Art is an antidote

A man sat at the next table--in his seventies, surel,y with a pinky ring that looked like it was out of a Cracker Jack box. A slender gold band with a giant red stone.

He sipped coffee and took bites of pumpkin bread--opting to use a fork, when I'd have just used my fingers.

He slipped a pair of glass on his nose.

"I want to draw him," I thought, imagining the satisfaction of capturing the bags under his eyes, the broom of stubble on his chin.

At the table next to him, six senior citizens--the women clustered at one end, the men at the other hovered over the newspaper.

These were interesting faces. Faces I wouldn't think twice about before taking a drawing class, I'd favored the smooth faced beauties in fashion magazines. Pretty. Fresh. But young faces have nothing to dig into, nothing to capture with the lights and darks of charcoal and eraser.

Art is the antidote to our beauty- and, youth-obsessed culture. All those anorexic, self-loathing girls and boys out there should just take a drawing class. Learn to see to creased and flappy bodies and faces, lined and stretched, dented and bent in a different way. Captivating.

Self portrait

In this evening's class we created a bizarre self portrait, working for 20 minutes at a time on just a small section of our face. We folded the paper into quarters, and started with the left eye and bridge of the nose, then the right, then the bottom part of the nose and part of the mouth, then the other part of the mouth.

We set things up so that our features would be out of proportion intentionally.  The mouth and eyes cock-eyed. Features pulled and squished.

Drawing like this makes me wonder if I can write like this.

More drawings

We have moved from graphite to charcoal, which proves to be much more forgiving.

I've always been intimidated by charcoal, but now that I understand a bit more about how to work with it, I love it. 

This first image is a composite. The left eye is Lauren Bacall's. The nose is Quincy Jones'. And the mouth and right eye from two others--combined to create a harsh looking individual, but I was amazed at what I'd created anyway.

The second and third image are from my last class. I spent most of the class working on the old man, and all of about 10 minutes on the old woman. Nevertheless, I think I captured her essence much more accurately--perhaps because I was working so quickly and not worrying too much .

Intro to drawing

I'm taking a drawing class. I've always loved drawing, but beyond art class in school, I've never had any formal instruction.

Not that my class is "formal." It's as informal and loose as it can get. Phil Sylvester's approach is to get you to shut down that internal censor, not worry about trying to reproduce what you're trying to draw, but closely observe and let your instincts take care of the rest.

In class # 2, we looked closely at each part of our faces using a little hand-held mirror. Phil asked us just to make marks on the paper--scribbles really--where we saw something. So I wasn't even trying to make an "eye," or a "nose" or a "mouth." I was just recording lights and darks and interesting places I saw on the paper.

We used a new sheet of paper for every part--so we could make giant eyes and noses and mouths. I drew several of each. And then at the end, we cut out the ones we liked best and glued them together to make a "face." Here's mine:

If you look closely, you'll see it really is scratches and scribbles. The mouth is mostly a series of vertical lines. I love that together, it looks like a crazy face.

Images from class 3 and 4 soon!

Excuses, excuses

I've been in a writing funk lately--where I want to write, but I think "I don't know what to write about," so I just do something else. What the hell? When has not knowing what to write ever stopped me before?

So I'll just write about my life. About what's right in front of me. No agenda. No big reveal. Just writing down the bones.

The kitchen window is open. I turned the heat back on yesterday, and I keep discovering windows open around the house. Last night, I walked into the bedroom and saw the curtains billowing out from the wind. My mind mother scolds me for wasting energy.

I started a new big project yesterday. Last week, I gave up everything I was doing, rolled it all up and handed it to someone else. My status as manager. My client work. One week passes and I am a new person. It's a good experience to have now and then. No one really needs me. The work goes on without me, and people will find their way, not matter what that is.

When my parents retired, they were both so scared to leave their jobs. They didn't know what to do with themselves. But I could hear another question they weren't asking out loud. "Who am I without my job?" I couldn't imagine it. I pitied them for not seeing retirement as a giant gift. Free time to do projects, complete their own work, and follow their own passions. But I can see how it happens. Years and years of being the person with the answers. The person who needs to be at the meeting. It's tricky. You start believing that's why you're important.

