Today's theme: Anything Goes
1. Great vintage finds can be had at BlogBlogBlog.
2. The Art of Non-Conformity: Unconventional Strategies for Life, Work and Travel
3. I love Jay Kelly's collage creations
4. ...and Jess L.C.'s SOC line of jewelry.
5. Girl Meets Business presents The Young Professional Rockstar.
[Taken in Athens, Georgia the night of the 1995 Boybutante Ball. From left to right: Kitty Crack, yours truly and Coretta Scott Queen.]
The most interesting thing about the experience had nothing to do with the costumes, the lighting effects or the scene where Joey Arias became a drag queen Godzilla stomping all over New York City. It had to do with one of the stranger revelations I had about myself. Throughout the entire show, although I was enjoying myself, I was also thinking about all the details of the event - a big production on a major Los Angeles stage, a crowd full of LA's hipsters, the singing, the high heels - and I found myself actually critiquing every bit of it, right down to a moment when Joey Arias stumbled a wee bit on her stilettos and I immediately thought to myself, "Well, that's an amateur mistake."
Before too long, I had to face the ugly truth: I am a drag show snob.
I did a little research on the star of the show, and Joey Arias has quite a resume, which did not surprise me as Joey's voice is a sound to behold and she has a powerful stage presence. I bet the stumble I scoffed at was a rarity, and it is the snob in me that took for granted the fact that it was likely a major coup to land a show like this in Disney Hall. Had I never seen a drag show before I probably would have been more impressed, but I saw performances like these on a regular basis in the clubs of Athens and Atlanta, Georgia when I was a grad student. I worked with and hung out with one of the organizers of what is now the Boybutante AIDS Foundation, so had the opportunity to see an array of talented, hilarious performers (even got to help some of them apply their mascara before they went on stage!) This was in the mid-90s, and - excuse me - but you're reading the blog of the bona-fide winner of the Cute Girl Contest at the 1995 Boy Ball. How hip and cool am I?
What? Don't pay any attention to those purple clogs I'm wearing (with white tube socks) or to the fact that I am now usually in bed by 9:00pm every night - I'm hip and cool, people, there's now no denying it.
I'm happy for Joey Arias. I can't imagine it has been easy to reach the level of success she's had following her particular passion. I think many of us who call ourselves Artists take pride in the fact that this label connotes a certain rebellious streak - a commitment to forging our own path, to being trailblazers, maybe even to being outcasts. There are so many ways we are required to put ourselves in boxes and attach labels to who we are and what we do. Anyone willing to walk away from as many of those categories as possible and create their own definition of who they are and what they are called to do in this world is a beacon of inspiration as far as I'm concerned. Even if she does slip on her stilettos now and then.
~
Head over to Pink Coyote today for a totally kewl guest entry by yours truly.
Today's theme: Cupcakes!
1. Pixie gave me this book, and it's a winner! And now she has a Cupcake Kit!
2. Sprinkles is taking over the world!
3. Vanilla Bake Shop is one of my Santa Monica favorites.
4. Of course there is a blog devoted entirely to cupcakes: Cupcakes Take the Cake.
5. A recent New York Times article will give you the skinny on all the latest in CupcakeLand.
THIS WEEKEND!
Saturday, December 5th and Sunday, December 6th
1:00 - 5:00pm
Peach Tree Gallery
3795 Boise Avenue, Mar Vista, California, 90066
14 artists ~ Oodles of holiday goodness
Peach Tree Gallery was just listed as myfoxla's Best Art Gallery for 2009!
Today's theme: Gems from the Blogosphere
On the one hand, when I read the bios of writers published in American Short Fiction and the resume of Mary Karr on the back of Sinners Welcome, her latest book of poetry, I wonder what area of my brain is so delusional as to believe I have the right to call myself a writer (or maybe I'm taking the wrong approach - maybe I need to consider that my entire brain is delusional enough to make me think I have the credibility needed to say this with conviction.) Either way, I have been walking around lately asking myself, "Who am I kidding?"
But.
I have also been walking around lately with a story swirling around in my head, a fictional story I have decided I need to actually write, and I have been obsessed with it ever since I started. Obsessed, as in you might see me in the grocery store looking intently at the selection of breakfast cereals, but really I am envisioning a scene in my story wondering if it makes sense, considering how I might make it more real, examining different arrangements of words and how each composition might best express the mood, idea and feeling I am trying to convey. I have been sitting down at my computer to work on revisions at, say, 11:00am, and the next time I look up at my clock it is almost 2:00pm. Each time I give this story my full attention, time vanishes as quickly as a child's attention at the sight of an ice cream cone.
