Art and Music

(Clancy Callahan and Tom Barrett playing music at the opening of Clancy’s mom, Cathy Eide’s exhibition  of paintings.)

The other night I went to see Cathy Eide’s art opening at Cafe Flo.  I was interested to see what she paints, and was really excited to hear Clancy sing.  I’ve known her since she was very young and never knew until this week that she sings.  Tom played and sang with her, and it was a fun night.  Clancy’s voice is rich and rollicking and her songs are fun.  For me they were evocative of a time many years go when I was married to a jug band musician, and used to sing along with him sometimes.  She and Tom sang the same songs he did, and did it ever take me back.  Back to a time when I thought the music could carry us along, through rocky and slow times.  As long as we could sing through it we’d be okay.  The music was a leveler of sorts.  He didn’t seem to feel the same way about it, because he walked away without a backward glance a couple of years into the deal.  After the child was born.  Twenty years later music carried me through some hard times.  As long as I could sing I didn’t cry because the singing touched the same place inside.  Although I’ll admit there were some times I cried and sang at the same time.  Not satisfying to sing while crying, but it couldn’t be helped.  Sometimes the singing won out over the crying, however and I felt great comfort when that happened.  Somewhere along the line, in the past fifteen or so, I forgot about the music.  How did I do that?  How could I forget the music?

Today I went to an Open Studios tour, to three different yards and art shows.  There were quilts, paintings, ceramics, glass, beads, gourds, fountains and metal gates.  Wonderful back yards and studios.  I used to quilt.  I poured my passion there, combining strong vibrant colors with deep black and then hand quilting them with black and shiny gold thread.  The touch of the fabric, the colors and the sculpting of it with my needle and thread filled my heart.  I was disappointed every time I finished one.  But there was always one more to begin.  For a while I had a studio upstairs where I could work in peace, yet could still see and hear my children below in the yard.  I worked then, but my job didn’t satisfy my need for creativity so I did that outside of my work.  Once I became a teacher I used so much creativity in my work that I faded out of quiltmaking.  I haven’t finished one since I became a teacher.  For a long time that was okay with me.  I was doing other things, writing and making little mandalas on black paper.  I still kept it going, often with my students.  I believe that to write well you need to activate both sides of the brain, and that meant doing an art project before writing a essay.  It seemed to work well for my students and me.

Times have changed again.  For the past three or so years my job has not been especially creative for a variety of reasons.  I seem to have quit doing any art and I barely even listen to music any more.  Only recently have I begun to sing again.  I take pictures now and have begun to regain my vision.  Today’s tour of studios and backyards has inspired me to step it up a notch.  Not sure yet what that means.  We’ll see.  In the meantime, you’ll have to excuse me.  I need to go put some music on and clean my house.

White Peach

There is a place on Highway 70 in Yuba County, California, called White Peach which one can only see during the months of August and September.  Every year on a morning in early August the plywood sign appears, the words “White Peach” spray painted in green to entice passersby to stop and visit.  It is clearly a roadside attraction.

One year you decide that you’ll stop.  Is it a village, a fruit stand, a space ship perhaps?  Given the location of the sign beside a peach orchard (not to mention that it says “White Peach”), you assume peaches might be sold there.  But there is no fruit stand visible, so you can’t be certain. Still, you have been intrigued by it for a long time and you want to take a picture of the sign for your daily photo, so you turn into the orchard. Immediately you are surprised to find a lovely little house, surrounded by vines and flowers.  With a some relief you think, “Oh, they must sell peaches here.”  But no, there is no fruit stand to be seen.  Not even a little table with a box or two of peaches.  So you continue along the rutted dirt road, deep into the orchard.

