Creatures Night and Day

ZOELAB DAY 94

Original Date of Post: December 3 2012

There is something to be said for peeing under the stars. Where the crickets can see you. I can hear them now with their staccato siren call. A surround sound symphony easing me into night.

And the stars, they are here to remind me how empty I am, that there are star-sized spaces inside. And the moths, with their lamp worship, inspire and disgust me with their number and their diligence. In the morning, they are still there, calmer now, just sleeping through the day, where all light is equal.

To really arrive here, at home, is a relief. Living with the creatures, I find my way towards acceptance. We both can be ruthless. 

Today I destroyed a black widow nursery. Maybe. The tiny soft sacs cradled in web nests under the seat of the wrought iron chair. I poked them with the tips of the gardening shears I found yesterday. Then I saw the mamma, but I could not identify her in the book. I stomped on her with out knowing if she was dangerous. I, with my foot and my gardening shears, was dangerous. I spoke to her as I killed her, and I felt it. The brutality of nature. It’s that way sometimes, when we have someone we need to protect. 

Don't Let The Bastards Get You Down

ZOELAB DAY 334

Original Date of Post: August 3 2013

A poem written to my inner child.

Don’t let the bastards get you down, my little one.

Be strong, and bring forth the parts you know to be true.

For if you do not, you will have not lived the life you were blessed with.

Little women are lucky to have a strong and principled mother.

I have been with shaky principles, shaky sense of self.

I have been a prisoner in a tomb of outside aggrandizement.

I have been asleep and dreaming of darkness.

I have been so so asleep, so very small, in the worst way.

So very blind to the ways of darkness.

I have suddenly become greatful for the gift of words and clay.

I am alive with my own mistakes.

My mistakes are my past prisons, but are now my truths that set me free.

I am no longer waiting to die.

I am reliving my birth.

I am relieving my forgetfulness by accepting my disconnected heart.

I have refound my heart.
I have refound what is lost daily, but remembered 

through looking away for a moment.

My eyes are focused only by slowing down. Only by seeing my own disappointment and frustration.

There is no difference between truth and art.

The difference is discipline and honor. To honor truth with discipline is art.

There is no truth except that which is.

Come to me, little one,
Hold my hand. 

You have reason not to trust me because I have ignored you for so long. 

But you can see and feel that I am here right now. 

I have come back to you with my midnight mirror and my telescope.

I have come back just to hold your hand, 

and to listen to your most intimate secrets. 

To be the friend you dream of.

To be yours.

Only yours.

All yours.

I cannot promise anything because only this moment counts.

All there is is now.

All I can be is here.

You and I. 

I love you with deep truthful compassionate unconditional love.

My gift to you is to accept you exactly as you are with no judgment.

I see your great heart’s desires. I see your frustrations with your limitations.

To imagine is to be limitless.

It is the word of god.

Befriend your imagination.

And trust yourself. 
Accept yourself.

No matter how bad you think you may be.

What ever it is. It is,

And it must be.

A Letter from ZOELAB Headquarters

ZOELAB DAY 92

Date of Original Post: Saturday, December 1, 2012

 

Dear Reader:

Welcome to a new month of ZOELAB! (Please note that if you subscribe to the RSS feed, you have to resubscribe by clicking on the RSS button every month.)

I sincerely hope you have been having as much fun reading and looking at ZOELAB as I have had creating and sharing it. I have been working hard on it, harder and more consistently than I have ever worked on a single project. (But really this is not a single project, but more an amalgamation of many projects.) 92 days in a row, so far (give or take some days of falling behind and catching up). We have reached the first quarter of the year, and every day I feel more and more inspired. I feel like I climbing slowly into the creative flow that I always dreamed of, but never had the discipline to make happen. That is why I made myself accountable for posting for 365 days in a row--I knew instinctively that it was the way for me to become the artist/person I have always wanted to be.

I have many goals and dreams for the next three quarters of ZOELAB, including: to enhance the website experience (with theme pages and an about page), to complete and report on projects, to promote ZOELAB to increase readership, to find ways to create a more interactive experience (research how), to write a book proposal based on themes from ZOELAB, to create a manifesto, to submit ZOELAB content to other websites, blogs, and magazines.

Right now I have a very specific goal for ZOELAB. I would like to have a reader whom I have never met. I would be very excited to know that someone I don’t know is enjoying ZOELAB. If you are out there, please give me a sign (in the form of an email.) I would love to hear from you. 

