger of getting stuck there if we're not careful, and then we may begin to actually miss out on our own life experiences while we're crying in our inner ladies' room.

Reading the very next page of the text, this sentence leapt off the page and started smooching my face:

The quality of life is in proportion, always, to the capacity for delight.

The waterworks began gushing away. This is my saving grace, I thought. When I read that line my heart recognized right away that my persistent and enduring capacity for delight is what perennially brings me back to life despite all my senseless efforts to dull down and all my habitual and counter-productive marathon wrestling matches with inner demons. (I think those demons keep their strength up through wrestling with me. Their muscles would probably turn to mush if I didn't keep climbing into the ring with them.) Interestingly, Ms. Cameron goes on to say that "The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention." This suggests to me that idea about refocusing again.

I've been aware as I have attempted to make myself and my experience smaller and more manageable that part of what I'm trying to attenuate is a very large capacity for attention. Too much gets in, I thought. I notice too much. Being intuitive, dealing with the feelings and experiences of others can be challenging, and I need to consciously practice maintaining energetic boundaries. But even just the smell of the air in October or the sound of wind in the trees, heck, even just looking at trees can make me tear up, and often does. Too much! What I put together when I read what Cameron wrote, however, is that my capacity for delight, my saving grace, comes in the same package as my sensitivity. I can't have one without the other, and I don't think I would want that anyway.

So when I put this all together, I get that when I feel sad or overwhelmed or bad in any way, I can refocus my attention outward. I can forget myself! - and turn my attention to any of the rich treasures that, as Henry Miller puts it, the world is simply throbbing with. No need to stop for even a moment to consider how sensitive I am and how problematic that can be. No need to put on my tights and mouth guard and climb into the ring with the reasons I think it's problematic. No reason to turn feeling into feeling bad. Just refocus, and let the well be filled.

Speaking of over-reflection, I'm enjoying this outlet of writing and sharing, but I also expectantly await the bursts of creative production that Ms. Cameron keeps promising. I await my new songs and poems or drawings or whatever else wants to pop on out. C'mon my little babies, come to mama.

Saturday, January 14, 2006

Overwhelm - Week One

Right. Didn't quite get to the date I described. Yesterday I found myself in overwhelm mode. When I woke up, I knew I should go to the fabulous bookstore, I meant to want to, but on some level I knew I wasn't going anywhere.

In a way, in a big way really, the last two weeks have been like one long artist date for me. Backstory: I lost my job two days before Christmas but by Christmas Day was feeling happy to have been relieved of it. My husband could support us alone, and I knew I'd gotten what I wanted - to not work. To work on myself, and to prepare for motherhood (we are trying to concieve). A few days later, a friend suggested I join this group. Perfect.

This group is a big part of the larger program I seem to have started as I round this corner into the rest of my life. I'm also going through the workbook of A Course in Miracles for the second time and doing yoga every day (for the first time). I'm learning the electric guitar and reestablishing relationships with my banjo and piano. I have found myself propelled into virtually unknown inner territory where I am suddenly willing and even eager to sustain domestic order, to read instead of watching tv, to cook all of our meals. This is not forced or impelled by any exertion of willpower - it's coming naturally and with very little effort. It's as if this time God agrees: I am ready. I am ready to move on, to grow up, to let go. I am ready to be the woman I have been afraid to be, the woman I am. I don't need to hold myself back anymore for some kind of perverse misunderstanding of comfort.

It's a significant point of transition, I think. I have therefore been careful to take care of myself emotionally, too - to do things that occur to me to do which I know will help me feel good. You want to talk artist date? I have taken an hours-long bubble bath every day this week. I've been reading Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet and Bridget Jones's Diary - covering all the bases. I keep music on, and I make sure it's what I want to hear. I took a lovely walk in the snow. I've been coloring mandalas because it's a low-pressure creative endeavor, but darned if it's not spiritually satisfying as well. When I feel sad or cold, I turn the music up and I cook. One long artist date.

Of course, there will be bumps. The thing is, I have a teensy self-harm problem. I've had it for thirty-five years. Not that that means I need to keep it any longer, but it did rear up yesterday. *Sigh.* [Sidebar: At the time I lost my job (and its attendant benefits - though I have different ones now), I had just started a six month program to hopefully help me address this stubborn issue, involving weekly class meetings and individual therapy sessions. It took a bit of maneuvering to get into the program because I do not have the psychological diagnosis it was designed to support. Since I have do some of the qualities and issues associated with the diagnosis, however (self-harm, overly intense emotional experience, and an invalidating home background), they signed me up. They wanted to help me. I felt committed - I knew I needed and really wanted to do something. That program, it turns out, wasn't going to be it.]