I have never written a piece of fiction before, aside from a couple of short stories required of me in high school, and I'm still not quite sure what to make of it, and not at all sure if what I'm writing is compelling, interesting or artful. More than I am asking myself who I'm kidding, I'm wondering, "Is this a story worth telling?" For while I literally feel electricity in the air as I work on it, I still do not know if that is because the stars are aligning such that a perfect beam of light is shining down upon my creative process or because I'm merely attached to a mishmash of ideas that only make sense to me and I'm giddy with the power I feel at being able to create absolutely anything I want with words. Another way to express this experience is to say I feel like I am on a strange high, like I'm buzzed, drunk on all the possibilities, on this quest to write a story that makes sense and has meaning.
It is still a landscape of unknowns, but I'm daring to explore those fields, daring to wander out too far than perhaps I'm meant to, well aware I might have to make my way back to familiar territory with my hat in my hand, story a mess, nothing to show for all the time and energy I've been giving this endeavor.
But that's the deal, and I'm eager to run out into that field blindly, hair waving in the wind, no sunscreen, arms spread wide open, screaming like a wild banshee. Sometimes our fiercest breakthroughs happen in the midst of total silence; when the howling of our souls lets us know what it means to be alive.
"When my thirst got great enough
to ask, a stream welled up inside;
some jade wave buoyed me forward;
and I found myself upright
in the instant, with a garden
inside my own ribs aflourish. There, the arbor leafs.
The vines push out plump grapes.
You are loved, someone said. Take that
and eat it."
~Excerpt from Disgraceland by Mary Karr
Today's theme: Retreats
1. Crystalbrook Retreat in Queensland, Australia is a community in the making.
2. Wallflower Friends: A Photographer Retreat
3. Mother's Plunge, hosted by Karen Maezen Miller.
4. Jennifer Louden's Comfort Queen Retreats look divine.
5. Shambhala Mountain Center has retreats and workshops going on year round.
I see now how uncomfortable I can get in the midst of long stretches of stillness. One effect of my commitment to riding out the remainder of the year without taking on any new projects has been a series of days where I get to wake up and decide - on that day, in those first moments of waking up - what I will do with that day. This feels luxurious, downright indulgent, and it is taking no small amount of effort to maintain such a low level of activity. Particularly at this time of the year, when so many of my fellow creative entrepreneurs are offering holiday specials and new product releases in order to make the most of the season of shopping. My orders have certainly picked up, and I am grateful for this, but the increase in sales has nothing to do with anything I'm doing at the moment, quite frankly.
I feel my ego tugging at my shirt, begging for my energy and attention. It wants to convince me that if I'm not working against an impending deadline, if I'm not constantly announcing new ideas, projects and developments, then I'm soon going to become invisible. "It only takes a few weeks, you know," it explains, talking to me as if I were the small child in need of its wise guidance, "And after that, you're toast. No one will know who you are, and no one will care what you're doing."
Fair enough.
Maybe it would only take a few weeks; maybe I'd slip past everyone's radar screens more quickly and easily than I'd like to ponder. Maybe so.
Or maybe there is a way for me to sink deeply into these spaces of silence and stillness, and trust that enough people will still be interested in what I'm doing when I make the next "big announcement", whatever that is, whenever the time will come for me to share it. Because right now, my work is to make peace with these not-yet-entirely-comfortable stretches of nothingness. My days as of late have been filled with the smallest of projects - knitting a scarf, working on a series of family storybooks, learning crochet, writing my first piece of short fiction, things I have not had the time or energy to do since long before summer. These projects won't help me get a gallery show, they won't increase my Amazon sales, they won't change the world. They are simply Things I Am Doing.
In the end, this is what we are all doing - we are doing This and doing That, shaping our lives around who we believe we are and who we want to be, around job titles and personal responsibilities. This journey is different for all of us, different each day and at different times in our lives. Right now, I am trying to loosen the reins on what I believe and simply live by what my soul calls me to do, and as quiet as it is, at this moment I am on a most remarkable and wondrous journey.
"Love is never born, which is to say, it is eternal and absolutely fearless. This love does not require my belief; it requires my practice." ~Karen Maezen Miller
A spur of the moment idea on this, the first day of December (how on earth did that happen?) In addition to my regular posts, I'll be posting a Five Things list everyday for the first twelve days of December. Today's theme: For the Writer.