The car bumps along for a ways, when the road suddenly takes a sharp turn to the left.  There you spy a porta-potty, an old cafe chair and a few piled up fruit crates.  Ah! Peaches must be for sale here.  But again there is no sign of anything at all for sale.  You drive on and encounter some trucks loaded with fruit boxes and a barn.  In the distance you can see a little white house with someone sitting in the front yard, next to a big orange water jug.  Still no peach stand and the person in the yard gets up and  walks away.  So, feeling like an intruder, you back up and turn around, feeling like you’ve failed.  You really wanted more than a photo from this venture.  By now you want peaches!  As you drive back along that rutted road, you spy another sign:

Now it’s definite.  There are clearly peaches sold here.  You can just call the farmers on your phone.  Except what are those two last numbers spray painted on that plywood sign?  You can’t tell, so once again you turn around.  You drive into the driveway with a bit more confidence this time, and this time the man in the yard stands up and waves.  So you park and get out of your car, and walk toward him.  He is somewhere between sixty and eighty years old, with beautiful crinkly brown skin and is wearing a dirty turban of an unrecognizable color.  He calls out loudly,”Peaches? Bag? You?  Peaches?!”  In case you’ve missed it, he demonstrates with his hands a shopping bag.  Relieved, you say, “Peaches! Yes! Peaches!  How much?” “Fifteen dollars,” he shouts.  Once you are close enough to converse, you drop your volume.  You are, after all an ELD teacher and you know that increasing the volume of the conversation doesn’t increase its comprehensibility.  He doesn’t know that, apparently, and continues to shout at you.  “Peaches! Bag!”  Thinking that fifteen dollars sounds like either a lot of peaches or a lot of money for a few, you say “Five dollars worth” and hand him a five dollar bill so there is no mistake.  He looks at it, and says “You car.  Peaches.  Bag” and he takes off walking toward the orchard.

You get in your car and follow him slowly along the rutted road through the orchard.  When you get to the cafe chair he signals you to stop your car.  You do, and you get out.  He comes up and pats you on the shoulder and says, “Bag?”  Frantically you rummage around in the backseat, looking for a bag.  He has your money, and you apparently must supply the container.  Fortunately your giant size Chico Bag is there, in a box, so you grab it and open it up.  He looks at the size of it and nods.  Clearly it’s too big for five dollars worth of peaches, but you figure he can put the right amount in, as it’s all you have.  He signals you to follow him, and he takes off into the orchard, trudging along between the rows of trees.  For a minute you think about the fact that there is no one around for who knows how far, as you head deeper and deeper into this orchard with this unknown man.  Finally, when you can barely see your car any more, he stops and points to a tree.  He grabs your bag and starts putting peaches in it.  One after another peach is tossed in there until it is completely full of beautiful (unripe) white peaches.

As you walk back to your car, he tries to ask where you live, “Marysville? You?” he shouts.  He speaks a few words in Spanish so you think maybe you’ve found a common language, and you reply in kind.  But no, those were his only words in Spanish, it seems.  So you reply, “I live in Chico.  I’m a teacher in Marysville.  I’m a teacher.”  He smiles broadly and nods, “Teacher?  Teacher.”  He pats your back vigorously and says, “Thank you!  Teacher, thank you!  Teacher.  Thank you!”  In a moment of clarity, you realize that today has been about way more than peaches.  The peaches are the bonus part of today’s adventure.  You’ve been to White Peach.  And it was a good trip.

Making Mandalas

One summer, I think it was about 2004, I made mandalas.  I carried black paper, colored pencils, a sharpener and a compass in my bag and I made mandalas, sometimes several every day.  It was kind of a way to check in with myself, to recenter my focus.  Some of them were really tiny, only about two and a half inches in diameter, and some took up the extent of a piece of black artagain paper, about nine inches across.

Amazingly, doing this art actually did help me to recenter myself.  It was like art meditation.  In the past week or so some of the old mandalas have resurfaced, maybe a reminder that I need to get something going.  It is so easy to get mired in the decluttering that I fail to start smething new.  I just keep on clearing out the old stuff.  Learning from what I find?  Certainly, to some degree.  But it’s time to start some fresh activity as well.  So, yeah.  I’m going to do that.  Photos to follow!

