icebergs

Lately, I am thinking about icebergs. I love the idea of something floating along on the surface as a warning signal but beneath the ocean is the real bulk, the unknown enormity of it. So much of my behavior and thoughts are like that, what seemingly is simple...Oh I don't know if I want to fall in love... beneath it: a weight, a mass of issues and problems and feelings that the iceberg of the original thought barely even hint at existing.



So I am beginning some drawings of icebergs, I really like the square looking ones. And I think I'll start with some drawings then maybe do some paintings of icebergs. It all reminds me of the hanging things I was drawing last year. I'll have to dig up some photos of those.

up in the air

Sometimes life is just up in the air...as soon as I want to nail something to the floor, gravity gives way and its space camp all over the place. Unfinished business is stressing me out lately. Speaking of that...
Here is a piece of unfinished business. I began this felt wallart a few months before E was born. I was going to put it in his nursery, I let K pick all the colors that she liked. But then her mother painted everything in primaries and it didn't match and I never finished it. EXCUSE ALERT! Oh man, I'm good at that. I just picked an excuse and ran with it to avoid finishing something that could've been amazing. So now I've lost the zest for that piece and I probably STILL won't finish it but maybe I can do SOMETHING with it. Make it into something new. I think I will cut it into 3 pieces and stretch them over frames. That would be cute and pass it onto my niece, Ayda.

In better news, here is something I did finish. Another blast from the past.
I thought about this and collected film strips for this for 4 years before I finally DID the lampshade. Sure it took a long time to conceive but I think it's one of my first actual finished products. Its been a learning process. I never had anyone to teach me how to start a project and finish it. Sometimes I still get overwhelmed by the process of taking the first step, having breaks in the middle and then accomplishing my goal. I think I also get caught up on the goal looking EXACTLY like what I had hoped, but little by little I am letting go of that. What goes up must come down, so hopefully things will come back to Earth soon and I'll be able to stand upright instead of feeling like a human cherry suspended in the gelatin of life. Oh! I also just realized I have this pre-concieved notion of Life Always Being Chaos! I'm going to leave that one in outer space so I can have a nice, quiet existence of making stuff and being happy.

let everything die.

Well, I wrote a poem today which is good. I mean, its good I wrote but I don't know how I feel about the poem. Its nice to feel like writing again though. I've been writing up a storm for a few days. Creation is destruction, so it seems.

_
_

I guess what is strange is that my affections haven’t changed
You said I rejected you
But the trick is a two-way street
What I can’t give, that big thing, you want from me
What I want from you is too small, so small you’d rather have nothing.
So I’m not washing my dishes, no really… more than usual.
There’s a bad smell in my house -
old pizza, litterbox, dirty laundry, stale air.
I’m not watering the plants because they’re angry,
reminding me how they prefer to talk to you. I might
Let everything die.
Let everything die.

I miss you, that hasn’t changed.
But the God-part of me knows I’m choosing new
My feelings got turned off like underwater at night, nothing
And I have to swim upward but not toward
Just swim for my life
Drowning in despair, hopelessness, misdirection
I’ve been swimming to save someone
Rescuing the nearest victim
Time to save myself before I
Let everything die.
Let everything die.

I would hold you while you cried
If you would let me be a comfort, the greatest gift
A driftwood soul, but I understand near is not near enough
When you want to swallow me whole.
We can’t lifeboat each other into forever,
Eventually I will turn the faucet on
Face the grit that clings to saucers and coffeemugs.
You will tire of ignoring me and send out a reluctant ‘hello’
Which I should not misread as a beginning
My heart choking on the knowledge that you would rather
Let everything die.
Let everything die.

2012, the end.

So I have been making quite a bit of art lately. Starting with my triptych of goals for the year.

So far so good. Its mid-February and I'm meditating more, stretching more & keeping my house plants alive.

Here's my new altar. I took all the stagnant books off of it, moved it and rearranged things. I was trying to do a thematic levels thing but I think it got away from me a little bit.

unsmush

People at work are driving me a little batty. Everyone is coming up to me and saying I heard you’re leaving for Trader Joe’s! NO, FOOLS! I AM A WORD ARTIST NOT A DESK JOCKEY!


I’m leaving to get on with my creative life, to create the life I want to live. I’m leaving for the freedom to persue dreams, I leaving because this air-conditioned, beige cubicle is murdering my muse! I went back into my original Nashville-move journal last night and it was full of gems, poetry, beautiful thoughts, story ideas, creativity.

Now my journals read like laundry lists. “I am so sad and bored and stuffed up” blah blah blah. It is possible for a place to stifle a person but only if that person allows it to. And I have allowed this place to smush me. I officially unsmush myself.


Sure, I’m working at a grocery store part-time. A grocery store I love, that treats people right and provided free benefits and good options for good workers. I am learning to work at work again, to find my motivation, to be among the living while being paid essentially what I am paid here.

but I am also putting my art into the world, I am starting an etsy, I am performing a rock opera, I am freelance writing, I am poet mentoring, I am LIVING and I don’t need a big Daddy corporation to take care of me. The world is changing, work is changing and America has become a service-oriented culture. what service can I provide my community, my friends, my neighbors? Well I am surely not providing it here at a Christian publishing house. I am a creative free-spirited silly outspoken authentic artist and until I own that and live that I will be miserable and I will only bring those around me down. I am living for myself and for the betterment of the people around me.

Love to everyone and every living thing.

Throwing myself

Leap and the net will appear.
Does this work? We’ll see, I suppose. I am trying to put my 2 weeks notice in at work. But my current supervisor (only of the past few months when my boss left for Atlanta) is never in his office. Monday, he was out all day “waiting for the contractor” who never showed up. Yesterday he was out for a dental appointment. Today, it’s a different contractor issue and 10 am and he’s still not in. BLARGH!

But I have gotten a part-time job with Trader Joe’s (free benefits, yo!) and I’ll have the freedom to do workshops with Youth Speaks Nashville. My first workshop was with middle-schoolers on Monday. Inspiring kids to love and be creative with language on a regular basis is heaven to me. I felt absolutely magical afterwards. The writing exercise I gave them was so fun to read.

I am thinking of doing some personal archeology, taking it on as a project, with interviews and everything. After the writing group last year about ‘firsts’ I’ve really been interested in writing a memoir. I don’t know if anyone would want to read it but I’m of the ilk that if you need to write something you should rather than writing for an audience. I had a wicked crazy childhood, no sense in letting that story be forgotten.