Also, if you are a happy reader, please spread the word by emailing the link to people you know who might enjoy it.

For those of you who have written to me: thank you for your comments, encouragement, and stories. Hearing from you makes my day. I want you to know that I am not only doing this happiness project for me, but I am also doing it for you. My aim is not only to keep myself inspired and creative, it is also to entertain, inspire, connect and communicate with you. This is an act of love and of revolution. I am risking my ego, my anonymity and my normalcy to open my heart and make this virtual connection. This experience so far has expanded my enchantment with every day living. I truly hope, it is, in some way doing the same for you. Thank you for experiencing this with me. It means the world to me that you are out there. 

Heart out,
Zoë

Projects, Parenting & Spray Bottles, Part Four

ZOELAB DAY 91

Original Date of Post: November 30, 2012

Anytime my activity at hand is seen by Emilio, not as something getting in the the way of my attention towards him, but rather something he can be part of, is a step in the right direction. It means that I can have a life other than being his mom that he can witness. It makes our relationship more mutual. This is a natural phase of development, when the child is no longer only interested in the parent entering his world, but when he wants to enter the parent’s world. I think it’s important, especially for a preschool kid (in this case preschool really means at home, not yet in school) to see that his mommy has a life other than him. For the first time as a Mom, I am allowing more of the other parts of my self into my relationship with Emilio. 

That being said, there are still many daily activities that I can do only when Emilio is asleep or away.

All Alone Activities

Reading

I don’t think I have the ability to concentrate on reading in his presence. For this reason, I don’t read as much as I’d like. But I should give it another try. I certainly read him books all the time. Sometimes I try to make it fun for myself by thinking the reading as an acting role or by allowing myself to get lost in the world the illustrations create. For this reason, I try hard to find books for Emilio that I love to look at too. That way I am getting to have an aesthetically inspiring experience while reading to him.

Writing/Blogging

If I attempt to work on my computer in his presence, he will immediately zone in on my computer, want to sit on my lap and ask to type, click on random images on the screen with the cursor, or ask to watch something. (He used to hum and haw and beat around the bush for a few minutes (Mamma, how’s your ipod doing? orA movie would be really fun, do you like movies?” before asking. Now he just cuts to the chase: “Mamma, I’m angling to watch a movie.”) But, if I am writing in my journal or writing notes on random scraps of paper, he will grab a pen and a piece of paper and say that he is writing a list or notes too. He creates his own version of writing. 

Making Music

Since he was a baby Emilio protests dramatically every time I pick my guitar. I think it has something to do with where it’s placed on my body--I imagine he sees the guitar as a block between him and me. And he’s right, in a way. I really hope this will change some day, as it means that the only time that I can feel free to play guitar is at night. It’s the same with singing. Since he was a baby, I sang Emilio Summertime before he went to sleep until one day when he yelled in protest when I tried to sing him a lullaby. He no longer wants to tolerate my singing--which is not so easy for me to take as singing both my deepest expression and insecurity. There of course are some exceptions, and Emilio and I have made music together on a few rare occasions. One time we made up a song together that I recorded--see I’m a rock-n-roll thing. There was a brief period when we had “family band” practice. Me on guitar, Emilio on drums, and Lucas on recorder. 

I suppose the lesson in this is to be willing to compromise a little: to find ways to include Emilio in what I’m doing so that it’s fun and satisfying for both of us. 

Note to reader: For more about this subject matter and to see photo of Emilio sprayinghis water bottle in the shower, check out Attention. Also see Art with Children.

Projects, Parenting & Spray Bottles, Part Three

ZOELAB DAY 90

Original Date of Post: November 29, 2012

I have the world’s best excuse for not doing dishes tonight (besides the ones laid out in yesterday’s post)--we’re out of water. Don’t worry, we’ll have water tomorrow--I can pump water into our roof tanks. But for tonight, no water. I had forgotten we were out of water, and I tried to wash my hands

Activities that can be completed while parenting with full or partial attention

Pedicure

Sometimes I give myself a pedicure while Emilio takes his bath on the patio. (The last time we did this he still fit in his bathtub which is really a plastic cooler. I am not sure he will fit in it anymore.) As he enjoys splashing in his tub, I enjoy soaking, scrubbing, and grooming my feet. After a while, he becomes interested in what I am doing and asks if he can have a pedicure too. He thinks a pedicure is an object he can have. I let him rub some cream on his feet and he loves it. He will usually split attention between what I am doing and what he is doing, and his enjoyment lasts for the entire pedicure process.

