Blooming Mondays: Painter's Delight (iris, 05.14.12)

Van Gogh would be in seventh heaven, don’t you think?

And, in one random moment, I looked up.

looking up to see a flowering tree

Pleasure is always there, waiting to be noticed and embraced.

Suddenly, I am transported to a filtered-light existence.

What music is making your summer extra special?

3-29-10

Sometimes, our actions can seem futile. Nothing’s going to change. We are who we are. We’re too old to be beginners, or to start over, or to ask for help. Everything is fine.

But the most astounding growth can come from planting a new seed, tending the soil in a different part of our garden, or simply giving a little more attention to a tiny creative spark that, if well tended, may just bloom into something truly magnificent.

What if we approached today with the intention to nurture those relationships, and address those tasks, that are most fragile, mundane or unglamorous? What wee pleasures might we discover? What beauty might we uncover?

by Pregnancy Education/flickr

Perhaps there is a man out there who will someday sweep me off my feet, or whose feet I will knock out from under him. Perhaps not. The likelihood that, if it happens, it will occur before my uterus retires for this lifetime is slim. I do not have the financial means nor heart’s desire to get pregnant on my own. Therefore, there is an extremely high probability that I will not have children of my own. It’s an incredibly uncomfortable reality to examine. I don’t want any more grief. I’m not sure what my feelings should be about it. I have NO CLUE what they actually are.

I’ve always been clear that I would never want to duplicate the same mistakes my parents made while raising me. There is much about family life, as I’ve perceived it, that isn’t worth repeating or perpetuating. I’m definitely not confident that I would be anything more than a complete, derelict, basket case of a mother. Note: That is not a reflection of my own mother, I swear.

On the other hand, I adore children and they tend to adore me. At least until they hit those terrible twos. Then, they become mean, vindictive little monsters and inflict mortal wounds upon my psyche with alarming accuracy and ease.

I’ve also always thought that the physical and emotional experience of pregnancy is such an integral part of being female that foregoing it makes me something less than a complete woman. I want to know what it feels like to create life. Without the extra hair growth, stretch marks, nausea, increased hormonal imbalance, and potential for torn bits, of course.

Most of my friends have at least one child. My sister-in-law is pregnant with her second. Being of a certain age and not having children makes me OTHER THAN. I’m excluded from the club. And yes, there is a club. Anyone who thinks otherwise is either still so young as to be annoyingly idealistic or so deeply entrenched in parentdom as to be oblivious to the prevalence of a specific social paradigm to which women are supposed to adhere.

I wouldn’t mind this if I overtly wished to make some contrarian statement with my childless or child-free state. I don’t. I tend to like a lot of the folks who are card-carrying members of the Parent Class. Yet somehow I’ve ended up on the wrong side of the tracks.

I know many women who have lost a child, whether by miscarriage or other tragic life events. I simply can’t comprehend such pain. I have absolutely no wish to know it. And how does it compare to that of knowing you’ll never have that which someone else had but then lost? I’m too chicken to want to find out.

If fact, any condition that involves FEELINGS tends to give me the heebie-jeebies. This is somewhat problematic since my emotions have always had more influence on my actions than my mind. In order to survive this conundrum, I dart about the edges of life, rarely engaging completely and shying away from anything or anyone that might potentially carry the scent of COMMITMENT, of any kind.

Parenting is the ultimate commitment.

By exhibiting what some might consider subconscious, passive-aggressive behavior, I’ve steered clear of it. Now I find myself on an entirely different road, with no visible exits. And I’m consumed with thoughts of what the view might be like in that other direction. I feel like someone else took over the controls of my life. I didn’t actively CHOOSE to be where I am.

It’s crazy-making.

Then, of course, there’s the little issue of my secret ponderings. I wonder if maybe it’s not too late. I consider the dangers of relinquishing this amorphous dream, which I’ve never fully embraced, of having a child by someone with whom I want to create and share the magic of life. If I accept it will never materialize, am I killing the possibility that it might?

This, too, is crazy-making.

The only solution I’ve discovered for quieting my brain about this issue while avoiding as many feelings as possible is to create other life questions over which I can go mad…

Why is my left boob sagging to a disproportionately greater degree than my right?

How will I pay my bills in ten years? Should I have walked away from that guy in 1992?

Am I the only person who is intimidated by the Foreman’s Grill?