There's more! Still with me? I had an interesting set of synchronicities on Thursday. I have a monthly appointment to do Tarot readings in a quiet corner of a restaurant. It's a promotional thing for them, but it's great for me. I do ten- or twenty-minute readings, often for staff members or friends of staff that have come in on their recommendation to see me. The readings are short but it's as if time stops - they are as long as they need to be. Anyhow. I wanted to do something grounding that would help me feel connected before I headed out, so I tuned the radio to a New-Age talk station (satellite radio!) and began to color a mandala. I didn't think I would have time to finish it, but would just get it started. I got in the zone. Then the Voice - which provides intuitive nudges and outright instruction, not to mention occassional blurts of wild wisdom so pithy and personalized they actually make me laugh out loud - more on that later, I'm sure - the Voice let me know I needed to stick around for the beginning of the next radio show. It was hosted by a "psychic" and was about divination.

I have mixed feelings about all the trappings of this field I nonetheless pursue, and I take it all with a grain of salt, just listening for what resonates and letting the rest go. [One more disclaimer for the squeamish: The shows on Hay House Radio, founded by Louise Hay, author of You Can Heal Your Life, can be a bit airy-fairy but they ain't Miss Cleo's phoney charge-a-thon, either.] Sometimes I'm afraid to listen: I don't want to hear things that annoy me, because I don't want to be associated with my less prefered aspects of this field. It's hardest to listen to people calling themselves psychics, because though I don't use that word, that's what I am. It can also be very very cool, though. Sort of like going to a comedy show, in a way - fantastic when it's right, embarrassing when it ain't. So here's the Voice telling me I have to stay and listen to a psychic talk about divination.

Okay. I do what I'm told. That's how I've found and/or accomplished everything that has mattered in my life. I kept coloring. I kept listening. And of course, she had much of interest to say. Among other things, she prefered the term, diviner to "psychic" because of the word's origins. Cool! She had no objection to the use of Tarot cards, though she said, "If you have this ability, just use you. If you want to use cards or that sort of thing, just use them consciously as a kind of temporary tool." I think I'm paraphrasing. But, Yes! Yes yes yes. I've known that was my path with this since I started offering readings professionally eleven or so years ago. So she had me.

I colored away. The mandala would be almost finished afterall. I had some flexibility around when I was expected to arrive; I'd be well within the acceptable range. The phone rang. Didn't stress - I couldn't miss anything truly important. As I hung up a couple minutes later and tuned back in to the show, she was saying, "...if you have kinetic energy - meaning if you get near things and computers go haywire and light bulbs burn out and that sort of thing - if you have kinetic energy, chances are you're a healer." Oh! Hm. Well, (grain of salt, grain of salt, grain of salt, remain grounded...) light bulbs are forever burning out with a dramatic poof! when I go to turn on a lamp while angry, I thought. Computers certainly seem to reflect my issues as well. Then there's the good stuff, the way things seem to repair and renew themselves when I am feeling happy and aligned. The way medical problems that were supposed to be permanent have disappeared. Hmm.

But the positive stuff was not new ground; that made sense to me and was familiar. What struck me now was noticing for the first time the way actual sparks seem to fly sometimes when I'm angry. That got me thinking... maybe my work is not just the mental, metaphysical stuff. Maybe there's an attendant physical effect that a) has been causing problems interpersonally, and b) could be directed and harnessed for good. Yikes. Hadn't considered that. Thinking about it made me feel sort of tingly - good but uneasy. Heady. This was new territory, yet familiar. It was like suddenly remembering something important that had somehow slipped out of my waking consciousness, like remembering a significant dream. I was stopped cold in my tracks.

The phone rang again, and after this interruption it was time to drive to work. The mandala was finished. I'd heard what I was meant to hear. Then, in a flash, another connection - driving from readings! My car has some sort of electrical short in the dash which leaves three control knobs dark 99.8% of the time, and occassionally results in strange dashboard flashes and blackouts. These extra pyrotechnics have only occured three times: a combination of symptoms shortly after I bought the car, as if to introduce the condition (I decided it was going to be one of those things that took care of itself and did not seek service); a blackout the day I was driving around my home town having recently left another job, one I'd had for fourteen years; and a slowly intensifying flare-up of brightness that by its conclusion verged on the comical yet was also quite scary, which happened as I drove home after the very first time I did readings at the restaurant.

