May Thought Salad

May.

(Third from the left--collage card made by Z. Fantastic.)

Epiphanies this new June week:

1. This move was good.

2. I am not living for naptime.

3. Health is on the horizon.

Things are looking up! We're steroid free this week, off to a weekend at a lake, and able to tell you what a penguin says ("waddle waddle waddle"). If I don't sound elated, it's just because I'm in a rush. 

I've even got time to think silly almost-epiphany art thoughts that I can't articulate well. It started when someone asked me why none of my art was on our walls, and I responded with a scrunched up face and some quiet babbling: "Oh, that stuff isn't art. I haven't done my art yet." The person--rightfully so--looked horrified. And I thought about how ironic that is, since this year was peppered with reading Donald Hall's Life Work and revisiting Madeleine L'Engle's Walking on Water and Parker Palmer's Let Your Life Speak. There are common threads in there. And I'm ignoring them. And so, I wonder about that.

I read a lot of art blogs, and recently an artist that I admire lamented her upcoming birthday. Her birthday that honors an age many years younger than mine and that she claims to be old. Her birthday celebrates a woman with a HIGHLY successful art career. I wondered about that.

I take frequent long walks with Neighbor B, the talented writer. And we wrestle over creating on our jaunts and talk about the darkness that comes from straying from what one feels called to create. Recently I made a new friend and marveled over her studio of paper mache and metal work torches and how she spends time at her craft--every day--for no gain whatsoever except for fulfilling her need to create. And I wondered about that.

A defeating submission to a publisher shamed me, as I doodled things of which I was embarrassed. And in their own way, they called me on it. They called it what it was, what I knew it to be before I emailed it, which was not authentic. And so, I've been wondering on that.

All these wonderings are good. They mean my brain is working again and there is space for newness where before there was stress. And best of all, my sense of humor is creeping back, and I'm able to make fun of my wonderings and tell myself to not take myself so seriously. After all, I'm a woman who found her toothbrush in the washing machine (better than the toilet, Gus) and does nothing to remove the playdough dried under her nails.There is great danger in taking oneself seriously (See Anne LaMott quote below). Because after all, Let's be real. I'm a middle class gal with the luxury to ponder and draw and read. I need to remind myself that there are real things in the world that demand my headspace.

(My former self would go on and on here about how can I possibly be so trite and pithy when there are refugee camps in the world and places without clean water. But if I bring up the refugee camps one more time, P might have an intervention.)

I've got no conclusion, but I do think I'll make a goal of making something for my walls. And I'm going to buy some wall paper paste. I can get really excited about the potential with paper mache.

Further ponderings. Quote salad:

Madeleine L'Engle, Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith and Art

"You have to write the book that wants to be written. And if the book will be too difficult for grown-ups, then you write it for children." 

"Basically there can be no categories such as 'religious' art and 'secular' art, because all true art is incarnational, and therefore 'religious." 

Anne LaMott, Bird by Bird

"I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each steppping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking will do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it."

Hear hear!