Why are dust bunnies and mildew trying to take over my home?

Just think, I spend hours caught up with these questions. What if I had A KID in this condition? I just saw you shudder!

Yes, sarcasm and humor make relinquishing a dream slightly more palatable, but it still kinda blows chunks. One more think I don’t think I could handle? A puking kid. But then again, I do clean up after my cat.

So, at the moment, I exist in a bitter-sweet purgatory of inaction. The dream drifts away while I’m still trying to decipher it. Perhaps, I simply need to wake up and focus on the concrete moments of pleasure in my day rather the hanging out with the Oneiroi…

Have you ever relinquished a dream? Have you ever held on to one despite yourself? have you ever felt like an accidental rebel without a cause?

by ecotist/flickr

I’ve just leaped into an e-course, Across Mediums, created by Kate Swoboda to nurture creativity. My registration was a prize granted by the lovely Olive & Hope. I thought it would be a piece of cake. After all, I have a drawer full of art supplies, I’m planning to open an Etsy shop in March and the IRS knows me as a writer. I scream CREATIVE, right? Well, kinda. Upon reflection, I’ve realized my creative nature is frequently on the losing side of a constant battle with the part of me that desperately seeks approval.

The art supplies in that drawer are covered in dust. The amount of procrastination that proceeded my current drive to open an Etsy shop is EPIC. The quantity of files stuffed with story ideas far out numbers that of completed scripts, novels or short stories written.

I yearn to be creative EVERY MINUTE OF THE DAY. And then fly to the kitchen for food, become obsessed with the dust bunnies under the bed, decide the cat looks lonely as she naps, grab the tv remote, or visit my yawning bank account online.

Anything to avoid the very thing I most want to do.

It’s not a pretty picture.

When I was a child, I wrote fairytales. The letters were backwards. Very little was spelled correctly. The stories were simplistic and usually involve unicorns. And I thought they were wonderful. I drew and painted and sculpted just to draw, paint and sculpt. Creating was A PLEASURE.

Because I wanted to EXPRESS. What? I’m not sure I even knew. I’m pretty confident it didn’t really matter. The moment was the reveal.

Then, at some point, everything changed. FEAR entered the picture. The need for approval. The need to not stand out, make waves, or get too noticed. The need to have a REASON for everything. The need to be BETTER THAN everyone else to be worthy at all. Competitiveness. Resentment. Jealousy. Procrastination. Money.

In the same way that dancing in front of the mirror and talking to my reflection while playing make-believe suddenly became an act of vanity, and then later an opportunity to pick myself apart and pinch the proof of my failings, making art transformed from being an act of pure joy to being not so far removed from a sin.

But I’m done. I’m 40 years old. Half my life (if I’m lucky) has passed. I want to be in communion with my true nature, with my creativity.

But the opponents are entrenched.

So, I’m changing tactics.

What is it they say? For every person called a terrorist, someone can be found who will claim her as a freedom fighter. While neatly (for the moment) side-stepping the socio-political implication of that statement, I must embrace its truth in regard to my approach to creativity. I think it’s time I terrorized myself a bit to ultimately gain creative freedom.

Put another way, I’m ready to walk through the fire and feel the pain of confronting fear, guilt, shame, and whatever else rears its ugly head as I commit to FOCUSED CREATIVITY for the next two weeks and beyond. Hell, maybe I’ll even dance to my reflection in front of the mirror.

What are you doing to embrace your true nature? And when was the last time you played with crayons? Up for some scribbling tonight?

I was recently talking to some friends about our favorite television shows – not the most profound of conversation topics but one in which Angelenos frequently engage – and I was struck by how often we each downplayed and justified our choices by labeling them “guilty pleasures.”

What do we mean when we use that term? Isn’t it really just a form of self-censoring? We are attaching shame to our individuality, our tastes, our opinions. We are protecting ourselves from potential ridicule, perhaps, but in so doing, we are denying our selves.

My experiences have taught me that keeping silent does more harm than good. Claiming my truths, whether they be mundane or profound, helps me be my most authentic self. Labeling something a guilty pleasure is the first step toward driving me into hiding, into secrecy. A similar distance is travelled between a white lie and complete deception. And who the hell would want to consciously live with secrets and deception?

If I had to list my guilty pleasures, what would they be?