I was so wired yet so exhausted that night. I had done nine readings in rapid succession with no break, some of which were rather intense. I hadn't done multiple readings successively before, and I hadn't paid enough attention that night to keeping myself grounded and discrete. When I finally stood up to go home I nearly fell over. And yes, as I got on the road my dashboard had gone completely haywire, lighting up like something from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. The scary aspect of that (oh crap - it's late at night - i want to get home safely - please don't go dark) actually helped me settle myself energetically, out of necessity. I breathed and drove and thought about God, and everything returned to normal.

The other symptom of the dashboard issue is of course that the three dark knobs light up sometimes. Naturally, that only happens when I am peaceful and balanced. And don't you know that I found them sweetly lit on my way home on Thursday, after a lovely evening of doing what I do, of helping people Listen.

Okay. This one last other bit might sound shallow, especially after the rest, but all the yoga and home cooking is having an effect on my appearance. I look pretty good, I think, and I had dressed up dramatically to go out into the world that night. Pretty good is good, right? Not so much. I carry some personal history residue that says looking good or interesting is bad.

The combination of all these factors - turning a real corner; doing what helps; all the Artist's Way/creativity stuff that's coming up and being dealt with; feeling good; looking good; getting the message that in addition to being an intuitive I may be also be a healer - well, it was a bit much for me cumulatively. Don't be fooled by all these factors being "good" things - intense emotional experience in any direction can be a challenge. The way I learned to creatively cope with overwhelm from childhood was first to pull my hair out, and later to break my own skin. With pins. I can't expect it to just instantly go away now, and yesterday it seemed the only thing that would help. So much for the utopian book store.

I understand that I will have to keep dealing with this, maybe to some extent for the rest of my life. I just want to do it less, to develop new creative coping skills, to live my life and do my work in such a way that I need it less and less.

So next week I will take myself out on an artist date. Because it's part of the program. Because it's a tool that I said I would use. Because I'm ready. And as for Week One, well, the pond has been stocked. The well has most definitely been filled.

Really sorry this is so long. Thanks for reading.

Thursday, January 12, 2006

Inspiration

Okay, I've got it. There's a used bookstore not far from here that's like a mini-utopia - funky former mill with many windows overlooking a lovely roaring river; happy little coffee shop and cozy seating areas - and all the books are used and therefore affordable and guilt-free. It's one of those places I think about going to all the time but somehow rarely do. I once lived literally around the corner from this place for a year and only managed to get over there a handful of times even then. I think it may very well be something I unconsciously deny myself - I'm not cool enough to hang out in this wonderful place... people will know I don't read enough... the staff will ridicule my selections behind my back - hah! There's some censor-speak! Okay, so here are my affirmations: I am wicked cool. I deserve to hang out in places that make me feel good and happy. I am intelligent. I am very open to my ongoing education. I love books. I am eager to read more. I enthusiastically embrace my creative development through doing things and going places my spirit enjoys. Other people find me interesting and delightful. Other people's opinions do not matter. God made me smart and full of life.

My date won't be until tomorrow. I'm a little scared. I'll post about it afterward. Thanks for reading.

Wednesday, January 11, 2006

Motivation

I still love the pages, but I'm otherwise finding inertia in my way as I watch week one quickly expire. I may just copy an idea I've seen on other blogs this week and go to a thrift shop if I don't find the motivation to innovate for myself an artist date with a little more personal juice. At least I won't skip it. This reminds me, though, of the first time I attempted the AW. I didn't get the dates. I think I ended up just taking myself to the movies most of the time, to see nothing in particular - whatever was playing nearby. I remember a film I saw on an artist date in those days as perhaps one of the worst I've ever seen, actually. I was the only person in the theatre, too, for this memorable matinee, and I thought I caught a whiff of what is her damage from the staff. Maybe it was just annoyance because if I hadn't shown up they wouldn't have had to run the horrid thing at all. In any case, I didn't do that part of the program very well, and it's quite possible that that contributed to the apathy which resulted in me dropping the program after three or four weeks (though I did keep the pages up for quite awhile).