Baking Bread

This is a classic full time attention activity (where our attention is both on the activity at hand) with an equally shared result--fresh, warm, delicious bread! The recipe I use is from the New York Times adaption of the Sullivan Street Bakery No Knead Bread. I learned it from my Dad, who bakes it all the time. It looks beautiful, is very easy to make--no kneading, just a lot of rising and tastes incredibly good, like my favorite bread kind of good with a soft, chewy interior and a hard, crusty exterior. Anyway, it’s so easy to make, it almost doesn’t make sense not to make it. Emilio loves to make the bread dough. He helps measure the ingredients out and mixes the gloppy, sticky mess--which is very fun to play with. Then we let the dough sit for 16 hours. The next day, it has to be handled a little bit more (not kneaded though) and then eventually gets baked for 30 minutes in a dutch oven with the lid on and then 15 more minutes with the lid off. The sense of accomplishment that we both get from the experience increases the pleasure of eating the bread. One loaf usually lasts 2 days in our family.

Watercolors

I did try my idea of putting watercolor paint in spray bottles, but it didn’t quite live up to my expectations. It was hard to get enough color intensity, and it became clear right away that the mess was going to be unmanageable for me. Emilio seemed into it, but I just couldn’t let it go on. But, then I got Emilio interested in classic watercolor painting, while sitting at the table, and Emilio focused intently on his painting for enough time for me to pack up our stuff to get ready to go. 

Collage

This is a great activity that we enjoy doing together, or Emilio also can do it alone. Some materials I like to use are: construction paper, dry beans, googly eyes, Lotteria cards, pipe cleaners, origami paper, magazines to cut. (Next time I want to try a nature collage, where we collect objects outside as our materials.)

Exercise/Getting the Rawrgies Out

I like to take the opportunity for us both the get some exercise. Rather than trying to find someone to watch him while I spend money and drive to a class, I can put on music we both like and start jumping around--on the bed, or the floor. Yesterday I played the music from Yo Gabba Gabba, (Emilio’s new favorite show that we just discovered in LA) which is great and arty, with electronic beats and catchy repetitive phrases. “Try it.   You’ll like it. Try it.   You’ll like it” The songs remind me of songs we’d make up on our own, but with electric beats added.

Imaginative Play (with toys we both like)

My current favorite is pretend play with Vintage Fisher Price Little People. Now this doesn’t seem necessarily like an activity where I am getting something done, but it is, indirectly. Not only is engaging in imaginative play the best way that children learn, but it also gives me the opportunity to develop my imagination, which is necessary for most of the projects I am working on. That being said, active playtime with Emilio probably teach me lessons about almost everything I care about: creativity, improvisation, happiness, love, psychology, humor, relationships, and the list goes on...

Cooking

Sometimes when Emilio sees me start to cook dinner, he asks if he can help. Without hesitation I set him up with a mini chopping board, butter knife and a vegetable to cut. He looses interest after a few minutes, but he loves the feeling of contributing to dinner. 

To be continued...

Projects, Parenting & Spray Bottles, Part Two

ZOELAB DAY 89

Date of Original Post: November 28, 2012

General home upkeep is also now an activity I do while Emilio is awake or around—I also don’t like tidying the house at night, and now that I have deemed it a daytime activity, I can be more engaged in the process of cleaning or organizing, while still being partially engaged with Emilio. I can give him some attention, by engaging in his play by asking him evocative questions, while at the same time accomplishing house care: sweeping, tidying up, etc. It’s only been a few days of this new approach, but so far I am encouraged by how much I’m accomplishing while still giving Emilio the attention he needs. Of course it helps that we have just returned from a trip, so we are both happy to be home--Emilio with a reinvigorated attitude towards his toys, and me with a reinvigorated attitude towards returning to my projects and organizing our home (partially in preparation for the next wave of objects from our past that Lucas will be carting back in the trailer and the fast coming tourist season.) 