1. The Sun magazine: Personal. Political. Provocative. Ad-free.
2. She Writes: Resources Galore.
3. Poets & Writers Database of Literary Magazines & Journals. They also have a great Top Ten Topics for Writers Resource List. Gift idea: a Poets & Writers subscription!
4. Bread Loaf Writer's Conference: My friend Nina goes to this one, and therefore I know this is bona fide!
5. Fresh Yarn: The online salon for personal essays.
[Sun streaming through two orchids :: Taken in North Carolina in 2007.]
This just in! A new interview is up over at the Get Inspired! Project.
And now, today's entry ~
I feel like I am waking up from a period of hibernation, easing back into the world slowly, mindfully, and with an awareness of how easy it is for me to slide into a mindset of trying to do and be so much to so many people that, before I know it, I have migraines every week. It took me many months and many migraines before I realized, "Hey, this is a migraine!", all the while thinking it was just a "really bad headache". I am now grateful for those migraines, grateful for the message they gave me. The message was simple: Too much going out, not enough going in.
Thanksgiving weekend around here was an exuberantly quiet affair. My husband and I broke tradition, and instead of letting it be known that our table had room for everyone, we closed our doors. Every year our Thanksgiving plans have come together last minute, where the week before we're not sure who will be with us, but by the day before we have a guest list of at least ten. It's always festive, loud, cozy and fun. Candles, turkey, stuffing - the works. This year we knew weeks ago what we would be doing: Nothing. We enjoyed our Thanksgiving dinner the night before at one of our favorite restaurants, and the next day, when so many kitchens were a flurry of activity, we went on a bicycle ride, read our books, played music and enjoyed a succulent, mouth-watering pizza. We felt giddy, like we were two rebellious teenagers, like we were playing hooky from adulthood.
Every year my husband writes me a letter for my birthday. This idea was mine, and I always have to remind him to do it, but I love them all the same - single page capsules of a year of our life. This year my husband wrote about the main story lines we have written together over the past twelve months, and it is quite a list. The one that stood out for me is the one I have chronicled most right here in this blog - the story of our home, and how many people have set up camp here since last spring. I do not look back at any of those experiences with any regret, and I know ours will always be a house of activity - of family and friends, of gatherings and dinner parties. It is who we are, it is what we are good at, and we get a lot of joy out of providing a safe haven for those we love. This will not ever go away, and I would not want it to.
I don't want to follow those statements up with a "but", so I will say this - that as much as our social proclivities make up the fabric of who we are, we learned this year that we have to be careful to take care of ourselves - of our marriage - in the same way we strive to take care of those we love. It was so easy to lose ourselves in the midst of friends needing a home or a place to stay and events like a wedding, all on top of our own work and personal responsibilities. It wasn't until our house cleared out and we stood facing each other that we realized our relationship was in desperate need of the care and attention we had given so many others over the past many months, and this was why we kept our entire Thanksgiving weekend to ourselves. We had to get to know each other again; in a way, I felt like we were dating.
One repeating cycle of our weekend - of our every day, in fact - that has been bringing all of this into sharp focus has been our morning routine. I come downstairs, fill the kettle with water and occupy myself with various mundane tasks as it heats up for a french press I fill with fresh coffee. I empty the dishwasher, get the newspapers from out front, grab dishes we might have left in our family room the night before and hang up coats. It is the time of year when the sun streams through two of our kitchen windows with special intensity, so when my husband sits down at our kitchen table it casts a bright, golden glow on his face. The water boils, I fill the coffee pot, a few minutes later I pour him a cup of coffee and heat up a small pot of milk for mine. When I sit down, we read the paper quietly, sharing articles and editorials of interest, enjoying the silence, the sun, and each other. We begin our day quietly, and it looks pretty much the same every morning, but over the past few weeks I have been taking a moment to stand still and soak it all in, to enjoy the sight of my husband at our table, to be grateful that we found each other and now share a beautiful home that has so much love in every crack and crevice.
So I am waking up right now to a different approach, a slightly adjusted mindset that understands while there is no limit to the love I can let into my life, there are limits to time and energy, and I will be in the best service of that love if I do a better job at balancing what I send outward with what I pull inward. It has been a slightly uncomfortable experience to sit still with no big goals, projects or trips to focus on. It has been a challenge to wake up each day and create the smallest to do list as possible rather than the most ambitious, the most comprehensive. My life has become an exercise in doing less, in simplifying in every possible place, in taking care of myself as well as I strive to take care of so many others. And in the midst of all that, there are my mornings, where there are no requirements beyond making coffee, feeling the warmth of the sun through my windows, and telling my husband I love him.
