tiny hand, holding mortal frame to eternal spirit, or something

what i wore:  uniqlo house dress, h&m lace up HIGH boots, bicycle chain necklace, earrings from harmony, vintage cameo ring from antoinette's. mac russian red lipstick.  ralph lauren men's cologne.  don't know what it's called.

i wore clothes and shoes and jewelry today.  and lipstick.  AND SHOES.  that i wore to the mailbox.

i ate my current daily lunch--open face cheese sandwich in broiler (so it gets those beautiful brown bubbles in the cheese) with sliced tomatoes, mayonnaise, kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, a diet coke & pecan sandies with dark chocolate chips.  sometimes i eat the same thing for lunch every day for months.  and then i hate it and never eat it again.

i read:

**nathaniel hawthorne's "the birthmark" which is as awesome a story as you might ever read.

**zadie smith's essay "some notes on attunement," which also kind of blew me away, especially the section on abraham and isaac.

**marcia aldrich's essay "the art of being born," enjoyable, and sad.  where was her doula?  where was my doula, way back when?

**chapter 33 "the specksynder" and chapter 34 "the cabin-table" from moby dick.

i wrote:

** the poem "poor & butterless," and the poem "remove your shoes"

i submitted:

**three poems to a journal who encouraged me to resubmit once, but has nonetheless rejected my work seven times now.

i would write so much better in this kimono & peach mules.

i thought about proposing a performance art project wherein i enact a year of proustian living. the first item in my budget would be this emerald kimono, followed by these kitten slides, which i would only wear to the kitchen to get beverages & snacks.  

habit schmabit

guilt trip

i got one thing done today.
actually at 3 a.m. during an episode of insomnia.
the rest of my day was taken with various obligations, some commitments i had made, some unforeseen little family crises.

at 3 a.m. i got ravished by an uninvited muse and wrote a new poem, and it was a sweet, sweet moment.

so i won't complain about the thwarting of my plans, because in sum, it was a difficult day and also a better day than i could have predicted.

a stanza from my muse:

i was young then,
and that was all.

more later, when time has passed and i can vet the whole thing with some distance from the newly birthed verses.

also, this pesky chart and analysis showing the relationship between the time an author arises and how productive that author is.  i still want more proof of a cause/effect relationship between early rising and excessive artistic prolificacy.

nonetheless, barring proof, i will continue to fret that i will never be as productive as the compulsive 4 am risers.

long work day, quick blog post

so rad.  literally.

my report for friday 29 august 2014:

reading:

• finished part 2 of charles olson's call me ishmael
• read "resisting amnesia: history and personal life," adrienne rich's 1983 speech at scripps college collected in blood, bones, and poetry
• read audre lorde's poem "afterimages"
• read sandra tsing loh's essay "the bitch is back" from the best american essays 2012, ed. david brooks
• read chapter 83, "jonah historically regarded," and "the doubloon" from moby dick

writing:

• wrote the poem "from the sun. . . " 
• wrote the poem "god's world is nothing. . . "
• FINISHED revising the lapidary's nosegay, and i must never touch it again until it is in press

business:

• submitted the lapidary's nosegay for publication with two days to spare before deadline passes

what i wore & a report

weird picture.  sorry.  i wanted to show you that i cast off my mom clogs in favor of h&m booties (see clogs in background), my proustian bed desk (i must work on making it more sumptuous), and that i'm still wearing tons of leopard.  also, i must get rid of that hideous red polka-dotted phone case. 

today, on thursday 28 august 2014:

• read most of section 2 from charles olson's call me ishmael
• read eula biss' essay "the pain scale" from the best creative nonfiction, vol. 1, edited by lee gutkind
• read chapter 17, "the ramadan," chapter 10 "a bosom friend," chapter 4 "the counterpane," and chapter 11, "nightgown," from moby dick.

here's what olson says about melville, and i find it highly applicable.  if you're a writer, you might also find resonance here:

he [melville] was a skald, and knew how to appropriate the work of others.  he read to write.  highborn stealth, edward dahlberg calls originality, the act of a cutpurse autolycus who makes thefts as invisible as possible.  melville's books batten other men's books.