I don't want to slip into Artist Date Apathy again. I know on some level that I deserve to think up something of interest to me and do that, but so far I just have a sort of whining I don't wan-na, I don't feeeel like it attitude about it. Blea.

I'm also dragging some ass on the tasks. So I figure I might as well do one right now, while I'm thinking of it. The semi-public nature of this online group is certainly a motivating factor. I said I would do this. So. Here goes.

Task number 3. Time-Travel: List three old enemies of your creative self-worth. The number one old enemy of my creative self-worth was my mother. She still is on some level, though that has more to do with what I internalized than how she is now. There are many specifics I could cite regarding her anti-nurturing of my developing creative self, but what comes to mind most prominently at the moment is that she always seemed jealous rather than pleased or supportive when I did anything interesting musically. (She's a singer from a musical family but never played any instruments or read music.) I remember once playing her something on the piano that I had copied by ear when I was about fourteen - I have a good ear, and it gave me great pleasure to figure things out exactly. (I must have been pretty excited about this to play it for her. I guess I just wanted to share it with someone, anyone.) But after I had played a little bit she wrinkled her nose and said, "How do you do that?" with great distaste, like I was a circus geek who had just performed an impressive but revolting contortion. The message was clear: what you just did was unpleasant for me.

Copying something by ear may not be creative in the pure sense, but this was not the message my budding musician self needed to hear as she developed her skills. For more about monster numero uno, please refer to my previous post. Or don't - it's depressing.

(Guess I'm combining Task 3 with Task 4 - write out a horror story. Works for me.) So... let's see. Number two would have to be the first voice teacher I worked with as a freshman at Berklee College of Music. Her name was Nancy. She was tall, too, though not as tall as me. She asked me to sing something for her at the beginning of my first lesson. I played and sang an original song I was pleased with. When I finished, the first thing she said was, "Do you always sing in your head voice?" Oozing disdain. At the time I didn't even know what that meant. Now I know that I have a large range (over three octaves) and a high break (C-C sharp), for those of you who might speak that language. (It's not too shabby, and she may have been incorrect in her rhetorical observation.) In that same lesson she also insulted my haircut. This woman later stole my boyfriend, which in a way seems a natural trajectory. Nasty bee-atch. Music school, I found, was lousy with bitter and lupine shadow-artist teachers who should under no circumstances have been in the position of shepherding young creatives.

Number three: my neighbor and classmate Victor, with whom I had incidentally been best friends in early elementary school. His family's house was set close to ours, and their back porch was next to the room my piano was in. At around age seventeen, I noticed him out there one day summer day when I had been playing and singing for awhile with the windows open. I went to the window to say hi. I think I also said something like, hope you don't mind the music. I was just making small talk, though I suppose that sort of comment might be construed as trolling for a compliment. What he said was, "All your songs sound the same." Nice.

Sunday, January 08, 2006

Monster

I guess I'm lucky - I don't have any recollections of teachers or the like shaming my little creative self. Not when I was actually a child, anyway. When I get to that excercise this week I think I'll have a few entries for the ol' Monster Gallery from my college days at music school. There were a few pointed comments from high school peers I could work with as well.

But before I get much further into this, I guess I have to identify out loud the ground in which my personality, creative and otherwise, grew: the fact that my mother has psychological and emotional problems; that she and I never properly bonded in my infancy; that her experiences with motherhood with me, her first child that lived, did not live up to her fantasies, and that in order to cope with her unbearable sense of failure as a mother and maybe as a person, she decided I was a problem baby, a bad child and a bad person. I think it was the only way she knew to cope, and though I know of no specific diagnosis, I also know she was and is not well mentally or emotionally.

My memories of my relationship with my mother do not include the sense of safety or the love and protection that most people think are automatic between mothers and their children. And while I can understand the tendency or desire to universalize those themes of motherhood, I know from direct experience that these things are not automatic. If they're meant to be part of our nature, then our nature can be usurped under temporarily stronger forces. Sad but true.

So. As I go through this process, I'm sure I'll find myself facing again in new ways the fallout of this unpleasant reality of my life. When I do, please know that I am not merely an aging adolescent unwilling to let go of mommy issues. I'm sure there is and always will be more work to do on this stuff, and I am absolutely willing to do it. I have my scars, but I am not bitter. I do forgive her. I believe she did the best she could with what she had, just like we all do. But the reality on the painful level of my experience in the world is that my mother did not love me or support me but rather resented, envied and distrusted me, emotionally abused me, and made of me a family scapegoat. That's just how it is on that level. It's just something I deal with.

