Seedlings in Stone: May 2012

On, In, and Around Mondays: The Smallest Wild Rose Will Do

I'm mixing it up, since I've already read The Artist's Way, twice.

I'm reading it a third time now, yes, for the book club, but I also got Cameron's Finding Water from the library. It gets at some of the same material from a different angle, with the coolest little shifts in language. Like this...

"Even the tiniest of Artists Dates will yield results."

I test this language, on a day when I have no date planned. It's just a small diversion, this decision to walk behind the parking lot, on a path that goes nowhere but a woodland loop (so short l I can do it in a few minutes).

Along the path? Wild roses. Diminutive, compared to the fancy roses we can buy and plant in our gardens.

But I spend time with them. Wishing I could catch the way the light is held, as if in a white cup. Holding my breath (why do I hold my breath?) as I lean in to take a shot. And then I run my fingers across the iridescent whiteness, just to take home the scent of roses on my skin. A free perfume. An alteration of my chemistry, if only for today.

Cameron tells me I am wrong about this—the temporary change of chemistry. She says, give it time to sink in, to enter as if into the blood stream, through the skin, through the inhalation of the fragrance. She says it this way...

"Artist Dates fill us with exuberance. We see that we are not caught by the narrow confines of life as we know it."

I am inclined to believe it, after the roses. Even though the path seems, on its surface, the same.

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On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

This post is also shared with Laura Boggess, for...

Labels: creativity, Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way

The Artist's Way: Collecting Quotes & Questions

Sometimes I simply like to collect quotes. Like these from today's first book club discussion of The Artist's Way.

For me, it's almost a form of poem-writing, to do this. I lift essential words from a text and they stand in a line, speaking powerfully...

***
How do you know if you are creatively blocked? Jealousy is an excellent clue.

[Question to self: who am I currently jealous of? why? ]

***
Many of us find that we have squandered our creative energies by investing disproportionately in the lives, hopes, dreams, and plans of others.

[Question to self: is there anyone whose plans I've let seriously eclipse my own? If so, why have I done this? What are the "good reasons" I continue to use as an excuse? ]

***
All that angry, whiny, petty stuff that you write down in the morning [pages] stands between you and your creativity. Worrying about the job, the laundry, the funny knock in the car, the weird look in your lover's eye—this stuff eddies through our subconscious and muddies our days. Get it on the page.

***
It is very difficult to complain about a situation morning after morning, month after month, without being moved to constructive action. The pages lead us out of despair and into undreamed-of solutions.

[Note to self: I like the process aspect of this. It assumes that the undreamed-of solutions will take time. That's okay. Undreamed-of solutions can't possibly all be at the surface. Otherwise they wouldn't qualify as undreamed-of.]

***
Very often audacity, not talent, makes one person an artist and another a shadow artist—hiding in the shadows, afraid to step out and expose the dream to the light, fearful that it will disintegrate to the touch.

***
Creativity is play.

[Question to self: when I don't take time to play, why don't I take time? What's that about? What are the excuses I use?]

***
Progress, not perfection, is what we should be asking of ourselves.

***
Give yourself permission to be a beginner.

[Question to self: what do I feel like I am a beginner at? Can I let that happen? Should I maybe always have at least one area of pursuit that requires beginner-status?]

***
'But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano/act/paint/write a decent play?' / Yes... the same age you will be if you don't. / So let's start.

***

Lovely post photo is from Duane Scott. Used with permission.

Labels: bookclub, Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way, Tweetspeak Poetry

On, In, and Around Mondays: Date with the Coyotes

The sign says coyotes live here. But I walk in anyway, thinking I owe Lyla an Artist’s Date.

Gradually, the sounds of the road are replaced with idyllic buzzings, rustlings, the sound of water babbling under an abandoned stone foundation. I hear a rattling and think “coyote,” but it’s just a chipmunk.

Woods grow thicker and light grows thinner and the trail becomes a narrow snake.

“Maybe I should turn back,” I consider, but I’m trusting the trail to loop, like trails always do.

In an early Facebook banter today, somebody mentioned the ancient relic called a map. I thought that was funny until now, when I’ve neglected to consult the map at the trailhead, and I don’t appear to be going in circles, which for once I am wishing to do.

Around a steep curve, at the base of an enormous tree is a bronzed tree left from Christmas; I can tell by its perfect shape and the cut of the trunk that it was a holiday tree. Who deposits their old Christmas tree in the woods? I am mildly nervous about meeting the perpetrator and maybe the coyotes too.

Four chipmunks later, the trail is coming round to civilization. I hasten my step. My return is at hand. But when I get to the base of the path, I find that this trip has been a line, not a loop. I’ve gone up and now down a small mountain, come to a road, and it happens to be a road where my car isn’t parked.

This Artist’s Date is turning into an afternoon. Not quite what I’d planned. But somewhere near a sunny glen, I begin to think maybe I will come back unscathed and my mind turns to compassionate feelings for Mark Zuckerberg.

