Five Things
1. The astounding and inspiring Liz Kalloch has taken it upon herself to organize the First Annual Squam Art Show, which will make its debut at Artstream Studios just before the September 2009 Squam Art Workshops. Here's the scoop: all of you lovelies who taught or attended the 2008 Squam Art Workshops are invited to participate, and even if you aren't planning on attending this September's event (we'll miss you!) your work is wanted and needed. Head over to Liz's website, which has all the news that's fit to print on what is sure to be an extraordinary exhibit. And if you're having any doubts at all about submitting, try this: Write down your doubts, fears, worries, etc. on a piece of paper, then promptly burn, rip up or somehow disintegrate that piece of paper. Shred it in a blender, stomp on it, do whatever you have to do!!
2. Dancing Mermaid is offering an e-course on how to create your own creative mermaid gathering. How marvelous is that?
3. Speaking of Squam Art Workshops (SAW), head over to Decor8 for a great interview with SAW's fearless leader, Elizabeth MacCrellish. Need more inspiration? Here's another lovely interview over at Droplets of Devotion with the divine Jen Gray.
4. Caroline Donahue – a career coach I've worked with over the past year – is offering an 11-month "Road Not Taken" program to help you make 2009 your year to dive deep into your dreams. The program begins Sunday, March 15th, and the deadline to register is Tuesday, March 10th. In Caroline's words, "It is a program to create support and community around pursuing goals that might have been set aside in the past because they didn't feel practical and realistic." Now is your chance to invest in your future and your dreams! If you sign up for the program, be sure to let Caroline know I sent you and you'll receive a free copy of Ordinary Sparkling Moments. Click here for all the details on Caroline's program, and email Caroline at caro@remabulous.com for information on a special discount through March 1st.
5. Creature Comforts – "Design for all creatures great & small" – is a lovely design blog, and she has a beautiful Etsy shop to boot.
Broken Streak
[May Sarton and Theopa Beets :: Photos taken last week]
I have been down for the count for the past few days, parked on the couch and sick for the first time in four years. I am not quite 100% yet, but on the mend, working through a mellow to do list and easing back into work today. I will continue to take it easy, but as soon as I feel totally recovered my first order of business needs to be exercise, as almost every meal I've had since Saturday has had the word cheese in it – grilled cheese, mac & cheese, cheese crackers. Ah, how nice it is to revert back to my eight-year old self now and then, camped out vertically with my favorite pillow, blanket, DVDs and crossword puzzles, able to hide from the world, if only for a few days.
I uploaded the latest photos of my current mannequin projects. I now have three in the works: May Sarton, Theopa Beets and India. I also received some exciting news last week – one of my essays will be published in next month's Skirt! magazine. My first published, paid piece. It is a milestone for me, and I am proud to be making my start in the writing world in such a colorful, inspiring publication.
“Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.” -Natalie Goldberg
Five Things
1. Sugarloop = bold, graphic color and design, prints galore to add some flair to any room.
2. Registration for the first Be Present Retreat is now open! As if Liz is not kept busy enough with her beautiful handsewn creations (which are all over my studio), now this. The amazing Judy Wise will be teaching in this first workshop, who will also be at Squam Art Workshops this September. In case you didn't realize, Judy's middle name is IS.
3. This one's for you Blue Poppy – Vintageweave, antiques & vintage items from your favorite part of the world. Ooh la la!
4. If you missed last Sunday's New York Times, then you missed my teacher's essay in their Modern Love column. It is a dream of mine to have a piece in this column and I am so thrilled for Amy Friedman, a wonderful teacher and talented essayist.
5. I am working on four different mannequin projects right now, one of whom is named India. An Indian Summer has been inspiring me every step of the way with this one. I am crazy about this gorgeous design blog.
As I Said, Aware and Intense
[Photo taken by Stacy de la Rosa]
How do you say all the things you need to say to someone, things you've held in for what feels like a lifetime – all those big and small dustballs that you've chosen to sweep beneath the rug, behind the bed, out the door? What happens the day you wake up and realize the time you've had to ignore what was real and truthful is gone, and that the crossroads you've hoped would never appear is not just on the horizon, but at your feet? The past twelve months seem to be my time for crossroads, journeys I've needed to take with myself, my work, and so many relationships. I see now that perhaps this has been so because I've needed a lot of practice, practice to face what must now be faced – a final frontier of truth and integrity in my life that I naively hoped would never come to fruition.
Forgive me, I've shown up here at a weak moment, and I'm only adding to the drama by listening to one of the most melancholy pieces of classical music I know. I know very well how to feed my dark moods, my anger, my confusion, my fears. They walk right up and devour what I have to offer straight out of my hands, curling their tiny fingers around mine as they lap up what I know will only make them stronger. But sometimes, strangely enough, they need to be fed, and I have to give them everything I have to give. Sometimes it is the only way to get rid of them. As if they come in, I welcome them and say, "Here, take it all. I'll let everything spill out of my heart, and when I've emptied myself of whatever muck has been getting in the way of my life, there will be nothing more to offer you. And when I open my hand again, you will see it is empty, and then you will leave me alone."
