Swirly Girl

Grace Whispers

[Iguazu Falls, Brazil :: Taken October 2006]

I'm moving forward with this idea and giving it one more adjustment - taking ideas, thoughts and musings from my comments and turning this blog into an ongoing discussion.  The discussions have been my favorite part of all the book events I've had this fall, so the idea of incorporating this into my blog is something that is very exciting to me.  Let's see where the wind takes us, let's share our thoughts on whatever happens to come up here...

*****
The lovely Lynne was the first person to leave a comment on my last entry, and what she wrote went directly to the core of what I was trying to express:

"If gratitude shouts, then grace whispers..."

So perfect, so true, and I haven't been able to stop thinking about all the ways grace makes itself known in my life in the quietest of ways.  In Ordinary Sparkling Moments, one of the experiences I wrote about was an evening of doing the dishes when, out of the blue, I was given a glimpse of how divinely perfect my life was at that exact moment:

"...I looked over at [my husband] and suddenly felt a gentle wave of contentment melt into me like a drop of honey in hot tea.  It was as if there was a force in the world that wanted to make sure I recognized how precious that moment was, and in that strangely poetic instance, I saw it with perfect clarity:  this is it.  This is the life we have worked so hard to create."

This piece was about grace, about one of those all too brief flashes of pure contentment that allows every ounce of stress, worry, angst and sadness to dissolve completely.  These moments don't happen when we are shouting from the rooftops or conquering some great goal - those experiences offer a different kind of gratification.  They arise in the soft, foggy corners of the forest, where the silhouettes of tiny birds can barely be seen among the tangled branches, spaces where we can sit for hours on end and hear nothing more than tiny drops of water plopping upon fallen leaves.  Grace comes when we are quiet; grace comes when we're not paying attention.

I was thinking about this a lot yesterday as I was deep in the task of post-Thanksgiving kitchen clean up.  Filling the sink with hot, sudsy water, taking the time to scrub each pot thoroughly, lighting candles on the counter, using up every kitchen towel we have drying, scrubbing, wiping down.  Grace loves those mundane, household tasks that occupy my time and attention on a regular basis - washing dishes, doing laundry, making the bed.  It is in those moments when my mind is perhaps as free as it can ever be to wander wherever it pleases.  These are such ingrained routines that while it looks like I am simply folding t-shirts I'm really imagining journeys to Uganda or trying to work through a complicated issue with a friend.  My mind goes everywhere as I take care of our home, and because this is usually done in perfect silence, grace is able to slip in easily, to be still, observe and, yes, whisper many of the answers I am looking for.

Grace is the quiet voice that tells me to say thank you every single day.  She comes to me when my husband and I are angry at one another and instructs me to go to him, to hold his hand, to let the past be the past, even if that past occurred just five minutes ago.  Grace gives me the gentlest reminders that I don't have to be perfect, that I don't have to solve all the world's problems in one day.  She lets me know it's OK to feel sad, to cry, to be still with disappointment.  She can also be incredibly blunt, when she advises that the wisest thing I can do in any number of situations is to shut the #&*$ up.  That's exactly what she says - quite often I might add - and thankfully, I've learned to follow that advice more often than not.  Grace gives me permission to take risks - in love, in friendship, with my work - and also gives me plenty of space to play it safe when my intuition is guiding me in that direction.

Grace knows...she knows all there is to know and I believe that is why she only whispers.  To be as wise and centered as she is means she has no need to shout, to make a big fuss, or to make any grand case for or against something.  Grace knows I won't always listen, but she doesn't care.  She is always available to share her wisdom with me, and in that sense she is perhaps the most benevolent force in my life.  She is gentle, she is all-knowing, she whispers.  She lets me know, just as the first rays of sunlight peeking through my bedroom curtains let me know a new day has arrived, that every single moment is an opportunity to inch closer to her.  She is always showing me the way.