1. THE VAMPIRE DIARIES. It’s on the CW; hip people watch Showtime. It’s about vampires. Its target audience is about 20 years younger than I.
   

   publicity image from CW Network

2. ROMANCE NOVELS. I am a highly educated person who can identify well-written prose, and these books do not fall into that category. They are as effective as a drug for distracting me from my life, and I’ve been around 12 steps enough to accept that drugs are bad.
   

   parody artwork created by Mark Longmire

3. GINGEROO COOKIES FROM TRADER JOE’S. I am not a size 2. They are cookies. I do not eat just one…

As I began to make the above list, I had an epiphany. These are not guilty pleasures, not anymore. In fact, as I continue this crazy, warp-speed journey toward fully integrating, embracing and putting forth my TRUE self in the world, I realize that I NO LONGER HAVE ANY GUILTY PLEASURES.

This is not cause for alarm.

I have my pleasures, a plethora of them. I simply don’t have the guilt. As a result, I’m ready to shed the term “guilty pleasure” from my lexicon. I no longer need it. I no longer need to justify my taste in people, places or things. It’s a liberating and giddy discovery. And, intriguingly, the pleasures that used to be guilty now carry no more added weight in my psyche than those I’ve always felt comfortable enough to share. Additionally, many things I used to publicly claim as pleasures, because they were sanctified by society, have revealed themselves to be not as interesting to me as I once thought them to be.

Pleasure is not granted to us to be feared, denied or lathered in shame. it is a gift. Celebrate it, in whatever forms it takes for you.

Are you ready to discard the “guilty” that has glommed on to your pleasures and, instead, claim them, completely? Proclaim them publicly, if you wish, using #nomoreguiltypleasures on Twitter.

breathe deep and smile

Whether you celebrate this day as special or not, I wish you a joyous one.

And may you have a New Year filled with abundance, grace, gratitude, laughter, and peace.

Thank you so much for hanging with me this year. I anticipate many more intriguing years to come!

xo -em

I’ve been sitting with this questions for over 24 hours. Why don’t you travel back over that time with me…

First off, I have to admit, I rejected “coffee shop” as the answer. People who’ve spent any physical time with me might be surprised by that. After all, I adore cafes and I spend a significant amount of time in them, being a writer in L.A. and all.

by d1andonlykar1/flickr

Unfortunately, while all that is true, I am still searching for one that hits all the high notes – great coffee, affordable prices, a food menu with which I don’t get bored, comfortable writing chairs, tables the right height, free wireless, welcoming staff, and friendly (but not too talkative) regulars… so, yeah, a cafe is not the best place I’ve been in 2009.

The other four suggestions Gwen kindly provided to stoke the imagination were nixed about 2 nanoseconds after the first.

I’m not much of a drinker and, while I visited some great pubs in Ireland, the pub scene in L.A. is a wee bit contrived.

Retreat centers have been out of my budget this year except through work and then, well, it was work.

I actually pity the people who reveal that a cubicle was the best place in which they found themselves in 2009, and may want to hear more of their stories so I can feel oh-so-much-better about my own life.

And then, there’s the nook…

Production still from Walt Disney Pictures 2005 film, "The Chronicles of Narnia."

I don’t actually think I’ve been in a nook, certainly not the kind Gwen has been in (which actually sounds utterly delightful and makes me think I, too, would have selected it if I’d ever experienced such a thing) or The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe kind (which is the only kind of nook that sprang to mind) because a) I live in a small apartment without large furniture and b) even if I did have large furniture, I’ve never had any impulse to crawl into that sort of thing.

Farm machinery boxes are an entirely different matter, but I had no access to any of those in 2009.

So I was left pondering all the places I’ve been this year and evaluating each. And after much hair twirling, but not enough to make me shave my head, I decided upon three places – the first is a great distance in miles, the second is only a place through which to pass and the third is the closest and farthest from me at any given time.

A GREAT DISTANCE IN MILES

On the opposite side of this country lives a little girl with bright red hair and a laugh that lights up the world. My niece is the most amazing person I’ve ever met. She is only two, but she has power over my universe. Any time I am in her sphere of innocent wonder and ecstatic giggles, I am overwhelmed. Adoration is too slight a word to convey my feelings for this nymph.

