The teeter-totter

What have I been doing with writing and drawing all these years?  Ever since 2^nd or 3^rd grade, when I started to seriously sit with a paper in front of me with some kind of want within me. What did I want? To be noticed, praised? To be understood? Seen, heard?

It has been a means to an end – trying to find somebody to understand me, trying to communicate. Drawing and writing are just tools. What I want is communication, understanding. Writing and drawing are also ways to communicate with myself, try to understand myself.

When I put my words and images out there and I don’t get feedback or a dialogue, then I feel frustrated and angry and feel it is pointless. Why do I keep doing these things? Why do I persist?

Then I try to be patient, keep going. I think there must be something more for me to figure out. What is it? What do I keep missing? What am I not understanding? Not getting? Has it been right in front of me all along?

Why do I keep writing and drawing? What is it for?  — Recognition – but not recognition like accolades but recognition as in understanding, and camaraderie.

One interior life experience to another.

I’m frustrated when someone responds that something is “good”. I don’t care if they say something I made is good or not – I’d actually prefer if they didn’t. it isn’t what I’m after. “Good” is a lame answer. I don’t like pats on the back; they’re empty. It is not a full recognition, just surface.

I want someone to identify something, notice something, convey something. One interior life experience to another.

Maybe it is a lack in my work. I’m not getting there. I’m still holding back? Maybe it is a lack in the audience? They don’t care. They don’t really look.  (and then back to me – I didn’t make them care. I didn’t make them look)  (and back to them – no one can force anyone else to engage)

There is some kind of disconnect.

Maybe I’m too needy.

Maybe I’m just needy enough – to keep trying, to keep exploring, to keep wanting to perceive clearly – to know, realize, acknowledge.

I don’t want the games and toying and shock-value art. It feels false. Why all the masks and irony and slyness? Are we cool when we make ironic statements? I say, who cares for disaffection; who cares for irony? I don’t. It has no heart. It has no soul. It is cold. So much of art has been cold for so long. Cold and pretentious and empty and mean-spirited. If you have disdain for your subject and for the rest of the world – why are you doing it? Artist as bully?

I want the common… the communal…the compassionate.

Not the competition.

But who am I fooling? I’ve been cold; I’ve been competitive. How would I recognize these things if I didn’t know them myself?  But  there is also something innocent and true and sure still inside me that doesn’t want and doesn’t understand the game. A part of me has held on for so long, waiting to be understood as other than that.

By whose authority do you feel the way you do?

 This morning I woke up with that sentence. It popped into my mind.

It felt like a question for me — but not only for me — for other people I know as well –

“By whose authority do you feel the way you do?”

Which led me to think of other questions:

Whose authority has power in your life?

Whose permission do you need to do what you want?

Whose approval are you seeking?

It usually seems I can crack into another avenue with words when I look up their history. There is usually an unexpected angle in the history. In this case, my Webster’s dictionary listed authority as “opinion, decision, power” –

from ME authorite from auctoritas: originator/author

From “author”  — enlarger, founder, master, leader, “one who causes to grow” – to increase.  Hmmm…

“Who is the author of your life?”  relates to the authority of what you do and how you feel. When I ask myself why I do certain things, I do not always come up with the answer that I am doing them on my own authority. There are other authorities in my life, some with less power than they used to have. Although it could be argued that there are necessary authorities, I think it is best to be your own primary authority. The primary authority for your happiness should be you. Why give that power to other people, who have themselves to contend with?

After musing about the word “Authority” this morning I heard knocking on my window in front of my house. I looked out, but didn’t see anyone. Then it sounded like someone was on top of the house. The noises sounded human in origin – but how could anyone be walking around up there – or purposively knocking, for that matter?

When I left the house out the back door something drew me to turn around – a sound? I saw a big blue jay – the largest blue jay I’d ever seen – flying. I thought, “It was him – knocking at the window.” He seemed twice the size of a normal blue jay.