• wrote the poems "we are all dreadfully cracked. . . ", "but what is worship?",  and "there you lie. . . ."
• wrote blog post
• re-submitted to rad journal who asked for more work
• submitted to new journal, work never before submitted

not done

• manuscript editing on the lapidary's nosegay.  the fourteenth day in a row this has been on my list and has not been touched.  

p.s. in addition to wearing this outfit to blog in, i'll be wearing it to a parent-teacher conference in which we discuss the issue of my child drawing a mustache and beard on his face with marker at school yesterday, to neylan mcbaine's women at church book release at zion's books, and to the opening of tamarack, a new provo restaurant, which i will review if all goes well.  and finally, to watch the dita von teese episode of project runway later on tonight. 

accountable to cyberplace

i wore my favorite betsey johnson nightgown for reading time, and my favorite target merona black dress for writing time.  i think a peignor set would be more inspiring, though.  like proust, i work best in bed.  i'm not going to be ashamed of that no more.  no more.

in an effort to be true to my new schedule of uber-productivity, here's today's report.  on wednesday 27 august 2014 i:

• wrote the poem "oh sweet friends. . . "
• wrote the poem "she was a thing of trophies. . . "
• wrote the poem "this world pays dividends. . . ."
• read part one of charles olson's call me ishmael
• read chapter 15, "chowder" from moby dick
• read chapter 16, "the ship" from moby dick
• read "unconscious came a beauty," "catbird in a redbud," and "gometrid" from may swenson's iconographs
• wrote this blog post

unfinished on today's list (i still might get there)

• re-submit to (great!) journal who rejected me last week but said to send them something else
• spend 45 minutes finalizing edits on lapidary's nosegay

searching for focus: an inspiration board

inspirations: watching chef gerardo cook a la minute at el rey

last week i pronounced and announced that i was going to go full on d.i.y.  since then i've done:











yep.  that's it.

inspirations: beautiful avocado with chimichurri sauce at el rey

there are reasons.

inspirations:  ingrid

i'm recovering from travels that were so rad but also a bit taxing.

inspirations: ingrid, saddle shoes, bee dresses, and the philadelphia magic gardens

i'm dealing with a rather large brood of children.

inspirations:  cecily, huber farm in midway, picnics

i'm still getting my strength back from being sick and injured for a really long time.

inspiration:  my doppel at the philly magic gardens

i'm trying to get some really crucial and non-fun stuff done, like finalizing formatting on my dissertation for the dissertation office (you who have done it can sympathize, i'm sure.)

inspiration: cy twombly room at the philadelphia museum of art: fifty days at illiam

and also re-watching the entire bbc pride and prejudice (it's like eight hours, people!) with ingrid.  so fun!  so crucial!

mary shelley in london before writing frankenstein by karen kilimnik

job applications, laundry, bathroom cleaning, doctors' appointments, end of school year kids stuff.  most of you know.

inspiration: this beautiful jumble of stuff from ingrid's dorm room that she had to get rid of to make room for her new life as a sister.  lavender fascinator, white cowgirl boots, gross vintage fox stole, record shelves.  if she can transition, so can i.

a dull list of dullness.

christian and julie at the new museum.  christian has such smart working ways.  julie has such fun living ways.

my main problem, though, is where to start?  i just wrote down all of my ideas, and opened a google doc for each.  i also have things i started that i need to finish (two of my biggest problems are focusing on one thing and finishing things).  so i have eight new google docs, blank, with titles.

inspiration: a mermaid against misogyny sighting at philly magic gardens.

i'm overwhelmed with ideas and idle fantasies, but no practical sense of how to prioritize or where to start.

inspiration: hivemind. these are ingrid's beehives at bryn mawr.

sorry if this is boring.

inspiration: the cloisters at bryn mawr.  i need to find my meditative space.

i'm really stuck in the middle right now.

inspiration:  feminism & motherhood, mothers, female divine, jesus, skeletons, intersectional feminism, activists.

luckily i know this has happened before, and i've always eventually found my way--this just feels long and agonizing at the moment.

a micro/macro macro/micro breakthrough

filled up morning pages notebooks, my artist's shrine, and cameron's book.  some of the tools.