Please please please don't tell me about how you used to hate your mom too when you were seventeen but then you learned how to see how much she always loved you and only wanted the best for you. I know no one's mom was perfect. I also know my mother did and does love me in her way, and that she wants the best for me, too. Unfortunately for me, that manifested in her telling me regularly (to make me better) what a mean, insensitive, conceited person I am, from as far back as I can remember.

I found a photograph of a long-ago Christmas a few years back, a Christmas I have clear memories of. I got a Chrissie doll from Santa, and from my mother some handmade clothes for her. I remember considering those clothes, which included a very simple wedding gown with a veil made from the same ivory jacquard, and wondering if it was a some sort of peace offering. Or, did she have to do something nice for me because mothers have to? Is it so no one will think she's a bad mother? Or did she really mean to do something nice for me? I think I ended up deciding it must be a sign of a truce, that she did actually want to give me a gift. I accepted it like the adult I felt I was, with cautious gratitude.

I intellectually knew but didn't really let myself know when that took place. I was shocked the day I found that photo to turn it over and note from the date the developer printed on it that I had been six years old.

Not long after that, she took to telling me, "You're a monster. And you're not my kid," when she thought I was being bad. (This was generally when she thought I was copping an attitude. I was pretty well-behaved. I thought I was an adult.)

Thankfully, there has always been a part of me that did not believe her. And I have worked hard on myself. But because this dynamic goes back to my preverbal days, it's such a part of who I am in the world that it's really easy to slip into forgetting that this particular littany of censoring ideas came from somewhere outside me. When I first mused about my Monster Gallery in my pages this morning, I began by thinking that I was probably the only monster in there. (!) No matter how I disinter and examine and fight to dissociate from and resolve that enormous inner critic, it still doesn't seem to immediately occur to me when I have a thought like, "Who do you think you are?" when I'm in danger of doing anything potentially threatening to real or imagined fragile egos around me, that maybe that thought is not mine.

I hope this program helps me with that. Onward.

Friday, January 06, 2006

Lovin' those pages

Man! I look forward to the pages every morning. I don't know that they've facillitated any creative miracles as such just yet, but as a practice they provide palpable comfort. When I feel a twinge of anxiety or other unpleasant emotion during the day, I think of the time when I will write the pages and I wish it was right then. I realize that I could do more journaling if I chose to at those times, but somehow I just don't want to mess with a good thing: I wake up and have my little brain-drain of whatever pointless crap happens to be bothering me, I usually have room after that to noodle about in other sometimes helpful ways, and when I'm done I feel clearer, calmer and happier. Now I'm probably jinxing myself. Well, for now I do them and they help so I love them.

I do think creative energy is percolating. Yesterday while listening to music I colored a mandala by my friend and mentor Clare Goodwin - just coloring! with markers! - and it came out so glorious and intricate and, well, colorful, that I decided I should laminate it and give it to a friend. Clare does posit the idea that there is something about working with mandalas that lends a particularly spiritual aspect of self-expression, even if on another level you're just coloring in a pattern. I did note the sense of freedom in deciding which colors to use where, and I worked around the black lines of the pattern to make it even more my own. Anyhow, it was a lovely, low-pressure and fun excursion into creative pursuits, with nary a whiff of angst.

Hey! There it is - my inner critic! It's saying that coloring can't possibly be creative. Well, I just gave my inner critic an inner rasberry. Oh, dear. I hope that through the AW I'll find more sophisticated weapons to fight the real battles that I know must be coming. And I hope doing the pages helps me find the willingness to use them.

Or maybe heavy mental artillery is just what is not needed. Maybe doing the pages and the other tools will help me really get that instead of further arming and armoring me. Which brings me to the following quote, which I found at the above link to Clare's mandala page:

"Forget the resolutions. Forget control and discipline...too much work. Instead try experimenting. Go in search of something to fall in love with...something about yourself, your career, your spouse."~ Dale Dauten ~

Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Synchronicities du jour

I just left a large pile of comments over at kat's paws about my adventures in synchronicity since I started doing morning pages yesterday. I tried to copy and paste them in here, but that doesn't seem to want to happen. Maybe I'll figure that out later. In the meantime, please to click the link and read them there. (Long story short: principles language tricky, me likey, synchronicity gooood.)