According to “Animal Speak” by Ted Andrews, blue jays represent ability for survival with the least amount of effort (I like that!) Any blue bird (to me) has felt to be spiritual – the feeling I get from blue and the ability to fly. Blue jays are members of the crow family – and crows have no fear. (Crows are also wonderfully smart) They seek pleasure. They reflect lessons in using your own power correctly. (Even though the cliché is to regard blue jays as bullies – they provide great lessons about power – not only how to use your own power – but also about not allowing yourself to be placed in a position in which power is misused against you.) How appropriate this Giant Blue Jay was adamantly stomping around my house and knocking at the windows after I had been musing about “Authority” – and who takes authority in my life and in the lives of people I know.

As if these weren’t clues enough for me to pay attention – on the way to work I saw a smaller, normal “life-sized” pair of blue jays– the two of them together on the bridge.

 Look – look – there are signs everywhere.

On a side-tangent – following the origins of the word “Authority” and “Author” – I came to this interesting quote:

…[W]riting means revealing oneself to excess …. This is why one can never be alone enough when one writes, why even night is not night enough. … I have often thought that the best mode of life for me would be to sit in the innermost room of a spacious locked cellar with my writing things and a lamp. Food would be brought and always put down far away from my room, outside the cellar’s outermost door. The walk to my food, in my dressing gown, through the vaulted cellars, would be my only exercise. I would then return to my table, eat slowly and with deliberation, then start writing again at once. And how I would write! From what depths I would drag it up! [Franz Kafka] 

On some days, I would regard that as a perfect existence. – Writing, revealing, discovering  — digging things up, dragging them up – not taking time for other things like answering phones, talking about the weather, whatever else our lives are usually filled doing – but instead spending time discovering things in the subterranean depths. It is a bit like a personal archeology. I wrote about something like this when I wrote about finding buried things that had never seen the light of day before. (“Construction Season”) Of course, to have that kind of life, someone would have to be catering to me — bringing me my lunches and dinners.  And yes, although it may be appealing, it would also be lonely, and probably not the best life, long-term. But sometimes — yes — sometimes — such a place would be the perfect get-away — the recharge for my batteries.

Solitude, authority, play–  and another quote I saw today, but can’t place where, about beauty not being enough to entertain (Beauty contains a moment of looking and appreciating – but musing, imagination, mystery and speculation amuse us much longer.)

11:18 – Art: Power and Nourishing

Learning to make art gives people more appreciation for art created by others.

This is a huge reason why it is important that the arts are included in education from the youngest age onward; and that the arts are not neglected at any age.

We connect to ourselves – to who we are – through art.

 The concept of the value of art needs to be shared in our communities and our families. It means more to a healthy, evolving, and educated society than any other single thing.

Simplify and enjoy –

I had a dream this morning that I was living with Amish people — but they weren’t regular Amish people — they didn’t dress Amish, and they drank fine wine and watched movies and didn’t follow specific Amish religious beliefs or rules. They lived simply. While I was there I just had a bed and a few favorite movies and a few changes of clothes. It was great. My subconscious is getting pretty direct about what it wants: to simplify and enjoy.

Break on through – “What is art?”

Today’s musing started from a Lynda Barry interview on Wisconsin Public Radio. Barry is a force for Real Creativity and living a genuine life. I love what she says and writes. It is inspiring to get in that mode and what it is about — about process and perception — not about judging and the inner critic. Her way is about getting past “good” and “bad” — Hey, that can be our way too.

Lately I’ve been thinking instead of being in the mind (bind) of good/bad — to instead feel, get connected, and sense when art has that connection and is real and alive. Instead of asking of my work or someone else’s work, “Is it good?” I’m starting to ask, “Is it honest?” Does it come from a genuine feeling of the artist? I think this is what I’ve always responded to, but intuitively. Now I’m starting to identify what the unqualified “it” was in a work that made me feel excited about viewing it. (or in the case of a poem, story, or book, excited about reading it) Can’t you feel the difference when someone is trying to give the audience what they want? Blah, blah, blah. It is boring, dead, sad, lifeless. What about when the artist or writer is impassioned about what they share? Even if I don’t agree or jive with that artist’s vision, I will feel more energy from the work.

This morning I read a sentence that I really liked in the I-Ching — “Make a sincere attempt to meet the social responsibility of the artist, which is: Reuniting people with their reality.”