Mopping

House cleaning and organizing can also be a full-attention parenting activity. In other words a joint activity you can do with your child. One rare day I felt like mopping the floor to our house (like dishwashing, mopping is not on my favorite house chore--I strongly prefer sweeping or wiping down surfaces), and as I got out the mop and the spray bottle (filled with half vinegar and half water-a great natural and inexpensive disinfectant) I saw a glint in Emilio’s eye and I asked if he wanted to help. He wanted to be the one to spray the vinegar water on the tile floor while I mopped the area he sprayed. We both had a lot of fun and felt equally motivated to clean the entire floor this way. I felt a deep satisfaction at having a clean space, and all the more so because we had managed to accomplish and make fun, a chore that I had always found tedious. And I didn’t have to spend any precious alone time doing it. 

Wiping Surfaces

On another day, we decided we wanted to use the coffee table to draw, but it was dirty and needed to be cleaned. Again, I got out the spray bottle and a rag. I let him spray the entire table with the spray and wipe as much as he wanted, and then I added some finishing touches. After we were done, I felt like I could breathe better. I remarked at how nice it was to have the table all clean. I asked Emilio if he liked having it clean (hoping I could instill a cleanliness gene in him mentally instead of through DNA) and he said “yes.” And then I asked him why. And he said “because we sprayed and wiped it.” What he liked was not the result of table being clean, but the activity in itself, the experience of cleaning. Wouldn’t I keep the house cleaner if I saw it the same way?

Cleaning Up Toys

Another activity that can be done with full attention, and therefore becomes a good parenting moment and a good house care moment, is cleaning up toys. Now because the space we live in is a shared space by three unique individuals (Ping, covered in fleas, does not come in the house--which is the Mexican way with dogs) , it is easily overtaken by any one of us. I find that I feel happier at night if Emilio’s toys are already put away. I also think tidying up is a good skill for him to learn. Therefore, another one of the evening rituals I try to do is clean up toys as part of bedtime routine. I dangle the three books he will have for night time as a motivator, which usually works, unless he is so tired that he will resist just to resist. In which case I don’t ask him to clean up his toys in order to keep clean up time free of negative associations (you’ve got to pick your battles.) Ihave come up with an organization system, using various containers of shapes and sizes to help contain his toys. Therefore cleaning up becomes as much a sorting game as it does a chore. Even Emilio’s friends know which types of toys go in which containers. For example: the 1950’s white vinyl train case (from Ruth, my mother in law, who, on an overall life simplification jag, dispersed her impressive collection of vintage suitcases and train cases) holds the dolls and doll furniture (I guess some day we will get/make him a doll house), the metal Japanese Snoopy tin holds his collection of 1960’s and 70’s Fisher Price Little People, the cylindrical oatmeal tin holds his magnets (and becomes a great magnet toy in itself). My point is that cleaning up can be challenging and fun when it’s a sorting game. Sometimes as an extra motivator I add the challenge of competition-the point system. Every time someone puts a toy in a container I call out “I got a point. I got two points. You got a point” and so on. It’s just like a basketball game, but there’s lots of balls and we put them in the same hoop. This usually works in getting Emilio to put away his toys, but sometimes he still resists, and then his own internal motivator kicks in--he makes a new game where he finds creative ways (usually involving toes) to pick up the toys and put them in their appropriate container. It’s not as quick as my point method, but whatever works in the current circumstance is what’s best.

To be continued...

Note to reader: the power cord to my computer just burnt out on me, which means that I will not be able to charge my computer after it dies, which means I might be delayed in getting the next posts out until I can borrow or buy a new one. Yikes!

Projects, Parenting & Spray Bottles, Part One

ZOELAB DAY 88 

Date of Original Post: November 27, 2012

I used to think that it was impossible to get anything done while parenting. I guess that’s because it used to be impossible to get anything done while parenting. But, things have changed. Now that Emilio is three years old, and has expanded his attention span and developed a lovely imagination, we can work on projects together that we both enjoy. Painting with watercolors is currently the main activity in our lives that we both equally love. (Some of my watercolor illustrations this month were done while I was painting with Emilio). It’s relatively messy, but not compared to poster paint or finger painting, or even baking. It’s an art form that has the added element of water play, a beloved activity for many children. Emilio loves water play and will spend long amounts of time squirting a spray bottle filled with water. That just gave me an idea! I can put up large pieces of butcher paper on the walls outside, fill a spray bottle with watercolor paint, and he can make watercolorsquirt paintings. I can’t wait to try this tomorrow! Anyway, I suppose all kids projects are messy, especially for this mother and this kid. Every time Emilio “plays toys,” in a manner of minutes, Emilio’s toys are spread all over the living room floor. Many of his toys end up in the kitchen, under the couch and under the bed. This is partly because we live in a one-room house (plus attached bodega), but partly because Emilio is Señor Rough-on-stuff. I can’t blame him, as I, in my own way, am pretty careless with our objects as well. 