Grace

Main Entry:    gratitude
Part of Speech:    noun
Definition:    appreciation
Synonyms:     acknowledgment, appreciativeness, grace, gratefulness, honor, indebtedness, obligation, praise, recognition, requital, response, responsiveness, sense of obligation, thankfulness, thanks, thanksgiving
Antonyms:     ingratitude, thanklessness

How original!  How unique!  Yes, that's me folks - an artist and writer who breaks down barriers, who goes places no one else would dare go...

An essay on gratitude, just in time for Thanksgiving!

Please, I beg of you, refrain from overloading my email in box with notes of thanks for shedding light on a topic that just isn't spoken about enough on the third Thursday of every November.  I know, I know, I am rocking your world.

I simply could not resist.  It is terribly cliche, but I happen to be a huge fan of cliches.  They are time worn, ragged and frayed at the edges because they speak to all of us, because they are real, because they are true.

When I looked up the word gratitude in the thesaurus, I loved seeing the word grace in the long list of synonyms.  I think of the word grace and I picture a perfectly poised ballerina on toe shoes, the sequins on her pink satin costume twinkling beneath a spotlight, tutu fluffed just right, glitter in her hair, arms as delicate as a feather floating in the wind.  Grace is maintaining this poise - this quiet strength - no matter what is going on in the periphery.  Holding one's head high even in anger; remaining composed despite feeling vulnerable.  Feeling grateful when you'd rather hurl rocks against a wall in order to release the negative energy wreaking havoc on your spirit.

I believe any measure of grace is a wonderful gift we can give to ourselves, those we love and the world in general.  We can't go wrong with grace, we do no harm when we express gratitude.  But what of those moments that feel like there is little or no room for gratitude?  What of those dank mounds of dirt that exist in the darkness, beneath the house, behind the shed, where creepy crawly creatures thrive and earthworms build communities?  Is it possible to find grace in those spaces?  When we accidentally step on one of these mounds, feel our foot sink deeply into the muck, only to pull it out and see that our favorite shoes are now dripping with gooey soil and spiders?  We have to go back inside, clean off our shoes, now we're late, we're frustrated, we're going to upset the person waiting for us and might even have to change our entire outfit.  How can we find grace in those moments?

I always try to find that thing - that hidden treasure that gives me some semblance of grace, some reason not to completely wallow in whatever calamity I feel has befallen me.  This sounds very romantic and open-hearted, but I must admit it does not come easily in certain situations.  It does not always give me great comfort; sometimes it offers no relief at all.  In fact, I sometimes resent the fact that I have to try so hard to see something good in a situation.  Gratitude should come easy, right?  There's always a silver lining and you've got to have rain to make a rainbow, right?

It is not always easy, but it is the only way.  It is the only way.  We might have to look beyond whatever situation we're stewing about or struggling with, but there is always, always somewhere we can turn to find our grace, to be thankful.  Sometimes focusing on gratitude feels like the angels are parting our darkest clouds to allow gold beams of light to wash down upon us and sometimes it feels like a desperate clinging, as if it were the last tiny branch growing out of a cliff that we don't dare let go of.  I have experienced both, and as much as I would like to believe I will someday be able to completely embody grace no matter what I am faced with, I realize I will very likely always struggle with this.

I am a fierce advocate for gratitude, I give thanks every single day for all the large and small details that make my life what it is.  But still, I struggle.  Still, I sometimes have a very hard time finding my inner ballerina.  I feel the blisters, swelter under the spotlight, can't always take a deep breath in that costume.  Some days the angels sing, some days I am hanging on to a thorny branch with dirt and pebbles dropping thousands of feet below me as I struggle not to let go.  That is just the way it is.

The holidays are topsy-turvy times for people.  Emotions run high and complicated histories play themselves out in all too familiar ways when we are surrounded by family members.  Childhood dreams of what we want the holidays to be feed our expectations, which only make us that much more susceptible to big disappointments.  For many of us, our deepest wounds are exposed and we can't help but long for December 26th when it will all be over. 

