Stuff

I think about "stuff" a lot.  I have too much.  I know it would be so good to get rid of most of it.  To that end, I sell at flea markets twice a week.  And I give stuff away to the Salvation Army & the local swap shop.  But the pile of stuff never seems to get any smaller. And I often have this idea that if I were to pack it all up, call Goodwill or Salvation Army to come haul it away, I would be so much better off.   My kids are coming to visit at the end of the week and it brings it all to the fore.  They can see clearly how much this impacts me.  It may not be the thing that is making me stuck, but it doesn't help.

So I share with you this bit from Firesign Theatre, the last line pretty much sums up my conflicting views.

Announcer: "So here's your last deal Ms. Presky -- now, which would would you rather do? Hit this dude over the head with a bag of sugar ...or beat out that rhythm on the drums..."

Mrs. Presky: "Er....ahhhhh....I'll take the bag."

Announcer: "You mean you're gonna trade this four foot cube of 18 carat Swiss Bouillon and the steak knives, Mrs. Presky, all for that little bag ???"

Mrs. Presky: "Yes!"

Announcer: "Well alllllright!! Open it up!!"

Mrs. Presky: "Why. . why . . this is a bag of shit!"

Announcer: "But it's really GREAT shit, Mrs Presky."

-- Firesign Theatre, Don't Crush That Dwarf, Hand Me the Pliers.

Keeping Journals

I'm no stranger to journals.  I have kept them since I was 14.  They are the way I make sense of whatever is going on with me.  I've written about family, about love, about loss.  I've written when I was angry or hurt or depressed or just plain confused.  I have written when sentimental and even happy, but mostly it's the tough times that inspire me to write.  I've written down my dreams and later found they were telling me things I wasn't consciously aware of.  But all those journals were written just for me.  They were never public so I could be messy or ungrammatical or mean or thoroughly pissed off. 

For me, this blog is a different kind of journal.  I am still writing about very personal issues.  And I am still being honest.  But it's not the unvarnished truth.  I edit.  I consider the words I will use.  I consider that someone else might read this.  Now currently there is no indication that anyone but me is reading this.  But this is a public sphere and ya never know.  Someone I know just might read what I have written.  It makes me think really hard about what I will write.  I don't want to tell all the gory details.  They are not important.  What is important is the emotional truth.

Retuning to this blog started because I was tired of being stuck.  Writing in my private journal was not moving me forward.  It didn't get me moving.  And it didn't tell me what is going on with me.  Somehow editing out the details, the despair (which I just didn't want to put out for anyone else to see) is allowing me to see what is true for me.  It's a slow go, so I don't know if it will unstuck me.  But it sure is nice to notice that each day I have a further insight and I take one more step toward wholeness.

My Heart is A Fixed Point

I keep thinking that all this angst is about making art.  But it's not.  It's about opening my heart again.  The art stuff is just there in the background because it's something I want to do.  But I can't.  I can barely get out of bed each day.  But that's just a symptom.  Trust is the real issue.  Because it seems to me if you can't trust, you can't love.  And if you can't love it's impossible to do anything else.

Is trust something one can learn to do?  I used to be the most trusting person.  And then. . .
Did I lose the ability to trust?  Is it a permanent loss?  I don't know.  I'm not sure I even know how to find the answer.

This is such a tough thing to deal with for me.  For no matter how much I have been hurt, how much I mourn the loss of trust, my heart is still a fixed point.  It has been since that summer at camp so many years ago.  Hearts are amazing things.  And it's really, really scary to open them up when there is no guarantee that they won't be broken again.

Gallileo, Newton and me

What will I say today?  A friend of mine was working on growing her business and the business coach told her to blog every day for 30 days.  I don't have a business coach, but I would like to.  I love the idea of coaches!  I'm not  sure I have a business and I'm not sure I could sustain one.  But I want to express my creativity.  And I don't want to be stuck any longer.  And since writing has always been the way I make sense of my life, here I am again, writing.  

So, what will I say today?  I've been thinking about physics a lot lately.
What will open my heart and allow me to be more than a passive observer? 
 What disrupts inertia?  Newton's First Law states: 

"An object at rest stays at rest and an object in motion stays in motion with the same speed and in the same direction unless acted upon by an unbalanced force."