My goal lately has been to become more efficient with my planning and time so that I can truly have the time I need to complete all the projects I’m dedicated to—creating for ZOELAB, planning workshops for Art For Life, sewing for Seis Doce, planning my tv show, playing music again, wedding planning, organizing our home, planting our garden, while at the same time staying present and relaxed and having fun. A tall order for sure. With the exception of my one day a week job, I am a mostly stay-at-home mom who lives with a part-time working dad, and a not yet school aged kid, in a not-so-finished off the grid house in the desert, so I need to balance all these projects with family life, pre-Victorian household chores and parenting. In my attempt to look somewhat objectively at my life, so that I can find ways to become more organized and efficient with my time, I have come up with a system of categorizing my daily at home activities: those I can do while parenting with full attention, those I can do while parenting with partial attention, those I can do when Emilio is not around, and those I can do when no one’s around. 

Activities that can be completed while parenting with either full or partial attention

Dishwashing

I have decided that dishwashing should no longer be an after Emilio goes to bed activity, or an activity I do when I have some time alone. That’s just a waste of my alone time. Dishwashing should be done while Emilio is playing, or with Emilio. After years of being torn between Emilio and the dishes (an easy contest in Emilio’s favor), I am now astonished that Emilio asks to wash dishes with me. It’s become a fun activity to do together. I separate all unbreakable dishes for him to wash with his own pot of soapy water and he is so happy to make bubbles and use the sponge for almost the entire time of dishwashing. (Though I do have to step inwith some occasional damage control as he loves to splash water all over everything.) In my attempts to make dishwashing more appealing and doable for me, and to inspire me to keep the kitchen cleanliness at a higher level, I have come up with two key times a day to do the dishes: once in the morning, right after breakfast, while the day is fresh, and once in the evening, right before dinner. From the efficiency point of view (thinking specifically about how much time is spent washing dishes) No matter when I do dishes, I am going to spend the same amount of time doing dishes, so if I have to dishes anyway, doesn’t it make sense for me to wash them more often, in smaller doses so that I can enjoy looking at a clean kitchen, rather than saving the dishwashing until our entire is sink is filled with dishes and it’s so overwhelming that it makes me (or anyone who enters the kitchen) avoid it even longer. Additionally, I realized I really detest doing dishes after dinner, and this way I don’t have to, I can wash them when I have more energy and there’s more light. Now when Emilio asks for me to read to him or play with him after breakfast I can say “after I’m done with the dishes,” and that really means in only 15 minutes as opposed to the hour that it would take me to wash the terrifying pile of dishes in our sink that has been accumulating all week. Of course, I realize if one is to have success at dishes upkeep, one must absolutely start from a completely clean kitchen otherwise one might lose hope fast. Returning home to a thoroughly cleaned kitchen after our trip helped give me the boost I needed to turn over a new leaf.

To be continued...

Child-like

ZOELAB DAY 337

Date of original post: August 6, 2013

27 signs that my inner kid is still very much alive

1) Usually my main goal is having fun

2) I am often disappointed when others are not like this

3) My favorite colors for outfits are inspired by romper room

4) When I buy a present for my child, I am not sure if it’s for me or him

5) My favorite place to be is lying down on the floor

6) I fight with my child over toys 

7) I like to set up little creativity and play areas all over the house

8) I always want to be mirrored

9) I like making a mess, and I don’t like to clean it up

10) My sources for art inspiration are comic books, children’s books and animation

11) My favorite snacks are carrot sticks, apple slices, and cheddar bunnies

12) I want to do everything my self, in my own way

13) My best collection is my Snoopy Collection

14) I still wear Swatch watches and Le Sports Sac purses

15) I hope for underoos in my size

16) My favorite things to draw are hearts, stars, butterflies and flowers

17) My preferred drawing tools are markers

18) I am primarily focused on when my next snack will take place and what it will be