But then the turkey is brought out, and we experience that deep belly laughter from a long-forgotten memory that bubbled back up to the surface as we look at old photos.  The sparkle from a candle catches our eye, and the smell of rosemary fills us with warmth.  We think of our friends, we wear our favorite blue turtleneck sweater, we take a moment to be still, we say a prayer as we hold hands.  Life is filled with plenty of reasons to be sad, to give up, and to embrace the dark clouds.  But grace is always there for us, ready for the taking.  Sometimes those dark mounds of dirt that look useless and bare have secret fortunes just beneath the surface, and only when there is fire or flood can new growth occur.  Grace exists everywhere, in every moment, within every grain of sand.  Grace is never far away.

Re-calibration

This word was given to me over the weekend and what a gift it was.  Thirteen little letters, one small word.  A gift, a way out, a sparkling charm to carry with me wherever I go and ponder as I go here and there, hand people money for a coffee, pack a suitcase, write a note, light a candle.  The word calibration is defined as this:  to plan or devise (something) carefully so as to have a precise use, application, appeal, etc.  In re-calibrating you go through that process more than once, re-visit it, adjust it, alter its terrain.  One word, one extraordinary gift.

On the plane ride from Chicago to Los Angeles yesterday, I hammered out a three page, 1700+ word treatise on why I've decided to adjust - ever so slightly - the focus of this blog.  Thinking myself the Warrior of Honesty, that I simply had to share why I've decided to try something different because that's what I do, I realized this morning I did not need to go into the details.  Because they aren't especially pretty details and I couldn't quite articulate what purpose all that sharing would serve aside from what would very likely be a fleeting feeling of catharsis.  I am not trying to hide anything, protect some dark secret or gloss over the truth, I am choosing to take this as an opportunity to begin to let go of a lot of tangled feelings and emotions that have had their day in the sun for far too long.  If I write a big entry about certain details, then all I'm doing is extending their stay and giving them more air time.  It is time to move on.

Whenever the topic of blogging comes up, the thing I say about it most consistently is this:  it is a tool to help me practice my writing.  I enjoy the challenge of discussing and processing personal experiences in a way that is coherent, interesting and inspiring.  I treasure the community and I value the exchanges; I love that my writing has helped some readers feel less alone and more courageous.  I do not want to stop expressing myself in this way, but it is time to shift its focus.  In this change, my aim is threefold:

1.  To go further with the idea of using this blog as a tool to become a better writer.  The idea is simple:  every day that I can, I will pull a topic or question from a jar, and that is what I will write about.  Whether I am in the mood or not, whether it has anything to do with what I am experiencing on that particular day, the topics I write about will be dictated by chance rather than immediate experiences. 

2.  To remove the more day-to- day personal aspect of my writing.  In other words, my writing will continue to be centered around beliefs, questions and ideas that I explore through my personal experiences, but they will not necessarily be taken from what is going on the day I am writing.  If I am feeling angry about a work-related issue, I might pull from that experience in an entry three months later, but the day it happens I will very likely write about something very different.  (Or if I am feeling compelled to write about something as it is happening, I might save it for a later post that covers topics explored in that piece of writing.)

3.  To take a step away from using this blog as a high school yearbook, where my friendships are notches on a popularity belt and our time together fodder for the judgments and opinions of other people.  I acknowledge that this last piece comes from a defensive place, and that is the closest I'll come to the glaring truth of why I'm changing the way I approach this blog.  I think all I need to say here is that the world I share with my friends and the world I share on this blog, well, they need a little breathing room, a little time apart.  They were getting too closely connected for my comfort level and as mind-blowingly proud as I am of the friends I have, I am feeling rather protective of these connections right now.

I am looking forward to using this blog as a tool to help me become a better writer.  I have been stuck behind a monstrous wall of resistance around my writing, and it is time to deal with that, even if it feels like one small step in a long journey ahead of me.  The first step, I have found, is always the most important, and this shift feels like a first step on many levels.

Onward I go.

