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.

Comments

[Niki]

I would say your whole place is like an altar with many individual altars inside. So glad to hear you are doing yoga!! I thought of you when Cameron wrote about swimming - thanks for sharing your poem.