on june 11, 2012 i started julia cameron's artists' way--a twelve week program of writing morning pages every day, taking yourself on an artist date every week, and completing exercises to figure out why you might be a "blocked creative," or why you might not be living up to your full artistic potential.

when i started, i hoped to have some sort of huge break through where, finally, i would figure out what my "true" artist's calling was.  eventually, i realized this artist's way process felt a little like what i was taught to do as a religious young person in order to gain a sure knowledge of the gospel of jesus christ.  in my religious training, we were taught that if you read the word of god every day, had a sincere desire, prayed day and night, fasted, "went into the wilderness," either literally or figuratively, you would be given the gift of sure knowledge.

i know many people, in fact, many people who are the very most beloved humans in my life, who have a sureness and a belief that they would be willing to die for after completing the steps outlined in the religious training of my mormon faith tradition.

the book

i completed my checklist, the studying and prayer, fasting and meditation, but this kind of big, unshakeable truth, a burning in the bosom, to borrow a phrase, never manifested itself to me.

perhaps my idea of what should have happened, what should have been revealed to me, blinded me to what was learned instead.  since i was focused on one outcome, i may have failed to notice other equally good outcomes. 

i started feeling this same way about midway through the artist's way.  that there was a specific way i should be feeling, a specific kind of break through that a "good" artist would have in this process.  this is not necessarily anything to do with the book or the program itself.  i'm pretty sure it's my own context and mindset that produced this feeling, this obsession with other people's breakthrough stories:  so-and-so had a huge breakthrough in week 8, so-and-so discovered that she should _______ and she sold__________ and moved to________ and started a ________________.

i admit, i got fixated with other people's artist's way break throughs.  i also admit that i'm still really obsessed, and i'm dying to hear other people's stories about this.  but, in the end, i had a different sort of break through, one that's still in process, one that i'm still trying to understand.

i finished the twelve week program today, september 2, 2012.  i had a lot of micro-insights, and a few larger ones as well.  here's a short summary of some of the things that came from working through morning pages every day for three months:

today's big picture: sunday dinner old school.

1) micro/macro:  i learned that i need to continue focusing carefully on the micro.  i've written about this many times on my blog, and it's a realization that i started coming to a few years ago.  for me, a focus on small, daily, affirmative actions creates the greatest amount of artistic productivity in my life. when i have grandiose plans, when i try to control a project with grand plans and ideas with a capital "I", my projects tend to fail or burn out. i decided, at least for now, to continue with the mode of working in micro-bursts, as this will best enable #4 on this list.

farmer's market salad--again!  heirloom tomatoes, cukes, cilantro, avocado, feta & vinaigrette.

2) walking blind: the mountain i'm climbing is one of those depicted in a beautiful japanese scroll-- enshrouded in clouds.  i'm climbing in a mist, one step at a time, and i can't see the guru, the mountain peak, or how far it is to the top.  or even if there is a top, a guru, or a place worth climbing to.  it seems my path has something to do with faith, working one letter at a time, one footstep at a time, without knowing for sure what it's all for, except:

3) the deep breath in & the deep breath out:  i've learned i really have to pay attention to the moment i'm in, not the one that's coming, not the one that's already happened.  the literal deep cleansing breath is one i take many times a day to remind me to stay in the moment.  what does it mean to live a moment fully, beginning to end?  i don't really know, but it's something i'm working on, and it seems like it's important to continuing to get work done every day.

finishing salt and rosemary rolls.

4) multitudinousness:  i'm learning to be okay with a multitude of answers, paths, and outcomes. there doesn't have to be one.  i'm a little (sometimes a lot) jealous of people who have one clear path or obsession.  that has never been clear for me, i've always jumped around in my pursuits and had many, perhaps too many, interests.  now i'm working on figuring out what that means for the work i need and want to do while i'm on this earth.  i love poetry, cooking, music, film, performance & caring for my family.  i want to do all of those things in some capacity, and well.  i don't know what that will look like, finally, only that

tomorrow i'll do some yoga and meditation and morning pages, i'll work on a poem and read a poem, i'll practice some music and write some scenes for a film project, the meditative part of my day will start again with cooking dinner and sitting at the table with my family, as we do on most days.

the most caloric mashed potatoes in the world with mushroom gravy & roast beef.

this is what i'm starting to understand right now, after working daily to have more insight and to be more productive as an artist.

i can't wait to hear the wisdom of some other people out there.  how do other people keep their work moving forward, integrate worthy pursuits with daily life, get inspired?

hearing these stories what keeps me going.

xxoo

transformation update

freeing myself of distraction in the mountains

did i tell you i'm attempting a transformation?

i'm trying to live a life that will leave me, at the end of it, like at the end of a beautiful, transcendent meal, feeling satisfied but not over-full, wanting a just a little more, in a good way, and with some beautiful flavors that linger and waft into. . . . wherever it is i'm going.