When I was going through Lionheart, I had a revalatory moment and wrote this down:
*I* am important.
I am not *important.*

Meaning, there's really no function out in the world that I alone can fill, nothing that is so worth the cost of losing myself. It's my experience on this planet that counts.

It sounds selfish, but actually, it's the opposite of selfish. Thinking you are *important* is actually the selfish thing. That's the ego talking--and it tells you no one can live without you. It adds layers of meaning on top of your identity, to the point where you are no longer you, you're a writer, a creative director, a manager, a leader, an expert, blah blah blah. And those meanings remove you from you.

I like stripping away the meaning now and then. It brings me back to why I am here. Which is maybe why I am writing this morning after all, no longer able to hide behind that curtain of "I'm so busy, so stressed, so important so I don't have time to write/can't think of what to write." I am just me, a person up too early and sitting at the kitchen table, coffee in hand, feeling the itch to write, and taking a moment to scratch.

Why I write and why I don't do drugs

Last week I went to hear Ruth Ozeki read from her new novel, A Tale for the Time Being. I love the Q&A session at these type of events, sometimes even more than the reading. I love the little glimpses into the lives and personalities of the authors. And I am always amazed at how open they are, and how genuine and human they seem to be. They tell little jokes. Make funny comments. Just talk, like the real people they are. Ozeki was delightful. She told stories about how her characters come to her. And about how she rewrote A Tale several times before she got it right.

Sometimes I pretend I am the one up there answering questions from an audience of readers. Today, on my way to work, I was enjoying this daydream. I conjured up a fan who asked me the question "What motivates you to write?"

Here was my answer:

Two things. The first: I can't help myself. Sometime it takes me years to write a story. But it's there. And I can't stop thinking about it. I work on it for awhile, and decide it's not right. But it keeps coming back. Eventually, maybe years after the first idea comes to me, I get another one. The idea that allows the story to be told. But all that time, the story just kind of hovers, looking for a place to land. Right now I've got three stories I keep thinking about. I know I will eventually rewrite two of them, and finish the other. But right now they are hovering.

The second: death. This may seem like a tangent, but I promise, it will connect. I don't do drugs. I certainly enjoy the buzz of a strong margarita or two, but nothing more than that. In college, I did pot once. I ate some pot brownies that friends of mine made. And maybe I ate too much of one, or it was too strong (my friend did spend several days cooking the weed in oil in order to get every drop of THC possible and then used the oil to make the brownies) but it was a bad ride. I sat on the floor of my friend's room and I'm sure it was just the drug messing with my short term memory, but it felt like I'd open a door, then head down a hallway, then open another door and head down another hallway. I couldn't make it stop. The doors just kept opening.

After that, I was scared to die. Because that bad trip was what I imagined death to be: always stuck in a loop of nothingness. No past, no future. Eternal present.

How very zen. And being stuck in the present is probably why most people do drugs--to escape from the pain of past failures or the anxiety of the future. But the present means nothing without the past. And it doesn't mean anything withou a future either. 

I never did pot or anything else again. It was horrifying.

Death is the mother of beauty, wrote Wallace Stevens. I guess that experience of feeling dead, made everything more beautiful to me. Even the pain that comes with being human--it means something. And writing about that beauty that I see and feel, before at some point, I see and feel nothing, seems incredibly important.

Pink spring

Pink spring.
I can smell it--
earth and honey.

I open my windows,
let the world in,
unwrap this heart,
from its woolen blanket.

Turn my face
to feel the sun.

100 haiku challenge, 62

Neighbor's christmas lights
still twinkle on in late March.
Leave them up all year!

New habits?

Again, I have some work to do tonight, but I'm blogging first.