19) I am most enthusiastic about: learning new things, toys, colorful objects, presents, pasta and ice cream

20) I still want to have my friends over for play dates

21) My favorite activities are making up songs, goofy dancing, imaginary play, and games

22) The best reason to do something is because I feel like it

23) If someone is mean to me or I don’t get what I want, I cry

24) I love to do cartwheels and stand on my head

25) I refuse to wear Band-Aids for grown ups

26) I crave the kind eyes of loving attention

27) I still have all my my favorite stuffed animals

dichotomies/dualities

ZOELAB DAY 105

Date of Original Post: December 14, 2012

Being a person who is filled with contradictions and multiplicity in identity, (as we all are) I have found it painful and unnatural to align myself with any one side of a dichotomy. I have come to believe, as the Taoists do, that in life, all things and thoughts have an opposite that is equally true. Nature is predicated on the balance between opposites: birth/death, light/dark, creation/destruction, and so on. If we ignore one half of a dichotomy or judge it, then we are not balanced, we are not allowing ourselves to the see and experience the whole and natural truth. As it is said: “you can’t have one with out the other.”

During my training to become a psychotherapist/expressive arts therapist with a spiritual perspective, which included years of personal therapy, I learned about “splitting”, which in Freudian terms, is a primitive defense mechanism that the ego creates for its emotional protection from anxiety (or any threatening emotion). Splitting is when the ego, for the sake of protecting the good part of a person, or an experience, splits off her perception of the person into two parts--All Good or All Bad. Instead of seeing the self, another person or an experience as one integrated whole with complexity, contradictions and ambivalence, with both good and bad parts, the splitter sees only two separate parts or just one part. Splitting is “black and white thinking” at the psychological level.

Black and white thinking or splitting occurs also at a cultural level (as is apparent in bipartisan politics.) There is pressure in Western culture to make a choice, to specialize, to take a side, to act. It is not acceptable to be in-between categories, or to exist opposing categories. These pressures stem from the left side of the brain, which is, in itself, a bias in Western culture. Generally speaking, perhaps since the start of agrarian culture, we have been a left-brain dominated society that favors masculinity, action and rationality over femininity, receptivity, emotion. (For a fascinating read that suggests that culture turned from a right brain dominated (or at least equal brained) culture to a left brain dominated culture with the introduction of the alphabet and literacy, read The Goddess Vs. The Alphabet by Leonard Shlain.)

The last few days I’ve been listening to a book called A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink, which proposes a compelling argument that American culture is moving from left brain dominant (information age) towards right brain dominant (conceptual age). He outlines “6 senses” that he believes will be necessary to master in order to thrive in the conceptual age: design, story, symphony, empathy, play and meaning. I would say these are the qualities I focus on in this blog. Being a right brain type of person I received this news with great pleasure and relief. After a lifetime of feeling unaccepted and alienated for being highly emotional, intuitive, and non-linear, I feel somehow validated, and understood. It’s as if, suddenly, there was a little bit more space for people like me in the world. By the way, I just did an online right/brain test and I scored 55% right brain, 45% left brain. 50% auditory, 50% visual. Perhaps this means I am becoming more balanced between right and left. It would be interesting to compare these results to the results I would have gotten when I was a child.

I truly believe, in society, and as individuals, we need to use BOTH sides of our brain (there it is again: the androgynous mind) for balance and optimum function. This is one of the underlying points of the Daniel Pink’s book. Discovering my tendency to split in graduate school, which caused much meaningless suffering, I decided I needed to change my either/or thinking to both/and thinking. I don’t have to decide if I am a clean or a messy person. I can be both! Both and thinking is integration--allowing space for all parts to exist simultaneously and harmoniously. Both/and becomes everything/and. Accepting multiplicity allows space for mystery and complexity in humanity and society.

When The Going Gets Tough

When the going gets tough,

remember to paint a picture

of your heart

where the tiny voice speaks

to you

in its sorrow, and in its rage and its wanting.

It says:

“It is never too late to hear me.

But if it has been a long time,

Then you might need to approach

Gently,

With a compassion that is

Just beyond your reach,

And requires you to jump into an empty, dark space.

But if you take that courageous leap,

you will win me back,

and your will

becomes aligned

with mine.”