(these are almost the exact instructions i give my students about how to write a good conclusion.)

i feel i need to make certain changes to live that life, but i don't know what they are, so i'm trying to figure that out right now by doing work prescribed by the artist's way.  julie and i have both mentioned that, in talking about this process, one might feel like person who has joined a cult, someone who is convinced of the veracity of the secret (remember this craze from the zeroes? people would say cryptic things to you like:  "if you think you are already prosperous, you will be." and you would know they were reading the secret.)

so i hesitate to say too much, lest i sound cultish, but cameron really does point out a lot of things that make so much sense to me.  she's like my perfect therapist.  i feel like i'm in intensive therapy right now.

do you, julie?

here are two things that are going on right now:

1)  reading deprivation.  cameron wants me not to read for a whole week.  i've decided, since i have to do some reading and writing for my job every day, that i'll do all that in the mornings and then go on a reading fast every day starting at 1 p.m. and lasting until i wake up the following morning.  here's one of her reasons for undergoing reading deprivation.  it's a good one:  "for most blocked creatives, reading is an addiction.  we gobble words of others rather than digest our own thoughts and feelings, rather than cook up something of our own."

2)  last week i began purging my house.  yesterday i took two big black hefty garbage bags of clothes, toys and shoes, and two ikea shopping bags full of books to the deseret industries for donation.  i had an obsession with getting rid of things, and have plans to do more purging in the coming week.  this morning, i read that this is predicted behavior in week four of the process: "one of the clearest signals that something healthy is afoot is the impulse to weed out, sort through, and discard old clothes, papers, and belongings.

this feels promising to me.

i wonder if anyone else is feeling transformation right now?

 hope you don't think i've become a multi-level marketer or something.  i promise i won't try to sell you any seminars, essential oils, or tahitian noni juice in the near future

looking forward: to yoga tomorrow and a dinner with my entire family minus my four nephews tomorrow night

inspiration: de-cluttering

poetry of breathing and bricklaying

after days of gloomy mood & gloomy skies, there was a lightening

the last seven days have been rough, both for reasons outlined in my last few blogposts and for some other unbloggable reasons.  today was so good, though.  just a plain day full of work, reading, & breathing it in.

i practiced my work(wo)manlike behavior and just did what i'm supposed to do--stacked some words together in a funky crooked wall, and it felt great.  good or bad, destined for an audience or the audience of one, doesn't matter. 

the work happened, and that's all.

i heart c.d. wright so much, and this poem looks as good as my day felt.  click on this link to hear the poet read the perfectly plain & beautiful piece below:

Flame

by C.D. Wright

the breath               the trees               the bridge

the road                  the rain                the sheen

the breath               the line                  the skin

the vineyard            the fences             the leg

the water                the breath             the shift

the hair                  the wheels             the shoulder

the breath               the lane                the streak

the lining                the hour                the reasons

the name                the distance          the breath

the scent                the dogs                the blear

the lungs                the breath             the glove

the signal               the turn                  the need

the steps                the lights               the door

the mouth               the tongue             the eyes

the burn                  the burned            the burning

barbies in a tight place

i spent last weekend in boulder, utah, the tight place of all tight places.  two hours from a supermarket or bank, population 120, and one of the two ways out of town along the hogsback, an eerie, terrifying road with steep thousand-foot drops and no guardrails on either side.

i've read that it's the most isolated town in the lower 48.

it's also one of the most beautiful, peaceful, spiritual places i've ever been, and we were welcomed with such kindness, openness and generosity by a group of people who mostly came there to get out of the tight place of mainstream american life, to live more deliberately, thoughtfully, lovingly, or beautifully.