Aware and intense, that is what this is all about. A situation that makes me so aware and intense it is capable of shifting my mood like a slingshot within minutes. But how strange it feels to know that this is all necessary and, in the long run, valuable. This is about me standing firm in my intengrity, priorities and values, and about being willing to pay a great price in service to that. I have paid it before, and I have no regrets about that. I have not shared many details of these situations because I am uneasy with the idea of crossing the line into far too personal, but sometimes the awareness and intensity is so great that I must let some of it slip out, if only to express the truth that sometimes we have to make monstrously painful choices, but in those choices there lies freedom that we cannot comprehend for as long as we try to avoid the truth.
I am having a moment of overwhelm right now, but I know it will soon pass. I received two extraordinary gifts today, so beautiful that they literally made me stop what I was doing earlier today and say, "What a great day this is." And despite this temporary detour down a lonely road, I will still go to sleep tonight believing this to be a great day. I am not sitting here wishing for an easier life, or wishing certain details were different. I sit here in acceptance, with a soundtrack of sad music and a handful of pixie dust. It is a beautiful day. In every way possible, it is a beautiful day.
Aware and Intense
Five Things
1. Um, hello – CUTE OVERLOAD anyone? Can you believe these tiny wonders from Got Crow Creations?
2. There are so many unhappy stories coming out of Gaza – my friend Marianne wrote a great post right here with a list of books to read and things to do to learn more about Gaza and, believe it or not, help make a difference.
3. The wonderfully talented Lisa Occhipinti just updated her website. Inspired by her work, are you? Good news! She's teaching at the September 2009 Squam Art Workshops. I took her painting class last year and it was divine.
4. To all you Los Angelenos, Ghetto Gloss now hosts the Silverlake Art/Craft & Vintage Fair EVERY SUNDAY. 9am – 5pm every Sunday on the corner of Silver Lake & Glendale Blvds. SWEET!
5. Here's what you need to do: get a cup of coffee, maybe your favorite croissant, then sit down and watch Elizabeth Gilbert's recent talk at TED. Twenty minutes of pure, passionate inspiration.
Intersections
I am working on a piece of writing, one I started early last week, that has grown more fascinating, intense and heartbreaking as I've delved into it. It has to do with all the letters I received when I was running Swirly, and I am still in the stage of pouring words on page without worrying too much about what it all means. Or at least trying not to worry too much about what it means, and I say that because my teacher has already – after just three classes – totally nailed me for being a tad too eager to figure out the meaning behind every new story.
So I am trying not to think too much about the ultimate structure of the story, but old habits die hard, so I've already dipped my toe into the process of mapping out the journey this story might take. It is not a complicated story as much as it is a story ripe with interesting tangents and themes, filled to the brim with bits and pieces of insights into the human experience. My challenge is figuring out how to pare it down and organize everything in a way that gives the reader a smooth sail through all the elements of a story that pulls fruit from many different trees.
I printed out what I had written so far yesterday and after some small edits, began cutting the pages apart – literally – by key topics. I have basically put a number of small stories in one big story without any thought of arrangement or order, and now I need to start working on how this piece will flow. I am probably getting ahead of myself, but to sit here at my desk with a stack of odd-shaped manuscript pages, knowing I am now free to play with the order as much as I want, gives me a giddy feeling. It is kind of trippy to take my visual approach to creativity and bring it to a written approach, where the way a story looks on the page is just as important as the way it is written. I am playing with using white space and imagining the paragraphs I've now physically separated as mobile entities that can move around as often as necessary to get it just right. It feels more like a mystery to solve than a problem to dissect, where the story will tell me where it wants to go as long as I'm willing to sit still, listen and do the work.
Tingling
[Current progress of May Sarton. Left image was layer two; right image is layer three.]
"Let every instrument inside you go berserk." -Hafiz
Five Things
1. Boho Goddess Denise Andrade is now booking appointments for artist photo sessions at the Fall 2009 Squam Art Workshops. Head over to her site for information on a fabulous discount she's offering for this special event. While you're at it, pick up one of her gorgeous prints, like the one shown above.
2. I am now experiencing one of the episodes in my life when I actually wish I had TV, so I could be enjoying the new season of Flight of the Conchords. Alas, I have to get snippets on youtube until the new season comes out on DVD, including this video of their new song "Sugalumps". I have to share that when I was watching this, laughing my head off, it suddenly occurred to me – this is their job. Making up songs about their family jewels is just another day at the office.
[P.S. You might want to keep the kids away from this one, it's not G-rated.]
3. Have you signed up for Susannay Conway's e-course, Unravelling: Ways of Seeing My Self? Not yet? Well get going!! It starts a week from Monday and is sure to be inspiring, transformative and FUN.