For some reason I think he’s made a mistake about Instagram or maybe just a mistake in buying it before he’d discovered the fallout from the new Facebook design. I believe there is fallout. Ads are no longer as visible, and I heard today that GM pulled theirs. So that would be a bad thing for Zuckerberg, and I’m suddenly feeling sorry for him, especially after he was so nice and wore the hoodie too.

My knee is hurting a little and I start to think Mark has nothing to worry about compared to me. What if I can’t make it back? What if I have to stay in here forever, fearing the coyotes (or have to resort to turning my cell phone on and request a woodland rescue?).

I keep retracing my steps. The mountain, the fallen trees, the sharp turns, the stone ruins. I think how perfectly kind it is that someone painted little white squares on the trees, so I can be assured that I’ll need no rescue, at least not from a failure of my internal GPS system.

More fallen trees, moss, a little stream—until, at last, I am back to the grassy path where I began.

Here is Skunk Cabbage Field. There are the lavender flowers and the black pond. Zuckerberg and I will meet later, in a way, when I post on Facebook, about my risky day. Maybe he had a risky day too. Or a risky year. I will comfort him with consolations that he hasn’t fallen prey, yet, to the coyotes.*

*I wrote this post on Thursday, before the Facebook IPO flopped.

_______

On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

This post is also shared with Laura Boggess, for...

On, In, and Around Mondays: The Questionable School Choice

"Sometime I want to hear how distance-learning has gone for your daughter this year," she wrote.

I am not sure what to say.

On the floor are three copies of Machiavelli's The Prince. Different versions, for comparison. My girl ordered them from the library after reading an excerpt in her history text.

We never really used texts before this year, but the distance-learning school uses them. So here we are. With the exception of Biology, it seems to me that the real learning still seems to be happening on my girl's own terms. Machiavelli, times three.

The distance-learning school assigns essays. She writes them because she has to; they are usually bare reflections of her true capabilities. And yet, last night, after she walked at sunset by herself, she came home and spent two hours in vigorous essay writing. I saw her consulting books, flipping from here to there, happily engrossed.

My girls have been home educated their whole lives, but for high school I simply didn't feel like keeping the transcripts, proving the learning, in the ways I would need to do for the girls to apply for college. Distance-learning seemed to be the happiest medium we might find.

One of my favorite librarians asked me the other day if my girl still writes the way she always did. I had to say no, she does not. She doesn't have the time. A little piece of my heart broke in the telling.

How is the distance-learning going? It's hard to say. There've been losses I find it hard to live with. Still, my girl found Machiavelli in her history text. And she says the writing is beautiful.

That's what I'm counting on, in the end. That the center she's been given all these years will help her to find the beautiful, to make her own way, even when her reality doesn't feel ideal.

_______

On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

This post is also shared with Laura Boggess, for...

Labels: family stories, home education

On, In and Around Mondays: Focusing on the Wild

Every year, this lawn gets wilder.

I have been letting it happen, even making it happen by spreading dandelion seeds to the wind, by refusing to mow the leopard-faced flowers that look something like violets but smaller and more elongated. This morning, I was greeted by more buttercups, more purple spike flowers, more wild mustard than I was last year in May.

I love this wildness, this lack of landscaping focus—in a county that prizes the pristine, the trimmed, the perfectly edged.

Suddenly, the thought rises in me—a thought I've been toying with in conversations and private musings for the past few weeks. I'm unfocused. Like my wild lawn. I am never going to win the prize for the best rose garden, the biggest and reddest tomatoes, the greenest dandelion-free grass. I am also never going to win the prize for being a national speaker, a top-selling author. I can't stand the focus it requires.

One of the conversations I had, concerning this matter, was with a visionary photographer friend. She is far more than a photographer, dipping her hands into business and investments, and all manner of networking and people-building. I told her I really couldn't see her focusing on one aspect of photography and trying to make a name for herself that way. I asked, "Can you really picture yourself on a 5,000-ways-to-photograph-a-biscuit track?"

I also told her that this is a particular kind of gift, this wildness in her spirit, this vision she has to keep thinking up the next thing and then moving on.

I'm thinking this is me too. I can focus. I can focus on my wild ways. Spreading seed, cultivating the purple in life, building the raucous creativity of color in people and systems. I can let this happen, yes. I can even make it happen.

_______

On, In and Around Mondays (which partly means you can post any day and still add a link) is an invitation to write from where you are. Tell us what is on, in, around (over, under, near, by...) you. Feel free to write any which way... compose a tight poem or just ramble for a few paragraphs. But we should feel a sense of place. Would you like to try? Write something 'in place' and add your link below.

If you could kindly link back here when you post, it will create a central meeting place. :)

This post is also shared with Laura Boggess, for...

Labels: life management, On, On in and Around Mondays, personal growth, professional life