Heartspider

Like anyone else, on many occasions I have had reason to notice how I deal with emotional distress.  I remember once, many years ago, when my son was a teenager and something he had said or done made me really mad.  I remember stomping into the house, tearing the kitchen cupboard open and looking for chocolate.  I could suddenly see clearly, “I am so mad – I need to eat about it.”  Whoa~that stopped me in my tracks.  Until the next time, when maybe I was a different degree of mad and I failed to notice it at all and ate the chocolate.

Another time, before I was a teacher, someone at my work had played a joke on me, at least they called it that. It involved a prolonged and elaborate scheme of lies. To me it represented a significant betrayal.  I felt broken inside, and after a few minutes of messy despair, I noticed something happening within me.    Here is what I had to say about it (this is a piece of a much longer story):

“  I felt myself deflate, kind of like a bike tire that’s just run over a puncture vine.  I had this stupid smile still hanging on my face, but I felt empty. I recalled all the little details…and it was all a lie.  I felt a burning anger at everyone who had been involved in this farce.  How could they do that to me?  I thought they liked me, that we had a strong and trustworthy relationship…After a few minutes I made an excuse and left the office.  I needed to get out and feel my pain, to sort it all out.  That was when I discovered the heartspider.  While I was engulfed in this flood of pain and anger, I felt a fuzziness growing within me.  It felt like a little spider was in my deepest self, quickly spinning a cocoon-like web to separate and bury the pain that I was feeling.  At first I resented her interference.  I wanted and needed to feel the hurt and anger.  At the same time, I began to wonder how many little fuzzy balls of insulated pain a heard can hold, and if they eventually burst out into  thousands of tiny ones, like baby spiders…Maybe everyone has a heartspider, I don’t know.  I think that I can learn to live with mine.  She was at work within minutes, wrapping up my own pain so that I could sense the sorrow and loneliness of another person.  I think I need her.”

Recently something happened which caused me to feel an emotional response.  As I went through my reaction, I watched as I grabbed a good book to read, realizing, even as I did so that reading would numb the pain.  The next morning I decided to take a walk in the park, even though it was rainy, and take some pictures.  Another distraction.  When I returned home I went back to the book.  That was when I remembered the heartspider.  I hadn’t had occasion to think of her for a long time.  But I recognize her work.  And now, after a couple of days, it is complete.  I am able to see more clearly, without the distraction of my emotions.  It’s true I can feel a new little capsule in there.  And it may someday burst into thousands of tiny ones. Is this the healthiest of ways to deal with emotions?  I can’t say.  Maybe some would say it isn’t.  I’m just glad to notice that this time I didn’t search for chocolate!

Making lemonade

Lately the universe seems to want to teach me a lesson about making myself happy, reminding me that my happiness is my own business and my own  responsibility.  This force is devious, I must say.  I have had lots of chronic, nagging discontent all around the edges of my existence lately, and I finally realize that even when other people are involved with it, the blame for my reaction to the events that befall me is completely my own.  I know, big d’oh.  Sometimes I forget this.

Yesterday, at the end of another week like many before it, and probably many more to come, I was feeling on the edge of something teetery.  I drove home with tears hovering at the edges of my eyes, for no reason I could have verbalized even if there had been anyone around to notice them.  I thought of going home, and what I would do with myself other than lay down and dissolve, and it occurred to me, not for the first time, but with some force, that I’m tired of feeling this way and it’s time I do something about it.

The first thing that came to mind was re-creating the feeling of safe haven that I need in my home, and which I have been feeling too dilapidated to make for many months now.  In times of feeling battered by the world around me, the most important thing I can do is create a sanctuary for myself, someplace from which to step forth refreshed each morning.