Whenever I am with her, even if it’s just through the camera on a laptop, I am in a best place.

by Yiyo

A PLACE THROUGH WHICH TO PASS

A five minute drive takes me to this place. It is marked by a thigh-high cement wall extended further by a chain link fence. It is on the edge of a road. It separates me from what could be a beautiful lake but, in reality, is an artificial reservoir built to quench the thirst of Angelenos. I arrive at this place to begin a walk or a hike or a jog, depending on my ambition on any given day.

It is a beginning and an end, never lingered in too long.

But if I am at this place, I can breathe. Because, if I am here, it means I’ve found time in my day for a moving meditation. I grab the cold metal of the chain link fence and… pull back and… STRETCH. And then I step into a bounty of possibilities – Will I walk or run? Will the deer or coyotes be out? Will I encounter other people? Will I find clarity as my head stops whirring or drift into daydreaming fantasy?

It is quiet. It is ritual. It is necessary. So yes, this, too, is a best place.

THE CLOSEST AND FARTHEST FROM ME

There are moments, fleeting and much too infrequent, when I am completely in love with myself. I cringe as I let those words stay on the page. And yet I will let them remain because, my god, we all really do need to love ourselves. It’s such a challenging prospect for so many of us, however, that we build up defenses against the idea, roll our eyes at the cheesiness of the statement and go on our merry mad way doing everything we can to get others to love us instead. Or at least, that’s what I usually do.

But every once in a while, and rarely as a result of conscious action, I land in a moment, a place, in which I find absolutely nothing wrong with me, in which the overly accomplished critic in my head has nothing to say – about my body, my bank account, my career, my love life, my relationships, my possessions, etc. – and so says nothing.

It is a place in which I simple AM.

That place is utterly amazing.

That place is one in which I wish I had permanent residence.

I’ve been there one or two times this year. And it is, without question, one of the best best places to be.

by LightSpectral/flickr

What best place did you visit this year?

I must admit, I judge a book by its cover. If the picture isn’t aesthetically pleasing to me, if the typeface isn’t interesting, if the title isn’t compelling, or if the colors are jarring, I am likely to pass over a book. Unless it has been recommended to me with evangelical intensity. Or is a selection for my book club. Then, I’ll tentatively pick it up and read the inner flap or back cover. If the story summary is at all intriguing, I’ll skim the first five pages. If I think the story is crap and the writing is crap, the book is doomed. If I’m undecided, I’ll skim the last five pages.

Yes. I read the ending first.

But only if I’m not already hooked.

I give a book seven (by my count) chances to catch me in its imaginative grasp. Why? Because I love books.

I spent my childhood with my nose in one. The melodrama on the page kept me safely distracted from the real drama of my physical world. When I needed an escape, books never let me down. Hell, they still don’t. As long as I choose the right ones for me.

This year, there have been a lot of sharp edges in my physical world, and I’ve been drawn to stories of whimsy and romance. Imagine my surprise, then, when I began to reflect upon Gwen’s question of the day and quickly realized that the book which touched me most this year had everything going against it.

I hated the cover art.

The title was crude.

The story was ALL sharp edges.

The book? Bastard out of Carolina. By Dorothy Allison

The copy I came across has an utterly drab and desolate Dorothea Lange photo as cover art. Strangely, I actually love Dorothea Lange’s work. Usually. But I detested this picture on sight.

Every visual clue from the book jacket conveys BLEAKNESS. Last I checked, that’s kinda the opposite of whimsy and romance.

Of course, when the story is about a young girl trying to make sense of her world while living in a desperately poor, abusive family structure, bleak is probably the right imagery with which to work.

I wouldn’t have touched this book with a ten foot pole if it hadn’t been my book club’s choice a few months back, and I hadn’t developed a reputation in said book club of not reading the books. I was kinda wanting to shake things up.

So I picked it up.

And I read the first five pages.

And, five hours later, I had a crick in my neck, couldn’t walk straight from sitting for so long, was out of Kleenex, and slid oh-so-slowly back into the physical world. Stirred. Stunned. Stung. And silent.

When that happens, I know I’ve found a great book. It doesn’t happen as often as I would like but when it does… it’s magic. It’s what compels me to keep picking up more books.

Consider this ramble my recommendation to you, my friends, to check out Bastard out of Carolina. I won’t give you a copy, but please don’t think me a Grinch. I don’t own a copy of it myself. I rediscovered the LIBRARY a couple of years ago, you see, and it’s a beautiful thing. They let you read books for FREE!