Monday, January 02, 2006

Why "six foot one"?

It's my height. Eat yer heart out.

Why "the wings of the morning"?

An excerpt:

Whither shall I go from thy spirit? or wither shall I flee from thy presence?
If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there: if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.
If I take the wings of the morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea;
Even there shall thy hand lead me, and thy right hand shall hold me.
If I say, Surely the darkness shall cover me; even the night shall me light about me.
Yea, the darkness hideth not from thee; but the night shineth as the day: the darkness and the light are both alike to thee.

Psalm 139, Book of Psalms, Bible (King James version) (somehow the most over- and under-utilized spiritual textbook around, simultaneously).

I can never quite get used to the deep, deep beauty of this poem. I love the whole thing, though I have had to wrestle a bit with lines 19-22. Ain't that the way, with the bible? Anyway, as someone who has made her bed in hell with a frequency that defies any system of logic or romantic notions of pain in the name of a passionate nature, this poetry goes straight to the inside of my insides, breezing unseeing past all the stories I tell myself and resonating on a level of full, real, undeniable recognition.

I cry and cry. But what a relief! I believe this; Love/Truth/God goes with me wherever I go. This has special relevance as I begin the Artist's Way, or anytime I intend to express myself, because whatever comes up as I work and explore, whatever I find myself wanting to say or do - even if I make dark choices - (behold,) I do not even temporarily leave, and I can never forsake, the Truth of what I am. Even the night shall be light about me.

In the interest of full disclosure, I also happen to believe that there is such a thing as a dark choice. I don't think every impulse is somehow a noble one. Our minds have the power to miscreate in a sense, to think we are separate from G*d and from each other, or to wish to be. It's all a giant misunderstanding in my estimation, but the point at the moment is that we can explore however and wherever we choose to, for as long as we like, and Love abides.

Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts...



Sunday, January 01, 2006

Hello, out there.

(Well, then.) Some lovely soul already left me an encouraging note, on my highly creative Test Post, so I s'pose I could start dropping bread crumbs and take a few tentative steps into this tantalizing and terrifying wood, already. Offer some early clues. Disclude.

I'm here for the Artist's Way group. Until the moment I post this, um, post, I can't really call myself a blogger. (After that it will be hard to avoid the new descriptor, at least in its most technical respect.) I have recently, blessedly participated, however, in the revival of a friendship that had nearly passed into oblivion, through only mutual emailing and the partaking of my friend's blog posts. I am therefore cautiously optimistic about the possibility of an online network of substance, or at least about the possibility that declaring my commitment to go through the AW program in a community, even a pneumatic one like this, may carry weight.

I lost my job a little over a week ago, a job I didn't much care for or about but which nonetheless managed to suck me dry on an alarmingly regular basis, and come to think of it on a pernicious, barely perceptible, chronic basis as well. I can see this now that I'm gone. Now that I've been fired. That was a new one for me.

I was planning to leave sometime this year anyway. I am an aspiring housewife, and I wanted to be not working. I got my wish. Things are a tad tight financially, but I'm not about to argue with the obvious metaphysics of this turn of events. Self-development can now be my employment. I have lots of time. What a gift. Besides, I'm trying to conceive, at going-on-42 (first timer), and I figure the decrease in stress alone has already begun to rev my fertility engines. Vrrmm, vvvrrmmm. I can feel it working.

Oh, yeah - creativity. Okay, so I'm an aspiring arsty, musician housewife. A wannabe funky stay-at-home mom. I sing, write songs, play some instruments. I like to arrange my things in a decorative manner, make stuff, draw, write, dress. I haven't done much along these lines, beyond enjoying clothes and dressing, for way too long, though I've managed to keep a slender lifeline open. Emergency rations only. I can still still feel a heartbeat. Since losing my job I've been cooking up a storm. Does that count?

I also sporadically read tarot cards, professionally. That job I'll keep. My spiritual pursuits are my first priority, at least in theory. In practice, I'm not great at directing my spiritual and creative energies productively. I have done the first three or four chapters of the AW on my own, and I know this all dovetails nicely.

So. Very happy to be here! And I do look forward to sharing something, or something. Thank you all in advance for showing up for this. That bit is most important, I think. That showing up thing.