Watermark

Outrage

 

I’m having a hard time writing. Even morning pages are flat. Few poems, little journaling of any kind. I know I’m not alone in this. 

 

I’m exhausted. Of course, that’s my diagnosis: chronic fatigue. But this is different, more than that. My mind, my heart, my heart-mind is exhausted. 

 

And I’m outraged, and tired of being outraged. I’ve been outraged too long. I look at my Facebook page and it’s just one rage-inducing post after another, nearly all shared from others, who share my outrage. It’s tiring. It begins to seem pointless. 

 

I feel so helpless, powerless, old and ill and unable to make a difference. Writing seems beside the point. Others do it better, more clearly, with more passion. 

 

And I am aware of my privilege. I am housed in a beautiful little house, with someone I love, who takes excellent care of me. I am fed and surrounded by art and books and constant entertainment, should I make use of it. Instead I feed my anger – and fear – with too much television news. I fear for the lives of my friends and of my country. 

 

I fear being separated from my love as one or the other or both of us are dying. I fear for my young friends, one has “underlying conditions” and others are on the front lines. And what country will the survivors enter into, later? 

Synchronicity?

Today, as I considered blogging again, I received a message from my old friend Anne Mathewson, telling me she'd had cause to revisit an old post of mine. And so, I consider it more seriously. I have, of course, lost most readers, due to long, unplanned absences, as well as the pull of so much else to see and read. 

Those who have followed at all will realize that much has changed in my life. It's not just blogging that I've abandoned, but largely writing as well, and no art journaling in over a year. A stranger might surmise that illness has taken me over, but that is not the case. The changes have been positive, if challenging. I have entered the frightening territory of coupledom. Serious, committed, in-love, coupledom. A country I thought never to inhabit. 

But here I am. Residency established, I begin to explore this new life. What do I want to bring with me? What should I leave behind? 

Some choices are not mine. Some losses are not chosen, and cannot be recovered. My dear friend Abigail died at Solstice. 

But others remain, and move closer. My life has become full. Nonetheless, I look back and decide to fill it up more. I am writing again. I plan to blog again, and dip into art journaling again, though perhaps less compulsively. So this is step one. Step one of reconnecting to this part of me, and to those I've missed since leaving this behind. 

I think I might have new things to say, discoveries to share, and – soon – new poems. 

I hope you'll come back.

 

2018 JUST ONE LITTLE WORD: LOVE

  

  

Choosing a word for this year has been a challenge. Many possibilities passed my mind, but none seemed quite right.

One of the rationales behind this meme, as I understand it, is to avoid the pitfalls of resolutions: resistance, stress, failure. I realize, though, that I am quite capable of carrying those pitfalls over to a chosen word. I considered WRITE, for example, an obvious choice, which can be experienced as a command.

My choice last year was ORDER. So much for that. Is my life more ordered? Have I incorporated the practices I hoped for into my daily life? Well, maybe, a bit. Or maybe I just learned that life tends to intervene and reorder things to its own liking.

LOVE, too, could be interpreted as a command. In fact, in some circles, that’s exactly what it is.

A conversation with my lover:

Me:

I'm thinking my Word should be: Love. Because:

• I think about it all the time anyway.
• I want to learn how.
• It's not like a resolution, even though I do believe that, at least to some extent, it is a decision, an action, a choice, a practice. Even a ritual, a sacred observance.
• A challenge and a reward.
• Commitment.
• Promise.
• As close to faith as I am ever likely to get.

 

Him:

poetry

 

Me:

?

 

Him:

• act of the poet
• resolution
• the precipitate of contemplation
• the distillate of longing
• the ferment of life

. . .

• well
• the well

~

The Well. Indeed.

More to come.

 

~

2018 JUST ONE LITTLE WORD

My One Word for 02018. The 3-D letters are from JustArt. Other elements are from Anna Aspnes; Crafty Button Designs; TlcCreations (altered); EHStudios; Rebecca McMeen; and Dawn Inskip, Just Jaimee, Little Butterfly Wings, & Nancy Rowe Janitz from various M3 kits & add-ons.

  

 

  

POISON (PART II)

  

  

POISON (PART II) 

For Art Therapy with Jen Maddocks at Digital Scrapbooking Studio. Elements from Holliewood, Lifescapes, Marta van Eck, Rucola Designs, Young, Captivated Visions, The Urban Fairy, Jen Maddocks, Lynne-Marie, and wish bliss studio. The essay on Quitters’ Flu is from LinkedIn.

Here is POISON (PART I): QUITTING CIGARETTES

  

  

POISON: Quitting Cigarettes

  

  

I quit two weeks ago, taking advantage of time away from home, separated from my usual habits and routines. Now I'm home, back to the place cigarettes were part of my day, but also slammed by some kind of respiratory illness. This is most likely a garden-variety cold or flu, but could be "quitters' flu", which sometimes hits newly virtuous folks, just to remind us we're not special. I've had that before. I hope this one is brief. 

Why do I quit now, finally? I am reminded by the illnesses of friends. I am newly in love and reminded that I might matter to others, as they do to me. I am reminded that I might like to be here awhile longer, able to think, and speak, and breathe.

