Watermark

The Artist's Way ~ Awful Affirmations

Are you fond of this affirmation?

     TREATING MYSELF LIKE
          A PRECIOUS OBJECT
       WILL MAKE ME STRONG

Have you, as directed, drawn it out and hung it on your wall? If so, you may want to quit reading this now. Because I detest it, and I am about to tell you why.

Let me acknowledge that the depth of my dislike is an indication that some unresolved feeling is attached to this; fears of vulnerability and weakness. But even without that, the connotations of this language -- precious, object -- are cringe-worthy.

The Artist's Way ~ Week 6: Recovering a Sense of Abundance

I confess, this has been an abundant week -- an adventurous week, given my usual quiet solitude. Even the solitude is abundant. Right now, for example (it's Sunday evening) I am writing this during breaks from Poirot, drinking wine and eating good dark chocolate. While I can quite reasonably claim that the specifics are unusual -- I rarely drink wine -- luxury is not unusual for me. I am not one of those anorexic, self-depriving, scarcity types for whom this chapter was written:

. . . a little authentic luxury can go a long way. The key word here is authentic. Because art is born in expansion, in a belief in sufficient supply, it is critical that we pamper ourselves for the sense of abundance it brings to us.

On the contrary, my lesson has been self-discipline -- and I do discipline myself, by necessity, at present. I know I can live on very little, having done so (and barely doing so now) and I know I can live on plenty -- by spending it. I also know that, in terms of contentment, there isn't a lot of difference -- assuming there's enough for shelter, heat, food, and pets. Which is quite a lot, actually. A very lot, by many measures.

All too often, we become blocked and blame it on our lack of money. This is never an authentic block. The actual block is our feeling of constriction, our sense of powerlessness.

The difference between enough to live on and a great deal is insignificant; the difference between not-enough and enough is vast. It is true, though, that the discontent in my life has generally stemmed from matters other than money.

The Artist's Way ~ Linda Hogan & Other Poets

Linda, as always, was great. She speaks from a deep place. The title of her talk was A Spiritual History of the Living World. I took almost no notes, but Niki did, and perhaps she will post from them at some point; if she does, I will link to it. Also, public access television recorded it, so I will post when it airs.

Linda spoke of language, and how it influences the way we see, and live in, the world. She reminds us that the whole land has stories, and they are not all told in English.

She read some poems, some I know, and some new ones -- a new book of poetry, and a new novel, will be out soon.

She said: We are all a part of this endlessly creative universe.

She spoke of spiritual ecology. She says that poetry is helping us get there -- to a new way of being in and with the world.

This reminded me that the work I do -- the work I try to do -- is important.

And yes, I have noticed the synchronicity with what we are doing in this Artist's Way group.

The questions after her hour plus presentation went on for another hour -- lots of earnest, mostly young people. Just an aside: many of those young people stepped right out of the late 60's/ early 70's -- witness the photo below. We saw tie-dye t-shirts and macrame necklaces. If not for the high-tech room and the plastic water bottles, we could have been back in our own college years.

Later, at dinner, as I tried to evade questions about what I do, Linda said: She's a poet. She's a really good poet.

Valentine

My friend Niki made this for me last year (the year before?) and it's been on my pinboard ever since. I wish the scan were better; this is so beautiful, color, texture -- that just doesn't show here. Those dots on the upper right sparkle. Click to see it larger.

This is a very special day for me -- this evening I'm going to go hear Linda Hogan read. Any of you who are in, or can get to Missoula for this -- don't miss it! I will never understand why every reader does not know her name.

May all of your days be as special as this.

The Artist's Way ~ Week 5: Recovering a Sense of Possibility

Is anyone else feeling a bit . . . sensitive? Early on, Cameron said something about emotional volatility, but I didn't think: me. I didn't think: raw.

I had forgotten that writing began, for me, in a difficult and painful time. Now, those memories and feelings come back to me. And not just those -- memories and feelings from very long ago.

No offense to those youngsters out there who have taken on this challenge, but I don't want to be twenty again. Well, maybe physically, but in no other way. I want peace, calm, surety in my days. Manageable affections. Acceptance of what is.

A big synchronicity to report this week -- but first, the more mundane.

I Dream of Dragons

Uploaded by wam mosely

 

Saturday 14 January 02006

I am sleeping in my bed, in a large room, when a handmade greeting card arrives. I find it charming. It flutters in the air and turns into a dragon. A baby dragon, with large, thin wings; so thin that they are nearly transparent.

The baby comes to me to snuggle, and I know that, even as an infant, this creature can be dangerous. It begins to nuzzle me & I realize, just as I am wounded, that it is trying to nurse.

My dog or cat tries to attack the dragon, & I protect it; I restrain my pet.

The dragon's mother appears, to nurse it, but I know that she will pass the baby on to me when it is weaned.

In the news: dragons are appearing everywhere. There is a move to kill them, but those of us whom the dragons have chosen will protect them.

This is my dragon.

Tagged

I have been tagged by Melba, who says she chose me because I wanted to know more about you. She has reframed the 4 Questions into 4 Artist's Way Questions, since she had already done this meme before she was tagged again -- so I'm not sure which ones she wants me to answer.