Updates, Bits & Baubles

Updates
I am back on an airplane tomorrow morning, headed for a long weekend in Chicago with two foxy ladies and an Ordinary Sparkling Moments event at TT Patton.  I'll be there Saturday, November 22nd from 11:00am - 3:00pm and I hope to see you there!

Many of the 3" x 3" tiny original collages in my Etsy shop will be taken down the Monday after Thanksgiving for another show, so if you had your eye on any of them now is the time to snatch them up.  Ditto for the framed original collages.

Bits
I attended a lovely event sponsored by Hewlett-Packard (HP) last week that was an evening filled with all of my favorite things - girlfriends, creative time, inspiration and plenty of chocolate!  I have been using HP printers from the day I became a professional artist and will always be one of their most loyal customers.  When I was printing my Swirly cards in-house, it got to the point where I had two inkjet printers going all day everyday and I worked those printers until they sputtered their last breath.  I've lost track of how many HP printers I've gone through, and I now have two that I love.  HP printers helped me build my business and without them I would have never been able to accomplish what I accomplished.  (For the record, I am not receiving anything from HP for talking them up here - this is all me!)

HP just launched their HP Creative Studio, and it is filled with fun ideas & resources to help you get your creative juices flowing.  From there you can head to Snapfish for great personalized holiday gifts, cards, photo books and more. 

The delightful Karen Cage hosted last week's Girl's Night Out event, which was only the second such event they have held.  If you are interested in helping her organize an event in your area, be sure to let her know.  You can reach her at karen.cage@hp.com.

Thank you again to Tracey Clark for inviting me to this sparkling event and to Jen Lemen for her beautiful, inspiring talk about Charitable Living.  These women are astounding!!

Baubles
My interview with Creative Thursday is up!  I had so much fun being interviewed by my very dear friend Marisa Haedike and hope you enjoy our conversation if you head over to have a listen.  Besides the fact that I say "you know" way too much, I think it came out beautifully, even with all of our giggle fits.  Marisa is a rock star in every sense of the word and I cannot say enough wonderful things about her spirit, wisdom, passion, integrity, talent and sense of humor.  In a nutshell, I adore her.

Have a happy weekend...hope to see you in Chicago.

For L

Show me how, how to fight my battle in life
Show me how to fight
And I'll run away with you

Teach me how, how to fight my hard times in life
Teach me how to fight and
I'll run away with you

And I will never dread the day I will die
'Cause my sunset is somebody's morning sky

Show me how, how to face my troublesome fights
Show me how to face them
And I'll run away with you

Teach me how, how to win my union in life
Show me how to win
And I'll run away with you

And I will never dread the day I will die
'Cause my sunset is somebody's morning sky

Show me how, how to win for all of my people
Show me how to win
And I'll run away with you

Teach me how, how to love this battle of life
teach me how to love
And I'll run away with you

How to fight, how to win, how to love
Teach me how, show me how, teach me how
How to love
How to fight, how to win, how to love

-Woody Guthrie, from The Works by Jonatha Brooke

Currents

Those currents in my mind that are always questioning, examining and exploring never run too far beneath the surface of my consciousness.  I have always considered this a blessing and a curse.  On the blessing side, I think it makes me a better person and has led me to some extraordinary like-minded souls; on the curse side, it is often times an unbelievable pain in the ass.

I had a very brief but poignant conversation with a friend a couple of months ago about the concept of impermanence, how, if one chooses to embrace this particular piece of undeniable reality, there is a strange middle ground that needs to be managed.  Nothing is permanent, so we only torture ourselves in holding on to anything, and I mean anything - our partners, our jobs, our material possessions, our very bodies.  Which brings us to a choice:  either wallow, worry and fret over the inevitability that all we treasure and love will someday change*, or embrace the freedom that exists when we let go of any and all attachments.  But in the midst of all this letting go, we are also best served by allowing ourselves to love as deeply as we can, commit ourselves as passionately as possible and move into any new arena that involves any level of risk, emotional or otherwise, with as few expectations as possible.

