I’m in a glorious state
I’m in a utterly awful state.
Isn’t it amazing how the two can co-exist at the same time?
Let’s talk glorious first:
My first radio show finally aired this morning at 5 am- and somebody actually listened to it and liked it. I’ve been operating in a vacuum on this project so a little touch of feedback was extra sweet. It will air again this week on SIRIUS Satellite Radio.
I just got a package delivered from Cheap Joe’s – 84 Neocolor II water color crayons… I can’t wait to use these… Cheap Joe’s is the best place to buy cheap art supplies on the web. Great customer service!
My daughter came into my study/radio studio/art room/library/pile-sty last night after we returned from dinner at my parent’s just I was adding another layer to a collage . She picked up a brush and asked if she could add to it. I said, "Sure!" Easily, organically, immediately we were sharing our creative heat- generating ideas, talking about future projects. She said, "I hope I don’t have a lot of homework tomorrow so we can do art." My heart lit up- this from my child who is separating more and more from me everyday. Then this morning she came in with a piece of tin foil and started carving it with a pen. She said, "You can doddle on this today and then we can paint it when I get home." This is what people mean when they say art heals!
I recorded a (if I may say so myself!) fantastic January Inner Organizer audio -part of the Inner Organizer package. I am so excited about being in contact with readers in this way, creating our lives together through spirit-first planning. (Note to self: Can spirit be planned?)
I found some really cool art books at the library – Artists Journal and Sketchbooks by Lynne Perrella and Collage Art by Jennifer Atkinson and Celebrate Your Creative Self by Mary Todd Beam. I have a dozen books on my desk from the library but these are helping me become clear on how to actually physically make things. I also adore The Complete Guide to Altered Imagery.
Now to the utterly awful:
I’ve been health challenged in a minor way for most of my life – extreme fatigue and mild depression caused by an out-of-whack hormonal system which is cause by…? Years of health efforts have brought me to greater and greater well-being, using herbs, body work, therapy, energy healing, acupuncture, yoga, breathing, homeopathics- you name it! In the last three months I’ve been working with a new naturopath. He is my way out there surfer dude doc. He made me aware on Saturday that my body is in a full blast state of fight or flight and has been for years. Being with this, taking care of myself, letting this pattern go, is so freaking strange and hard… But also fascinating! So this is why "too much energy" is a problem for me!
My agent read the first three-quarters of my novel and while she said things like, "You are a great fiction writer and the story is original, compelling, and interesting and I love your writing voice," she also said it needs a major overhaul to make it more accessible to the mainstream readers and my main character needs work. Sigh. Sigh again. Oh, I know, all first drafts get rewritten and rewritten again and I never thought the novel didn’t need work but faced with finishing it (this week!) and knowing I need to rewrite it so much… I feel sad. Excited and sad. Chocolate sad.
The up and down, the paradoxes and not knowings, the edge of my creativity and body, are fluid and strange. I accept it all. I open my heart to all of it.
I don’t have to like it but I do need to accept it because it is what it is!
3 responses so far ↓
1 cindy Nov 22, 2005
Hi! so glad u found cheap joes!
i think it is absolutely wonderful that u and ur daughter can connect thru art. that will help in the coming years as she goes thru the teen disease.
your art room/pilesty sounds just like mine! i have been creating lots lately. mostly because school is about to end and i only have a couple weeks to wrap up my final project. my final project is a piece that represents our body, mind and spirit reaching, straining, yearning for that something more. im excited about working on it. it didnt start out being that. it just ended up being that. i was laying in bed one night as my project was still being birthed and i came up with the idea and then implemented it the next day. not to say it was not without struggle. at a couple points i considered abandoning it altogether.
sometimes tho when i can just barely walk into the room because all the 4 desk spaces are taken up and then i begin to spread out on the carpet! i reach a state of “ack! i cant work in a room like this!” and begin to do some straightening.
i am glad that u r discovering art heals. i have quite a few books on just that topic. another “topic” out there to think about too is art and spirituality. yes there are books on it. hard to find, but they are out there.
congrats on finishing the jan IO. it does indeed feel good when we complete a job well! most fulfilling.
do u know the reason for ur flight or fight state? what is driving u there and has been?
on occasion i get “too amped” and when i go there, i know i am outta touch with my inner center, my place of peace. i hate it when it happens, but i am getting better these days about recognizing it and making adjustments before i implode.
i would be bummed out about having to rewrite my novel too. id be groaning UGH! i rememeber back in college rewriting and rewriting research papers over and over til i was absolutely sick of them! so i hear ya on that one.
i am just now in my life beginning to accept the saying “it is what it is”. for most of my life i fought against this because i felt that if i didnt like what was, i should fight to change it. now that i am much older, wiser and tired, i realize i cant fight every battle. i just dont have that much energy. at least god has not given me that much energy.
enjoy all your lusciuosness! take care over the next week and have a great bday!
ps our friend annelle is traveling all over egypt for the next 11 days! i would love to do the same some day! travel that is!
2 Lainie Nov 22, 2005
The other side of the coin…
What wonderful feedback from your agent… isn’t it much better than, “Your fiction writing sucks, stick to self-help?” And to have 3/4 of a novel done to show her… WOW! AWESOME!
The health info is good news, too… what a relief it will be, after years of searching, to finally have something that you can address and put a name to.
I know, I know, positive thinking is sometimes for #$%#.
I hear your frustrations. I hear your joy. I hear YOU.
HUGS.
xoxoxo
Lainie
3 Helga Nov 29, 2005
Combined with “It is what it is”, your “Art Heals” quote really grabbed me. I don’t even know how to begin to package my thougths manageably here, but I shall try.
Just a couple of years back both my body and mind were in true fight or flight mode. In the middle of the night I left my home with my 8-year old daughter to keep us safe from my abusive then-husband. It was probably the scariest and wisest move I have ever made. In the long, ugly aftermath, worthy of any LifeTime movie – only scarier, I ended up with our old house. The place where my ex-husband’s desk had been, and from which much terror had been launched, was empty. A dark, gaping wound in a place I was to tranform into a safe haven. I had no furniture, nor funds, to fill that fearful space. “It is what it is”, but I hoped I could somehow work with it. The blank walls finally sparked an idea: the plethora of my kid’s artwork had found a gallery, and what better piece to put under it than an art workplace! Put together from milk cates and an old door I found in a back alley, I created an art desk brimming with my daughter’s crayons and markers, old buttons, pencils and brushes, hand-me-down colors, recycled paper of all kinds, old magazines, you name it – I put it there. Above sparkled my daughter’s collages, masks, paper beads on string, ocean scenes in shoe boxes, unnamed things with feathers, all covered with generous amounts of glitter. My daughter’s eyes were big as saucers when she saw the desk. The once dreaded space was no more. In its place had grown a shiny, luscious creative haven. And it is still there. This is the place where we are close as we retreat from our troubles, where we express our hurts, and release them to the universe. As we prepare to do some serious Christmas creating, incorporating our art place into beloved ritual, I am less and less reminded of what that space used to be. I feel joy and love and peace. Art Heals.