Isn’t that what art is for? — for perceiving and connecting — and sharing perceptions — and then other people getting the communication?  Now we may see something in a way we didn’t see before because we’ve experienced it through art, through someone else’s eyes and shared experience. I think as an example of the orange glow in many Maxfield Parrish paintings. I first saw that glow in a Parrish painting, then I started seeing it Everywhere.

I am coming not to care about the “Game” of art — the heirarchy of who is important and who is not (the stars and dots that are handed out to people — the popularity contest of it all) I don’t think Maxfield Parrish is critically acclaimed. He is probably seen as an illustrator, not a fine artist. I don’t care. I see the color in a sunset differently because of his work.

Hazel

Hazel

She disapproves of everyone.

She hates everyone.

Judges everyone.

There isn’t anyone she doesn’t disapprove of.

She is married to a big guy. They have a daughter.

Hazel keeps tags on her clothes when she wears them in case she wants to return them.

Hazel is little.

A sharp, little woman

with sharp features. Bony.

One day I have enough.

I go over to Hazel’s house.

I say I want to speak to Hazel.

I ask her,

“Is there anyone you don’t disapprove of?

Tell me one person.”

She can’t answer.

I say, “You disapprove of me,

of my husband.

You disapprove of your husband,

your daughter,

your neighbors.

There isn’t anyone you see that you

don’t disapprove of.

You even disapprove of Hazel –

the sweetest little woman in the world.”

At the end of the dance the dancers dance themselves offstage

I’m watching a rehearsal for a musical. The stage is up higher than the floor where the audience sits. Down below are round tables and chairs. I’m sitting in the audience watching the end of the rehearsal. I can’t figure out if it is a great show or too over-the-top…. so over-the-top that it is funny, campy, and melodramatic.

At the end the cast is dancing. They are all men of various sizes and ages. Billy from Six Feet Under is in the front and the rest of the dancers follow his dance moves. The dancers kick and make big movements, swing their legs and arms. They are serious and earnest; they give it their all.

I see there is also a little boy, tiny. He has just learned to walk, but smaller than most toddlers. He sways back and forth. How amazing they found such a tiny boy who can do this – dance up there will all of the dancers, all the commotion, without being intimidated by all the big guys, the other dancers so wildly dancing.

At the end of the dance the dancers dance themselves offstage.

The last one left is up front on the far left, where Billy was. The last dancer is a larger, middle-aged man, tall and big, about 6’3” with a bit of stomach, a round face, he’s maybe 47 or so but still has a baby face, Kind of chubby like he still has his baby fat, like there is still something innocent and sweet, gullible, trusting about him. He is high-kicking, really good natured and earnest. He is into the dance.

He is doing all these indicators – shrugging his shoulders – all these tells – maybe 7 or 8 movements in a row. He’s hamming it up, playing it up, really earnest about it. And the last thing he does – he lifts one eyebrow – a wry, funny look — and then – zoom – he pops offstage.

Since it had been a rehearsal there will be the real show later. I’m sitting alone at one of three spaces at a round tale in the center front of the audience. I’ve had a meal – egg salad, crackers, and hamburger (but the hamburger was raw or nearly so, so I didn’t eat it)

I think that the real show will happen later so the places should be cleared: the plates and silverware. Maybe mine can be left because I’ll be back sitting here. But for some reason there is food on the other plates even though I’ve been sitting alone. I start to pick up the plates – putting the silverware on them, and another woman comes over – a waitress? – to clear the plates or help me.

I go backstage. Some people, the crew, are talking about the dancers and how great they were. I think I should tell them that I didn’t know whether to take them seriously or find them funny. They were too over-the-top. Then I think that I can say, “The guy at the end, although he is likeable and earnest – everything will be much more powerful if he pares down his indicators – all his shoulder shrugs and gestures – maybe just do the eyebrow lift at the end (that was ironic and catchy – more subtle)” I am going to say it but everyone else is gushing about how wonderful it was – as if – the more, the better.

Later, outside, I’m getting ready to go onstage with a bunch of other young women. We are all wearing shiny gowns of various colors. Mine is dark blue. Most of theirs are bright and light shiny colors. These women are all young and beautiful with long hair and perfect bodies. We are all sitting in a big Land Rover vehicle. There are three sets of seats and I’m in the third seats back.