4. OK, this feels like a peculiar site to link to, but a few commenters have asked where I get my mannequins. I get them at OnlyMannequins…your one stop shopping place for plastic molded human figures. Go figure.
5. My interview with the astounding Jamie Ridler is now up on her wonderful blog, Next Chapter: 12 Secrets of Highly Creative Women. Thank you Jamie!!
6. BONUS #6! Hot off the presses – Ms. Boho is doing an Ordinary Sparkling Moments Give Away on her blog today, and can I tell you how flushed, weepy and touched I am by her video? Thank you my friend, I'm speechless…
Part of the Journey
[Photo by Denise Andrade]
I was thinking about yesterday's blog entry and realized I came across a tad too flippantly with regard to my referencing the shifts that have been occurring in my circle of friends. When I re-read that paragraph this morning, I saw that it would not be too difficult to imagine me sitting at a table with a list of my friends, wantonly striking some off the page and laughing maniacally as my thick black pen marked out their names. This process was neither haphazard nor resentful; I have not let my connections with certain people drift away quietly out of anger or resentment. It was also not a process that I was inspired to do for kicks. I did not wake up one morning last fall and decide, "Hey, it's time for a change, so I think I'll drop a few people from my speed dial and send them on their way."
No, this is not the way things went.
I have tiptoed around this process a few times on this blog, feeling wary of airing out the details. But now that the emotional charge of these shifts has ebbed and I know these releases are healthy, I think it is important to be honest about why this happened. In a nutshell, all the seismic shifts began when Ordinary Sparkling Moments was released, and that's no coincidence.
At a reading I did at Book Soup last November, a very wise nine year old girl asked me, "Have any of your friends not supported you with your book?" My immediate reaction was to pull her aside and say, "Let's you & me bust out of this joint. We'll go somewhere where the margaritas and root beer floats flow, and I'll tell you some stories." I instead answered her as honestly, succinctly and positively as I could, saying something along the lines of, "There have been some friends who haven't been there for me and that has been really hard, but there have been even more people have supported me in remarkable ways. The way I've learned to look at it is that as some people did not show up for me, it created room for new friends and supporters." This was not a rosy answer to a thorny question meant to cloak deeper feelings of resentment; what I said was the truth.
What I chose not to delve into was that experience has shown me a peculiar piece of truth about making a dream real: Once your choices, actions, and accomplishments start to ruffle the feathers of those around you, you know you're on the right track. This is not to say that your intention ought to be to upset people, it is to say that when you take bold leaps, when you stand firm in your own belief system, and as you become more centered in knowing who you are, it is going to create a ripple effect that you won't be able to predict, manage or control. For the most part this is a beautiful opening that will only serve you and bring you closer to the best life you can create for yourself, but along the way, you will also experience loss, disappointment and confusion. There will be people who you thought would be your greatest cheerleaders who will remain silent. There will be people who you have supported along their creative journeys who will refuse to return the effort. There will be people who will not ever speak to you again. All of this has happened to me since last August.
It is part of the journey, and, ironically enough, it is a sign you are headed in the right direction. But here's the other absolute truth of this: It is not about you. It is not personal, it is not because you are doing anything wrong. The actions of others in response to your forging your true path is all about their struggles, pasts, lost dreams, expectations and beliefs. The simplest example is the all-too-common story of someone quitting their job to fulfill a dream of opening their own business, only to have someone they thought would support them be vocally critical of their choice. Why? Because the naysayer is stuck in a job they hate, unable or unwilling to take the same bold leap. The last time I heard someone share this exact experience with me? Last week. The last time someone shared with me that she wasn't sure which friends were going to stand by her through a significant (and beautiful) recent change in her life? Yesterday.
This is the truth of setting your own course, not said in discouragement, but in the beam of a strange ray of hope. Every time someone walks away from an opportunity to be your friend, it is good information. As we become more adept at learning when to release shallow, unhealthy or imbalanced connections with love and gratitude in our hearts, we lighten our load and step more confidently into the best future we can create for ourselves. In the big picture, this is all positive, forward movement.
I have tried to accept these experiences from last year without judgment. This is far easier said than done, and I will cop to feelings of resentment, bitterness, anger, and betrayal. I have sneered at the words some people have written, spreading stories of sunshine that, from where I am sitting, are hollow. I have gossiped, made snide remarks, bitched, complained and cried. It isn't easy, this open-hearted acceptance of other people's choices to treat one of your proudest achievements as a dust ball they can sweep out of their consciousness. Even writing this, I see how easy it would be to careen down a slippery slope of negativity right now, even after writing so passionately about acceptance, gentle release and hope. It has not been easy, but I have tried my best to move through the tangles with respect, integrity and grace. I've stumbled, to be sure, but I've tried.
We humans are complicated, and can't always be there for one another the way everyone wants. The status quo is an easy place to exist; it is in change, movement, and transformation that all of our relationships are going to be challenged. This is the way it is. This is part of the journey.