Could it be my life is too balanced?  It doesn't feel like it.  I don't feel at a point of equilibrium.  I think of balance as good, really good.  But according the laws of the universe, to move beyond being a body at rest, this body needs to be acted upon by an unbalanced force.

"To determine if the forces acting upon an object are balanced or unbalanced, an analysis must first be conducted to determine what forces are acting upon the object and in what direction. If two individual forces are of equal magnitude and opposite direction, then the forces are said to be balanced. An object is said to be acted upon by an unbalanced force only when there is an individual force that is not being balanced by a force of equal magnitude and in the opposite direction."

I'm going to have to think more about what forces are acting upon me.  And of course I don't know if you can apply Newtonian laws to emotional inertia.  But on the other hand it's a whole different way to think and maybe that in itself is an unbalanced force!



For more info on the science, check out The Physics Classroom   

She Don't Look Back

 That's the part of the lyrics I have always struggled with.  On the one hand I love looking back.  I am fond of telling stories.  My young adulthood was a most magical time and I mine it for smiles all the time.  But I think Dylan was talking about a woman who didn't bother with regrets.  And while I have no regrets from  high school or college, I have looked back over the last decade or so and wondered if the song lyrics still pertain to me.

I discovered theatre in high school.  Freshman year in college I wandered over to the theatre building and that's where I spent all my time for the next year and a half.  I was certainly too quiet and self conscious to take acting classes, but I felt right at home in the design/tech part of a production.  I loved the creativity. Designing sets is a combination of drafting skill and artistry.  Costuming is a combination of sewing skills and creativity.  And building sets, painting backdrops, sewing costumes with a bunch of dedicated folks is absolute heaven -- no matter how late you have to be there! 
 
However, the reason I love the lyrics is they were the first time someone told me I was an artist.  I had a friend.  I met him that freshman year in theatre design class.  He was an artist and hip and experienced and someone I felt amazingly connected to.  He really made me feel special.  We'd go to a party and I always knew where he was, we'd catch each others eye and smile at some private joke.  We'd jump into each others conversations from the across the room without skipping a beat.  At least that is how I remember it.  I never thought it would go anywhere -- like marriage or children, but I loved being in his company and he was always a lot of fun.  He was someone I felt comfortable talking to and sharing my feelings.  Since I was usually tongue-tied around guys I liked, this was a revelation!  We stayed friends all through college.

I don't remember exactly how it came about, but I must have been bemoaning the fact that I wasn't an artist and I wish I was, or something like that.  And my friend quoted Dylan,  "She's got everything she needs/she's an artist/she don't look back."  That's you, he said.  Art is a state of mind.  You are an artist because of who you are, not what you do.

Powerful stuff.

Heart of Mine

It has been a tough couple of years.  Two years ago, after a glorious month in France, I came home knowing the answer to the question, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"  I knew, as I probably haven't known since I was 15, I want to be an artist!  But the road has been anything but clear.  I closed my antique shop/turned it into a studio.  That was s'posed to take the pressure off and allow me the time and space to create.  Meh!  I have made art, some of it glorious, some crap!  (I'm really not being hard on myself, I know the difference).  But not nearly enough art or joy has been evident in my life.

And I'm not feeling like an artist.  Do I know what an artist feels like?  Does he have to be missing an ear?  Does she have to work in the studio every day?  Must the work be sold?  Must she conform to Dylan's definition? -- "She's got everything she needs/She's an artist/She don't look back."  I must have a picture of the artist in my head; a picture I somehow don't fit.  Or is it the emotionally tough couple of years I've had?  I think maybe one needs to feel to be an artist.  You can feel good or bad or angry or sad or any other of a million emotions, but ya gotta feel.  So probably the reason I'm not feeling like an artist is I'm trying real hard not to feel anything.

My means of escape can be found at the local public library or our subscription to Netflix. Makes sense that this piece of wisdom is the voice over from a show I watch.  I'm not there yet, to the last sentence of this quote anyway, but I know that is what needs to happen for me to be the artist I am, deep down:

"We try to live responsible, logical lives.  But we can't tell our hearts what to think.

Sometimes our hearts lead us to places we never thought we wanted to go.

And sometimes our hearts can be the sweetest gentlest things we have.

Sometimes our hearts can make us feel miserable, angry, excited and confused -- all at once.

But at least my heart is open.  And I'm writing again.  I'm dealing.  I'm breathing."

                                                                                                                                                                  -jason katims

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

May your holidays be filled with light and love!