This is so hard.

I look at my husband every single day with the awareness that we will not be together forever, that we may only be together for one more day.  I have moments when I fear this day will come sooner rather than later, of course, but I do not live in fear of it.  I know it will happen, one way or another, and there is no getting around that.  In that knowledge, in the deepest reaches of that truth, I try my best to take that as an opportunity to let myself love him as much as I can.  To ignore those moments of frustration when he doesn't do the dishes, to recognize that look of vulnerability that he so rarely lets me see, to accept him for exactly who he is, even when that makes me crazy.  To let go of my fears, my hesitations, my anger, my sadness, my wish that our separation wasn't the inevitable, ultimate conclusion of our partnership.

This is so hard.  In any area of life, with any dream we have, thing we want, person we love, hope we hold onto.  It is so hard.

I am experiencing one of those trying periods, where I am walking around somehow managing to do the work I need to do as I wonder what it is all for.  Unsure of why I have such a fierce need to examine so many things.  I don't know why I am the way I am, don't know how I got to this place where I feel compelled to dig so deeply into life's most difficult questions.  I don't know, and at the moment I'm rather frustrated with it, quite frankly.  But I have to continue taking forward steps, making the bed, hugging my friends, eating my favorite apples.  That's the deal, and sometimes the only answer.  To just keep moving and searching for the joy.

* die, disappear, get taken away, evolve, grow, end, expand...the list of possibilities that fall under the umbrella of "change" is endless.

Trying

[Golden leaves in Central Park :: Taken last week]

Suddenly I realize
That if I stepped out of my body I would break
Into blossom.
 - excerpt from A Blessing, James Wright

{Thank you Nina}

The Vivian Girls and a Quiet Time in NYC

I had a peculiar experience in NYC that has left me feeling slightly out of sorts.  Nothing bad happened, New York City was its usual lively self, all the more so this week with election energy tingling all over and preparations being made for the holidays.  Snowflake lights were hung but not turned on, Christmas trees were being planted in Rockefeller Center, and window displays were in transition as sirens wailed and horns honked like any other day in the big apple.

In the midst of all this excitement and movement, I was in a very quiet mood all week.  I wanted to be still, to bury my head in a book, to drink coffee all afternoon and watch the world go by.  I managed to have a pretty full day on Tuesday, but by Wednesday I practically had to force myself to leave our hotel room.  I had two full days in the city and this is what I did:  visited the American Folk Art Museum, wandered all over Central Park, had a light lunch on Columbus Avenue on the upper west side, visited the Guggenheim and indulged in a new pair of boots.  That was on Tuesday, and on Wednesday all I managed to do was visit the NYC Public Library where I wrote in my journal and visited three small but lovely exhibits there - including one about this extraordinary artists' retreat - before I went back to our hotel room and read all afternoon.  Read!  In our hotel room!  In New York City!  You've got to be kidding me!

As I was sitting in the cavernous main reading room of the library, at a long table with brass lamps which was one among dozens of long tables, writing in my journal, I filled many pages before I wrote this:

"All I want to do right now is go back to our hotel room and read.  What if I gave myself permission to do that?"

And off I went.  No hesitation, no agonizing over whether or not I should hit another museum on the way back, just very simply gathering my things and going back to a quiet room 22 floors above 57th Avenue.  After so much running around and moving and going, I finally found my way to some delicious quiet time in one of the most on the go cities there is.

I'll now go back to Tuesday, definitely the more "full" of my two days there, and share my discovery of Henry Darger at the American Folk Art Museum.  I have felt mysteriously drawn to folk art lately, and am now eager to learn more about its fascinating cousin, Outsider Art.  Henry Darger's story is simple and intriguing - a janitor who lived in a rented apartment for more than 40 years in Chicago, he left behind hundreds of paintings, collages and illustrations, along with a 15,000+ page single-spaced typed manuscript entitled The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinnian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion.  The Musuem only showed a small fraction of his work, but I was immediately pulled in and now want to learn as much as I can about him.  I can't help but observe that this newfound fascination with a man who was reclusive, unknown and basically ignored by society began during a week when I felt the urge to hide from the world in a city jam-packed with interesting, inspiring, creative things to do.  Maybe this is just a crazy coincidence, or maybe the fact that I was in such a deep observer mode all week enabled me to make this connection.

