Watermark

The Artist's Way ~ Week 12: Recovering a Sense of Faith

This journey ends, another begins; time to review where I've been. When I joined this group, it was with the intention of also working with Danny Gregory's The Creative License, which I've done only slightly. But you know, I'm feeling OK about that, in the context of all that I have managed to do over the past three months; and I know I will get back to it.

I've wrestled with my meanest demon -- the why do they like me/ why do they like my work/ I don't deserve it demon. I know that this nasty little thing will keep dancing around the edges, but I know it better now; I see it. I've also acquired some peace around the issues of faith and religion. Not the resolution Cameron might prefer, but one that works for me.

As my life filled up, I became less focused on this project, and a quick review of the AW Bloggers list shows me I am not alone in this. I wonder if this is just human nature -- we begin something with high expectations, and then fade; or the season, which in this northern hemisphere is calling us outside; or part of the process itself, which is designed to bring new things into our lives, and new attention to what is already there.

In looking through old notebooks -- just one of the activities this process inspired  -- I came across this dream, from October 01991 -- about four years after I began writing:

I am gagging, stomach heaving, trying to throw up. A child tells me: This is how whales are born! I must have swallowed a whale sperm/ embryo, which grows inside me until it's ready for the next phase -- to be thrown up into the sea. Most people who carry the whale (the child tells me) don't survive the birth; they either die immediately or bleed to death slowly afterwards.

My note to this entry says: This dream was in the middle of the night. I woke to escape it. I thought: The whale is the writing. I thought: I will survive it.

On January 14, 02006, just a week into this project, I had the dragon dream, which I think is the same dream, only more hopeful. Spirals.

I did have some problems with the book, mostly around issues of class, which I wrote about when I became too annoyed to take what I liked and leave the rest -- but I'm glad I took this on, and want to thank Kat once again for initiating and organizing it. I would have been unlikely to do it on my own. Some of the group are continuing at Contagious Creativity; I may join them now and then.

There have been some great pleasures for me in these past months: my dear friend Niki's participation in this project; time with Linda; visits from old friends; discovering new ones. I took a whole month of photos. I know that I lost some readers, and gained others.

Let's see what a poem-a-day will do.

The Artist's Way ~ Week 11: Recovering a Sense of Autonomy

Well. Hmmm. I've done almost none of the tasks (except, of course, the morning pages) but I did get myself some flowers, and I'm doing gentle yoga almost daily with my visiting friend, who happens to be a yoga instructor. And I've managed a photo every day for the 30DayPhoto Challenge.

OK, I confess -- I've barely thought about AW this week, even though I highlighted a lot when I read this chapter. For instance:

As an artist, I may need a different mix of stability and flow from other people.

And:

When we are not creating, artists are not always very normal or very nice -- to ourselves or to others.

Also:

To be an artist is to recognize the particular. To appreciate the peculiar.

It is this willingness to once more be a beginner that distinguishes a creative career.

. . . the Artist's Way is a spiral path.

Cameron talks about the Zen of sports, and quotes Eve Babitz:

"Swimming," she says, "is a wonderful sport for a writer." . . . That rhythmic, repetitive action transfers the locus of the brain's energies from the logic to the artist hemisphere. It is there that inspiration bubbles up untrammeled by the constraints of logic.

Swimming was my sport, before I got ill -- except for me is wasn't a sport. It was a moving meditation -- the breathing, the stretch. And this makes me grieve for it, and may push me back to the water, even if I can do only five laps at a time. One of my first attempts at a sonnet was about swimming:

Swimming Sonnet/
a nautical metrical exercise

The pool is long and blue and cool. I dive
into the soothing depth, the wet. I cut
the water, arms a knife, a curving slice,
a turn, another lap, a breath, a pull
and earth below is not allowed to hold
my body down and I am flying free
of ground, my cells expand, my spirit grows
and melts into the chlorine blue, I feel
the stretch of spine and soul, I reach to touch
some goal, it’s just beyond my fingertips
at last, another lap, if I could just
not need to breathe...
      now slow, I gasp and kick
           against the heavy claim of land-locked life,
           so hard, so harsh, so shallow, short, and dry.

Finally, this chapter encourages us to build an artist's altar, which I needn't do, as I have them everywhere:

She reminds us that:

. . . the artist child speaks the language of the soul: music, dance, scents, shells... Your artists altar . . . should be fun to look at, even silly.

I'd say I've managed that.

One more week.