What I posted yesterday has continued on like a conversation in my mind. I wrote,

Asking for help, admitting things are not alright invites others in. You reveal your vulnerability. And with that, you release your control. When you ask for change, it may not be exactly the change you are looking for--there are two people involved in the outcome now.

So I'm trying to figure out how to reframe it. When I'm feeling abandoned, should I think differently about it so that I can keep my independence but not feel miserable? Or should I just ask for help, and let go?

But I realized I was not acknowledging one of the big components in this swirl. Fear.

Asking for helps from others is scary. You need to let go, not just of your independence and your control of the situation and outcome, but you need to trust as well. When you ask for help, you open up the possibility that the other person will disappoint you.

But what's the alternative? A never ending cycle of feeling abandoned, then shutting people out.

So I think my task is to reframe things this way--when I'm feeling abandoned and needing help, I need to make the goal to connect with others, rather than getting the help to achieve a certain outcome. Focus on connecting, and the help will come.

Old habits

Today, I'm blogging BEFORE I do some work, rather than the other way around, which is what I usually do. But then, by the time I'm done working for the evening, I'm too tired to blog, or it's too late. This time, the work can wait.

Yesterday I had this revelation that I was re-living a childhood trauma. Am I saying that right? What I mean is, repeating bad ju-ju from my past.

Lately at work, I've been feeling pretty beat up. I won't go into the details (you already know one reason why: I'm working too much). Everyone in a position to help seems too distracted to really notice. My manager has cancelled or missed our one-on-one meetings for six weeks in a row. Quite honestly, I was feeling a little abandoned.

But that's when I remembered  what I was like as a teenager. My mom was newly divorced, working and going to school, trying to keep us clothed and fed. She was pretty distracted. I know I felt abandoned at the time.

And my reaction? No matter how bad I was feeling, I pretended everything was OK. I guess I didn't want to add to her burden. She had so many other things to worry about. I didn't want her to worry about me.

That's exactly what I've been doing at work. Just soldiering on, acting like I can handle it. Like I'm just fine amidst the chaos.

But here's the thing: back when I was young, I'm not sure I would have wanted my mom to pay attention. I gained a lot of freedom out of her distraction. If I had said something, things would have changed. She'd have been all up in my shit, and that would have killed my free-ranging abilities.

Which is where I get stuck. Asking for help, admitting things are not alright invites others in. You reveal your vulnerability. And with that, you release your control. When you ask for change, it may not be exactly the change you are looking for--there are two people involved in the outcome now.

So I'm trying to figure out how to reframe it. When I'm feeling abandoned, should I think differently about it so that I can keep my independence but not feel miserable? Or should I just ask for help, and let go?

Worth reading

When Paul Graham says it's worth reading, it usually is.

Burning woman

So I said I'd be fearless. Here's something I was too afraid to post when I first wrote it. It's sat in my drafts folder ever since. Why was I so scared? I don't know--maybe I thought she'd read it. Maybe I wasn't sure I was being honest with myself.

Interestingly, there are new developments on this front. I might write about them a little more this weekend.
_____________________________________

This Lionheart leadership thing--it's burning through me. I feel like a raw nerve right now. Boy, does telling the truth and following your heart lead to so difficult and interesting places.

So here's where it may have led me: to the end of a very long friendship. I don't really know if that's the case, but right now, it's a possibility. I may have just lost one of my oldest friends.

The Lionheart assignment was this: remove an obstacle in one of your relationships. When I heard that, the first thing that flashed in my head was that I needed to talk to E. I'd been doing this thing for more than a year, where I'd wait to see how long it would take for her to call me, or reach out to me, and then when months would go by and still no call, I'd finally break down and call her. It's sounds stupid, I know. But every time, I'd think "Man, why doesn't she ever call? Why is this so hard? Why do I feel like I'm always making the effort?"

So I called E and told her what was on my mind. At the very worst time possible. She was back East, dealing with a very ill family member. But at the time, she listened, and it didn't feel totally resolved, but it was an okay conversation. We agreed that I'd come up with the ideas for what to do together, and she'd make more of an effort.