I've done this before, been a non-smoker for long periods. I can do it again.

 

POISON: For Art Therapy with Jen Maddocks at Digital Scrapbooking Studio. Elements from Holliewood, Lifescapes, and (mostly) Jen Maddocks.

 

 

 

  

#MeToo

   

   

#MeToo

“If all the women, and men, who have been sexually harassed or assaulted wrote "Me too." as a status, we might give people a sense of the magnitude of the problem.” And we are. And it does.

Elements from Just Jaimee, Little Butterfly Wings, and Lynne-Marie, all from Mixed Media Monthly kits (mostly October 2017) at The Lilypad.

  

   

SURPRISE

   

     

BEAUTY, UGLINESS, & INVISIBILITY

   

   

BEAUTY, UGLINESS, & INVISIBILITY

For Take A Word: beauty. Elements from Crafty Button Designs, Forever Joy, Gabi’s Creations, Captivated Visions, Dawn Inskip, and Lynne-Marie. Fonts are Klee CapScript, Sweetly Broken, & Another Typewriter.

The journaling is an excerpt from an old blog post at Watermark: 

***

I have been, in my life, beautiful and invisible; and fat (in this time, in this place -- ugly) and invisible. Old and invisible. Female and not beautiful, and invisible. Female and beautiful, and invisible. So many of us are looked at, but not seen. So many of us look, but do not see.

And so we live our secret, invisible lives.

When I try to imagine how others see me, I give up in despair. I am always likely to reach the worst conclusions -- occasionally confirmed by experience -- that I am seen as fat, ugly, old, and uninteresting. Fat and stupid -- synonyms in our language. Old and boring -- the same.

But I know that I am not stupid; I know that I am not boring. I know that, in fact, I am sometimes -- often, even -- seen as scary. I take up too much space, in every sense. I am large. My mind is large. My body is large. And my self is large.

Better had I been male -- but this is not something I've ever wanted. The room, the space, the freedom that men have -- that I've wanted. The freedom to look at a man straight-on, instead of, attentively, up -- that -- I've wanted.

***

   

   

02017

 

A new year, a time for resolutions. Resolutions like: I shall post on my blog regularly again. 

I'm not doing resolutions, but I am doing maybe intentions. Among those, of course, is: I might post on my blog regularly again. 

Also, I'm maybe doing The Daily Poet:

The Daily Poet: Day-By-Day Prompts For Your Writing Practice (Published by Two Sylvias Press) offers a unique writing prompt for every day of the year. Created by poets for poets, this calendar of exercises offers inspiration and a place to begin. Whether you are a novice or well-established author, The Daily Poet is an essential resource for poets, teachers, professors, or anyone who wants to jumpstart their writing practice. The Daily Poet is portable, coffeeshop tested, and offers quick warm-ups for any writing group or classroom. An excellent guide for students, The Daily Poet is also a handy reference for poets looking for fresh ideas to share in their writing workshops.

This practice was endorsed by William Stafford. Many years ago, at a Sitka Writing Symposium, he posted a new poem on the board every day. He told me it's not expected that one will write a good poem every day, just – a poem. Do this, and at the end of the year you will have at least a few good seeds. 

There is a Facebook Group for this, if you would like to join in with others who are taking this on. The book is available for the Kindle, and when I got mine a few days ago it was available on Kindle Unlimited. 

I am also, maybe, attempting daily scrapbook/art journal/collage layouts for The Lilypad's Month of Challenges (MOC). They do this every January. The prompts are designed more for the traditional scrapbooker than for someone like me, but I'm giving it a try anyway. 

And, of course, I will continue to do Tangie Baxter's Art Journal Emporium (formerly the Art Journal Caravan), which I've done for several years now, except for my 2-year crash from which I am now recovering. I'm also, maybe, doing Ali Edward's One Little Word, which I've not done for years. 

All of this is maybe. All of this is intentions which may or may not come to pass. I know this from experience. What I do manage to stick with, though, I will post about here, on my long-neglected but still loved (by me) blog. 

May 2017 not be as dark as some of us fear. 

   

(Image from Tangie Baxter)  

 

Perception: Prosopagnosia

 

 

Last night I watched an episode of Perception which featured ". . . an interesting twist . . . a condition that makes him unable to recognize faces." This is called prosopagnosia.

I have a touch of this. When I was about twelve, I once passed my mother on the street without recognizing her. I got new glasses. But I suspect there was more to it.

I still have a hard time with television shows that have more than one handsome dark-haired 30-ish man. I can't tell them apart. 

I once lived in a cooperative household. We often had guests, house guests, dinner guests. On this occasion, friends of a housemate had been with us for a few days. I had talked with them several times.

At dinner one evening, at our long, full table – there would have been eight to ten of us – I sat at one end, with a guest to each side of me. At some point I noticed that, rather than two guests, as I had thought, there were three. I kept this surprising observation to myself.

Dinner went on, as usual, a long, active, conversational meal. Toward the end it dawned on me (and a slow dawning it was) that I was flanked by identical twins. 

Perhaps it's more an attention disorder than a face-recognition disorder. Dogs, I recognize. Cats, I recognize. People, not so much.

 

 

[Click the image to see credits & larger sizes at flickr.]