All the other women are sitting in front of me. We’re waiting, preparing, for our number, for when we’ll go on stage. I am bigger and older than the rest. I don’t have a perfect body like them. Although I am overweight, I am not as overweight as I am in real life, and actually I look pretty great, just not perfect like them.

I start thinking about coming to terms, thinking about my confidence; that I am beautiful, just not in the ideal/smaller/younger/perfect way like them.

A young man comes up to the vehicle. He is going to come in and get dressed, ready for the next act/scene. He is tall and thin, has dark hair, also beautiful and perfect. He is going to get in next to me and get dressed, change out of his street clothes into his formal-wear, but I think I should move or get out (get out of the way) so he can have more room.

I open the door to get out and I see that there is a giant puddle of water right underneath me. I don’t know if I can step over it without getting my dress wet and dirty. The giant puddle of water is also what kept him from joining me in the 3^rd seat back. He decides to get in the storage area behind me in the back. I am nervous because I think he is wonderful, I feel attracted, drawn to him. He makes me anxious to be near him. I think it is too bad because he’d prefer to be closer to one of the perfect girls up front. I am closer to him and somehow in the way.

It feels like the vehicle is moving. I had my chance to get out before and I should have taken it, because now the vehicle is moving, the water under us propelling us forward. I tell the others. Don’t they see/feel us moving? But they are oblivious. Even after I tell them they don’t seem to notice, to see it or feel it.

We keep picking up speed until it is obvious. We are going at a good clip; the water carrying us downstream, father and father away from where we are supposed to be. We are supposed to go on stage shortly.

Now we’re really moving and luckily the girl closest to the steering wheel, sitting to the side of it (not in the driver’s seat) – is at least turning the wheel when we are about to hit into things.  Good, I’m glad; at least she’s noticing.

We are going faster and faster. We probably purposively should have hit into a bank early on to stop us. We have no control over stopping now and it would be dangerous to hit something. I wonder how we will stop. We are getting farther and father from where we need to be.

We are coming to a small village – like a nearly abandoned tiny town with only a few, run-down houses in it. Either the water or the steering takes us right to one of the first houses. We rise up to meet it – at least going up the incline has slowed us down – but we still drive right into it. We drive right into the kitchen.

The place looks like from the 1940s era or so and impoverished. There is a woman there, maybe in her 30s. She is also somewhat larger, a size 14 approximately, and she is dressed in a full apron/smock like my grandmother used to wear. She would look better if her self-concept wasn’t so low.

I think she can help us get back. Somehow the key to getting back to the show is through her. I don’t know what exactly. Maybe it is just that she’ll allow us to use her phone. Whatever it is, she won’t do it for nothing. In exchange for getting us back to the show and for us having plowed through her kitchen, we would need to clean the floor of her house.

All the young women stand around, doing nothing. They seem blank to the request, like they don’t even hear it, or know what is going on. No one makes a move. I find out that it isn’t required that all of us clean the floor, just that the floor gets clean and that at least one of us cleans it.

I think, what the hell, we aren’t going anywhere any other way, and the floor doesn’t look that bad, I’ll clean it.

I take the broom from the woman in the kitchen and start sweeping a bit. The floors are wood plank. I notice there is so much stuff around – old-fashioned stuff, things that are ragged, dirty, and not valuable. Why had all this debris been saved? The place will look so much better if it is sorted and a lot of stuff discarded. There are a lot of knick knacks, cheap clutter, and rags, scraps of cloth.

I decide to go to the farthest part of the house, the farthest corner, and clean everything from there back to here so the whole floor will be clean. (that way I don’t track through what I’ve just cleaned, either) I walk through some dark, narrow hallways, going past other rooms until I come to a room at the opposite corner of the house. The doorway opens out into a bigger room. Everything is grander here, more space, surprisingly nicer, bigger, more formal, rich, opulent. This is a den or formal sitting room with big, old furniture, ornate, carved wood. The best room in the house.