Then, flash forward a month later--I know she's back, I know she's been through a lot, I don't hear from her, so I call. I leave a voicemail, "Just wanted to see how you're doing..." Nothing. The next weekend, I invite her to go to a holiday craft bazaar. She texts back, "Thanks for the invite, I can't go." I feel like it's all kind of chilly, but I'm trying to just be understanding of what she's been through. I text back, "OK. I miss you. Hope we can get together soon. Hope you are doing ok," and leave it at that. But it's bugging me.

Then last night, she calls. She tells me that our conversation has been on her mind and bothering her. She feels I'm judging and measuring her. She'd heard things like this from me before (true, I have tried to have this kind of conversation with her in the past) and she never gets this from any of her other friends. She is who she is, and that I shouldn't expect her to change. She doesn't want to hear this kind of thing from me again. That I told her this at a time when she needed to focus on her family, and I made the conversation about me.

And what did I say? Yep. I've got some lousy timing. I didn't mean to cause her an extra pain when she was already going though so much. And that my intention wasn't to make her feel judged, but tell her I value our friendship, I miss her, and that I want to feel valued too.

And then we hung up the phone and cried.

So there you have it.

So I don't know where I'll be tomorrow. But right now, I think I'm done. I opened up what was in my heart, and asked for a deeper connection, to be more involved in her life, and to have a better relationship, and I was told in effect, "take it or leave it."

So I guess I have to. It is what it is. I can't change that.

I actually imagined trying to talk to her again. Perhaps this time, telling her about what my vision is for what the friendship would look like. And I thought--well, there's a chance she's say "That's not my vision, and not something I want." So more rejection. But what if she says "Ok." Then I have to follow through on that vision. And that feels like it would be a pain in the butt. And I realized right then that I cared more about making her see my point of view, and feeling right, than I did about the friendship.

Ultimately, I think my focus on the friendship and how I'm dissatisfied, or what I can do to make it better, and am I being the better person, or doing the right thing, blah blah blah, has just been a distraction. And it has held me back. I need to focus my energy and time on people and projects that boost me. My family. My creative work. Friends that make time for me. Who don't fall back on "I'm too busy." And now that I'd thought of it that way--that's I'm not losing something--I'm potentially gaining something, I don't feel so bad about it.

I'm not pretending that..

1. People don't disappoint me.
2. Pictures of food are interesting.(Fucking stop posting them!)
3. I like board games.
4. I don't talk to myself. Especially when alone in the car.

The gift of fearlessness

I committed Facebook suicide this week. Totally pulled the plug. It's likely why you're getting a blog post from me today!

I used to blog a lot more. When I signed up for Facebook more than four years ago, that all ended. The time I used to spend here, or in my journal, or just in my head--pondering--dissipated. Instead I was spending my time on Facebook.

I came to realize it was not just effecting (goddam it! affecting?) my creative life, but my social life too. Instead of calling a friend, I lurked on Facebook. It was too easy. Too addictive.

How many hours did I spend scrolling through status updates, instead of playing with my son?

So I ended it this week. I couldn't think too hard about the consequences. I just had to do it. Thinking about who I'd lose touch with, or what I'd miss out on just paralyzed me. I got up early one morning, and in that hazy mind-space time when you don't really think about anything, I logged on and deleted my account.

Yay!

So now I have some time to do what I've been meaning to do for awhile. Write here. Back in January, as my birthday was approaching, I was thinking about giving myself a gift. The gift of fearlessness. I thought about the power of just posting whatever was on my mind--which I often don't do because I wonder what you all will think of me. (Ha! All three of you reading this blog.) Maybe if I write about what I really think, and really feel, you'll think I'm terrible, unworthy of friendship, a totally negative bitch.

Well, maybe you will. But I'm going to risk it. Because the consequence of not writing what's on my mind is...nothing. Nothing happens.

There is a saying: "The universe asks you to go first."

Here I go.

100 haiku challenge, 61

Two and a half beers,
Some duck boots and a raincoat.
Raindrops can't touch me.