I'll answer an unasked one -- Yes, I am an Introvert -- in order to explain my decision to answer the original 4 Questions that are circulating around the internet:

The Artist's Way ~ Week 4: Recovering a Sense of Integrity

NO-READING week is over as of 10:00 pm tonight. And I will be glad to have it behind me.

I learned that not-reading does not, for me, free up vast amounts of energy, though it does free up time -- that commodity others covet, and of which I have plenty. I wrote a bit more. I watched the birds and squirrels in the garden. My camera broke, so I did not take lots of photos. The pets got more attention, which they are always happy to receive.

I drew every day, but only a little. I did not learn to use iTunes, nor did I learn to use the Wacom Tablet -- but the book I have for that is lots of words, so i decided to postpone it on that basis. I found that I wasn't very interested in television, even though I had some recordings ready to go. I listened to music, and the radio. I remembered why I used to listen to Praire Home Companion every week.

I did feel a bit more "in my body" -- not always a good thing.

Synchronicity - Wasteland & Green World

In Crossing to Avalon [the book I was reading when I discovered the Blogging the Artist's Way group] in the chapter called The Wasteland: Depression and Despair, Jean Shinoda Bolen tells the story of one of her patients:

His "nightmare" was actually a waking experience that probably lasted only a matter of seconds. It had occurred . . . at 2:00 P.M. on December 21. (Though he was unaware of it, December 21 is the winter solstice, the darkest time of the year; there could not have been a more symbolic date.) He was in a crosswalk near Union Square in San Francisco, in the midst of Christmas shoppers and holiday decorations, when suddenly he felt as if a motion picture had stopped and the scene had frozen. First motion and sound dropped away, and everyone and everything was suspended in a silent vacuum; then, as he watched in horror, all color drained out -- it was like "watching the world suddenly bleed to death" -- until everything was lifeless, immobile, and in shades of gray.

A moment later, everything was as it had been before . . .

He felt like he had gotten a glimpse of the ultimate reality, and it was empty, lifeless, meaningless. "This was what life really was like, what lay beyond the maya, or the illusion of life," he thought . . .

Most depressions that take such a toll in spirit last for many, many months, while his was over in a matter of seconds, minutes at the most. I told him that it was the mystical opposite of illumination. It was an experience of "endarkenment" as profound in its capacity to affect him as an experience of enlightenment and subsequent recollection might be.

I have had this experience. This exact experience.

Except it was the opposite.

It is nearly as vivid -- and indescribable -- to me today as it was when it occurred about thirty-five years ago. I was in my early twenties. It was summer -- we could even intuit that it was summer solstice.

I was walking, as I did daily, the two miles or so between work and home, in Billings, Montana. I don't recall paying any more attention than usual to the cement schoolyard on my left, or the paved street on my right, or the sidewalk under my feet -- but I noticed a weed pushing through the sidewalk crack, and then, suddenly, I was suspended in a silent vacuum, watching the green world explode around me.

Stems pushed up from the ground, cracking pavement, becoming vines and trees. It was as though I was in a timeless bubble, watching centuries unfold before me. Plants climbed buildings; structures cracked and eroded and shattered under the weight of vines, until any indication of human habitation was gone. It was all jungle, wild and green and very, very alive.

A moment later, everything was as it had been before . . .

I was standing on the sidewalk, on an ordinary street, on an ordinary day. But I knew that what had happened to me, what I had felt, was not ordinary, and I tried to hold it all the way home -- knowing that it would slip away, that feeling that has no language. And it did.

But the memory of it did not. The certainty of it -- that this was not crazy, this was not an hallucination -- this was something else, something real, even if outside of everyday experience -- that certainty stayed with me, too. Has stayed with me, all these silent years.

Bolen says:

His particular spiritual path was taking him through the desert or wasteland; he was on the via negativa, the path where soul encounters negation and pain . . . why some travel the via positiva while others must travel the via negativa is one of those unknowables.

I suspect that those who travel any spiritual path, travel both.

The Artist's Way ~ Week 3: Recovering a Sense of Power

Before I review this past week, I need to talk a bit about the next one. The primary assignment -- the challenging assignment -- for this next week is Reading Deprivation. As in: NO READING AT ALL. No blogs, no books, no newspapers, no magazines.

No blogs.

Well, you see my problem. Sadly, Cameron's argument is persuasive:

For most artists, words are like tiny tranquilizers. We have a daily quota of media chat that we swallow up . . . It is a paradox that by emptying our lives of distractions we are actually filling the well . . . We often cannot hear own own inner voice, the voice of our artist's inspiration, above the static . . . For most blocked creatives, reading is an addiction.

I do feel -- as I have felt before -- that she tends to ignore lives very different from her own, and I am tempted to insist that I am an exception. After all, I spend most of my waking hours sitting on a bed, reading. Reading is my connection to the world.

But, I fear she is correct, that it is also a distraction -- so I'm going to try this, with some exceptions. Because isolation is a problem for me, I am going to read my personal and blog-related email (which I must do, anyway, since comments on my blogs require my approval to be published.) But I will not sign on to the web communities I participate in, and I won't read 'list' email.

I will continue to post to Watermark -- I have a few posts prepared ahead of time -- but I won't be reading your blogs this week. Some of you may have noticed that I put Chatango back on the sidebar awhile back; if I am online, I'll sign in to that -- but I don't expect that will be often.