Thinking about his life - about all the ways he created a vast, complicated world in his imagination as he lived an intensely private and solitary life - I go back to a question I have been asking myself for the past couple of weeks:  exactly what is it I am chasing?  And why do I all of a sudden feel like this word - chasing - is the appropriate word for so much of what I've been doing this year?  Chasing after a dream, after book sales, after recognition, after an audience.  Most of the time it feels like the most magnificent journey I could ever experience, but lately an uneasy feeling of grasping at something too fiercely has been creeping into my awareness.  What can I learn from Henry Darger?  What would he think of all the ways his work is making its way into the world, a journey that did not begin until after he died?

I think it is impossible to know all the ways the work we do and the lives we live impact the world.  Maybe the kindness you show to a stranger today will give them the glimmer of light they need to maintain their faith in humanity.  Maybe a blog post you write that exposes your wildest dream or your deepest fear or your tiniest disappointments will touch someone on another part of the planet and make them feel less alone.  Maybe the story you are writing in your sketchbooks and journals will someday be discovered, 100 years from now, by a total stranger, and this stranger will be inspired by your words and your creations and will start writing stories of their own, stories that might inspire the world.  How are we to know how far our influence might reach and who are we to think we are the sole determinants of how our lives contribute to humanity?  Sometimes the things we do and the choices we make begin a ripple effect we have no control of, and those ripples are capable of extending far beyond our personal experience, our social circle, our time on this earth.  We have no way of knowing all the details of our imprint on the world.

Knowing this, I am reminded how important it is to continue to breathe deeply and let the quiet spaces expand as I march forward with Ordinary Sparkling Moments.  I don't know all the places this creation is going to go; I can't control the path it will take.  It is not possible for me to force it one way or another.  Just as I stepped away from all the opportunities I had in front of me in New York to go, go, go, every once in a while I must sit still and let my work find its own way into the hands of kindred spirits, friends and total strangers.  Chasing is not the answer.  Letting my dream have a life of its own even as I take time now and then to do nothing to help it along...well, there, I think I may be on to something...

Around the Globe

Around the Globe

My second video!  This is a collection of snippets I've filmed during some of my travels over the past few years.  We start with footage from a ride to Kyoto on the bullet train (200 mph, totally silky smooth) and from there I take you to Shibuya Crossing in Tokyo, one of the craziest intersections in the world.  Next we travel to Havana, where I give you a glimpse of a Santeria cleansing ritual.  After this we see Iguazu Falls, a tiny cemetary in Kyoto on the way to a temple and then a bit of the action at the Tokyo Fish Market.  Another quick glimpse of Iguazu, back to the bullet train, Shibuya Crossing during the day, a view of the coast of Paraguay, the bullet train, more Shibuya,and then I finish it off with the butterflies "puddling" on the coast followed by some footage of a ritual my friends and I stumbled upon in a small temple in Kyoto.  The music is by William Orbit.  I hope you enjoy it - I'm already at work on the next one.

Headed Back Out

[New York City at night :: Taken December 2006]

My favorite thing to do when I travel is to wander - to walk outside and see where my footsteps take me.  With a map, camera, journal and pens, I have everything I need to explore, notice, record and soak in.  As many times as I have been to New York City, I have never been able to do this on my own.  New York City has always been a place I've explored with at least one person by my side.  While all of those experiences have, of course, been lovely, I am eager to have a couple of days to myself while I am there this week, tagging along with my husband on a business trip.  By the time you read this I'll be on a flight across the country with no real plans beyond a few dinners with friends.  My days are open, my itinerary non-existent; wild tales of adventure coming soon.