The floor in here is carpeted, a burnished gold color.  I need a vacuum. The other young women have followed me back here. They are going to help too, which is a relief since this project I originally thought wouldn’t be a huge job, seems daunting now, a lot of work, and a lot more work than I originally thought. The other women are starting to help, although they seem to use a lot of energy fluttering around and seeming to work without getting much done. It is like they have agreed to help, but don’t do anything.

I need a vacuum for the carpet, someone (the woman who lived there?) gives me a vacuum. It is an old-time vacuum (goes with the house!) I work at getting the cord adjusted and then plug it in to this weird old thing in the wall – a panel with lots of plug-in areas, some with cobwebs. I plug into one and start vacuuming in that corner.

I’m shocked that the carpet looks so different in the area I vacuum. It is a bright gold – so bright and clean. It stands out against the dull gold.

Then I realize that the cord doesn’t reach very far. Ah, this will be a big, troublesome task, trying to reach everywhere with the vacuum and not having a cord that reaches.

dream phrase

woke up with this phrase this morning — “No accepted door into reality is life.”

(and I saw a bunny somersalting into a mirror, as if the phrase was made into a poster)

I like it and it feels true. I don’t know if I can explain what it means. Maybe that’s the point. That theories about life aren’t life.

A poem I woke up with on the morning of my birthday – a work in progress

This place is this –
I know it is
If you let yourself feel
You’re gonna get hurt
but if you don’t let yourself feel
you’ll never know love.

((Here even pain
becomes part of beauty)

It isn’t an easy place
I know it isn’t.
All that lives, struggles
trying to find a way
to connect, to survive
a teeter totter
of hope and despair
of giving up, of going on

Someday I hope to know the way
the way I find will be my own.
I’m still picking out sign posts
In glimpses from friends –
in their trusting eyes,
their searching eyes.
One honest look from another
Breaks — and opens — my heart.

Row, row, row your boat

There’s a technique in creative dreaming called “lucid dreaming” in which dreamers affect their dreams by

1)    Acknowledging they are in a dream; and

2)    Consciously doing things, asking for things, and/or otherwise changing their dream

I’ve experimented with lucid dreaming these past 15 years or so. Although sometimes I am able to do it, I find I get the “awareness” of dream readily, and have less luck becoming an active creator in the dream.

My initial results first came after realizing something my dad said for years: that when he is dreaming he looks around and says to himself, “Hey, I’m in a dream.” (Listen to Dad…he knows these things. And is never pretentious about them) Dad’s common sense statement came many years before I read lucid dreaming books or listened to Joseph Campbell lectures.

Years later I read the books; the most recent one was “Creative Dreaming” by Patricia Garfield. Garfield writes about dream techniques of Native Americans and other native aboriginal tribes around the world, as well as experiments by dream searchers with a psychological/scientific bent to their studies.

My most effective dream experiments were around the time I read ”Creative Dreaming.”  One technique was to ask for a gift in your dream. Lo and behold, a few mornings after reading about this, I’m dreaming I’m being presented with a big wrapped present. Seeing the present, I realize I’m having a dream. But then I disappointed myself by “graciously” declining the gift, even before I got to open it and see what was inside. Even in the dream, the “I” who was observing realized consciously that the other I who declined the gift was “not doing this right.” I knew things would change if I accepted the gift, but some pounded-in philosophy of denial was internalized in me. Another part of me was observing what I was doing as I shrugged off the gift, “Oh, no – that’s all right.” As though I didn’t deserve the gift I was being freely given.

Recently I’ve been experimenting with something else – bringing a few aspects of my dream into my waking life. For example, just before Jen’s birthday I dreamt of turkey roll-ups – and so the next day I made them. Not earth-shattering stuff, here! But, they were tasty, and seemed a really good idea.

I bring dreams into waking life a lot when I write them down; but it is even more effective when I do a simple thing in waking life that I saw in a dream. The veil between the two – waking and dreaming – have seemed for a long time to be strangely switchable and interrelated – like two dream worlds affecting one another. Often my waking life feels more like dreaming than my dreaming life.

.

This isn’t anything that others haven’t noticed before – I think of the story that ends, “Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.” (Chuang Tzu).