there's way too much to say about this in a single blog post, but one thing i really loved there was the barbie art created by german photographer anselm spring.  we met in the  burr trail outpost, and anselm kindly agreed to show us his home and his studio.

we took our rented explorer (my toyota mini-van never would have made it) up a steep, steep mesa.  my palms were sweating and my heart was racing when a local in the car said, "you might wanna get some speed here."  i had to decide if i wanted to get enough speed to make it up the incline or risk going off the edge of the curvy road.

turns out the explorer had enough juice to get on up in that mesa.

anselm lives in a cinder block structure with a flat roof that was probably intended to be covered in stucco.  it was way cooler without the stucco frosting over top.  some other stuff about anselm:  he thinks dust and cobwebs are beautiful.  there were layers of dust on top of many things in the house, including the art.

his barbie art is a comment on the distortion of femininity ("the feminine is not about gender.  we're all both feminine & masculine.")

or is his barbie art a distortion of femininity?

whatever.  i liked it ("and yah."  that's how anselm ends practically every sentence.)

he's quite a good singer/songwriter & regaled us with four or five songs at the end of our visit, including a song for whitney houston on her death.

he made his reputation with photography, but has now given it up ("i used to photograph beautiful things.  now i photograph nothing.  and nothing is perfect.")  i think he had used that line before.

but i liked it anyway.

most people thought the barbie art was twisted & the photographs were beautiful.  i felt exactly the opposite.  what's wrong with me that i love things most people find disturbing?  granted, i adore barbie in all her distorted splendor.

there's so much, much more to say.  sadly, this is a blog post and not a chapter in a book, so i must end it here.

i know my life, heart, body, and mind changed forever in boulder this weekend, but i don't know exactly how yet.  i might begin to process it in the next few days or week, but i'm going to the most opposite place in the world, nyc, day after tomorrow, so it might be a while before the real processing begins.  

ken in a tight place

still life with boots, barbie styling head, and thick layers of dust

beautiful lavender flying barbie

barbie reclined on barbie styling head with no face throne in garden

barbie and shattered random concrete in garden

rock climbing barbie

legwear:  red tights (with red sandals & new strawberry shortcake dress, handmade in boulder, utah.)

inspiration: meeting people committed to people before things

looking forward to: new york city!

practicing sanity, health, gratitude, creation

eat your veggies--monday's salad

what keeps you sane?

what keeps you healthy?

what keeps you creative?

what keeps you gracious?

(am i weird for needing to work at these things constantly?)

or gets you back on track when you've lost your way?

isn't it fascinating how people work things out differently?  how what works splendidly for one person doesn't work at all for  another?

i have a short attention span and intense obsessions followed by intense burn-out, so i have to change up my practices all the time.  when i realized this, strong practices became a much more regular occurance.

(well, it did take forever for me to learn i needed small simple practices in the first place.)

here's one practice, that i already blogged about.

& of course you know that girls in a tight place advocate living deliberately through legwear choices.

another practice is eating my vegetables.  this week i resolved to have one mostly vegetable meal every day.  it went well sunday and monday.  today, josh the sandwich boy offered me half of his tuna salad studded with celery & dried cranberries on toasted jalapeno-cheddar bread, so my mostly vegetable lunch went uneaten.  but it's a practice, right?  meaning some sessions are stronger than others, and when the universe offers you a terrific sandwich, you would be stupid to not accept that gift.

over tuna salad, i asked josh about his practices for creativity, and he gave me this one:

i keep folders of ads, photos from magazines, newspaper clippings,
pressed flowers, leaves, interesting texts,  etc.  
rocks, bugs, sticks,
and feathers go on my window sill and mini-shelves, 
making my environment visually rich.

color palettes, the way handwriting looks, anything.
but it has to be tangible, has to be in a folder, 
it can't be digital.
electronic files never get looked at.

i asked a few more people who have interesting practices, and i'm waiting for them to get back to me.

i also really liked this idea from brenda miller's blog spa of the mind, and started working on writing my intentions and blockages this week.

i think i'll work on this a little every day this week in addition to eating more vegetables.

feel free to post your practices & your favorite vegetables in the comments.