A few months ago I made the resolve that I would accept any and all invitations that come my way this year.  I tend to hermit up and go nowhere, and this year I decided to change that paradigm.  Today I realized that not only must I accept invitations, I need to issue some.  So that’s my next step, after I reconnect with my safety, inviting friends to do something fun. Mixed in all this is the need for creativity (my photography outings make me ridiculously happy!), and for recentering myself on a regular basis through meditation or prayer.  Something like that.

Hmm, this is sounding curiously like Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, isn’t it?  Physical safety, nutritional and exercise needs met, check. Moving up, satisfy creativity, check.  Making connections with other people, check.  Honoring my spirituality, check.  It really is all in my hands.  That is nice to know.  A little scary too.

Suddenly so much to do

I chose this shot of all the crystals because it seems like I have a lot of things hanging all of a sudden, each with lots of little pieces to do before I reach completion.  I have several time-sensitive projects to do for school as well as for the Writing Project.  For some reason it all has come together now.  I look forward to each project, but realize I will need to be very orderly in my planning and execution of them all.  Especially if I’m to maintain my life beyond all that.  I should have known something like this was coming when the unread books began to mount up in my bookshelf.  I keep adding one or two or four more books until now I have over a dozen that are clamoring to be read.  I do that sometimes. It always seems to contribute to the general feeling of overwhelm, even though there is nothing urgent about reading a novel or two or ten.  Something is going on, even if I can’t put my finger on it.  It is also reflected in an overabundance of clutter in the house and car.  I’ve never really thought about it like this, but there it is.  Something is definitely building up.  It seems to me that I need to drink some water and get some exercise.  Shift the energy so it flows more easily.  We’ll see how it goes…

On Redreaming

I just finished a book by Adriana Trigiani called Milk Glass Moon. It is the sort of page turner of a book that reminds me of a Hallmark movie.  Completely engaging, yet not especially edgy.  I’m not going to shout to everyone that it is a must read, but I enjoyed it.  The reason I mention it is that there was a concept in there that has kind of stuck in my head today.  That is the idea of redreaming.  This is presented as what you do when you reach your dreams.  You don’t stop and think you have arrived, you must redream.  Dream another one.

What I’ve been thinking about this is that sometimes when you don’t reach your dream you need to stop and redream as well.  I tend to be a rather nonspecific dreamer.  I have vague ideas of what I want to do or be, but seldom allow myself to be very specific about it.  Then I am distracted pretty easily, leaving me with only a sort of wisp of a dream.  Academically I know that if you wish to reach your dreams you must know what they are.  The Law of Attraction works best if you can be specific about what you are attracting.  Yet in practice, I seem to avoid actually forming a picture of my dream.  Being specific about my dreams, forming an idea of exactly what I want is a lot of work.  It means I have to make it happen.  So I just go with the flow.

For the past couple of years this is what I did in my work.  I went along with what was offered, and did as I was asked to the best of my ability.  I knew what I was doing wasn’t really what I would ever dream of doing, but I felt that if I did these things they would eventually lead to something I could feel passionate about.  It was kind of like paying my karmic dues, I guess.  I left what I was passionate about to go do something I only felt okay about, believing that in time I would return to my passion but on a different level.

It didn’t work out like that.  Without spending a lot of time on details, suffice to say that I returned to my original passion but different.  Way different, and it has been extremely difficult.  I’ve often been grouchy about it, have felt completely powerless and overly cynical.  I quit doing almost everything that nurtures me.  No exercise to speak of, not drinking enough water or eating right or even sleeping enough.  Sounds self-destructive, doesn’t it?  It has been, I now realize.

One thing that has brought me joy in the past months is photography.  I’ve learned to see things in different ways, and have grown more and more confident about myself in this realm.  I’m no competition for Ansel or Dorothea, mind, but I am happy when I’m behind the camera or playing with the shots I’ve taken, and that’s enough for me.  It is a start towards redreaming my life.  Seeing things differently on the physical plane may just create the habit of seeing other things in a new way.  I’m open to that idea, and plan to start some redreaming.  Only this time, I will practice being a little more specific.