Backwards Night Dreaming of Camp, Illustrated

ZOELAB DAY 79

Here are some photographs that illustrate some of my pluses and minuses of living outside list from yesterday's post:

Plus #2

Plus #13

Minus #7

Plus #1

Plus #14

Plus #3

Minus #10

Plus #4

Check out our Camp Video.

what I learned from posting words and images (almost) every day for a year

I am sharing here, in honor of completing the 31 Day Art Journaling/Blogging Challenge, my second to last post from my first blog, ZOELAB 365, where I blogged every day for a year. This is the learning and meaning I made from that intense year, which catapulted me out of postpartum depression and into a highly-charged creative inner life that has informed me, and my professional work, ever since. 

THE WRITING PROCESS

I love to write. But writing is very taxing on the mind. I need to be alert, awake, I need to feel clear. I need few distractions. Also, writing takes time. No wonder writers always seem to be writing. Writing is the most time consuming art for me. Of course there are times when writing is quick—sometimes a poem just flows out of me, or sometimes I do free writing from the unconscious that is uneditable. But, for a lot of the writing I do on here—autobiography, essays, story-telling and even poetry has become a labor I work at and edit. 

Writing cannot be rushed. It takes as long as it takes. Feeling rushed is no good for writing. No good at all. Yet, structure is very good for writing. Therefore, I like to give myself regular periods to write. I like writing every day for about an hour, but not to let time determine when I am done with a particular piece. Having watched the emotional damage an unrealistic writing deadline did for Hannah in Season Two of Girls, I am convinced that kind of writing deadline is no good for no one. 

There is nothing good or bad about this discovery—it just is. But it does lead me to want to change the parameters of my next project. Writing every day is great. Publishing every day is a challenge I am not up for again, at least not this next go round. It is too taxing on my brain. 

Writing in the mornings is ideal. Writing in the afternoons with a cup of coffee is great too—but if I drink coffee in the afternoons then I can’t sleep at night, so therefore it is not ideal.

Insomniac writing can be very good for me--way healthier than lying bed with thoughts circling.

PROCESS

I like to have different stations already set-up around the house with pens, pencils, markers paper or notebooks, recording devices, books.

THE LONG VIEW

One of the lessons I have learned over and over this year is basically a cliché—when we hear something said the same way enough times we no longer pay attention, but here it is: nothing great is easy. It’s true. It just is. Going for our dreams, building a life that mirrors our values, living life that is less governed by practicality than it is fun, going for happiness—all of these sound great, but all require enormous amounts of sacrifice and hard work, which isn’t always fun. And time. Building a dream takes enormous amounts of time. It’s hard to be patient with long-term goals, but if you are like me and Lucas, and have a low income, you must make up for lack of funds with creativity, time spent and acceptance of a lower standard of polish--with the understanding that it is all in process. This is something I never understood before I moved to Baja, or even before I met Lucas. He reminds me over and over again when I start to become despondent about the state of our house or the vermin factor that we are working on it—it’s improving a little bit every day. Be patient. Take some time for relaxation or fun. It would be awfully hard for me to stay balanced if it weren’t for Lucas holding up the other side of life.

It’s all about priorities. Every day I make little and big choices based on these priorities sometimes I find myself doing something that does not align with one value, but it aligns with another, but in that moment—I must prioritize one value over another. And what I have discovered in motherhood—is that more and more often—I choose what’s good for me in the moment because I believe I am a better mother when I take care of my own needs first. This is not to say I neglect Emilio when he truly needs something. This is to say that I let him watch a video if I really need a break and he is particularly demanding of my attention. This is to say that I eat a snack before playing with him to avoid getting grumpy and hungry later. This is to say I go out dancing with my friends and risk being tired the next day so that I can release some energy and have fun and grown up time. 

AESTHETIC

I have honed my aesthetic which is fueled by different combinations of reality: dirt, simplicity, naiveté, freedom, and expression over perfection of skill. 

ORGANIZATION

Organization seems to be the bane of many creative people’s existence. I have come to believe disorganization is really an unwillingness to spend time organizing when that time can be used writing, thinking, reading, painting, lying on the couch, chatting with a friend, almost anything else seems more fun/valuable/less daunting. However, if I find a way to feel creative about organizing, and when I realize how useful it is for creativity, to be organized, organizing takes on a whole new meaning. The problem is organizing is quite time-consuming and overwhelming, it is best to take it one step at a time. Conquer one area of the house, or one aspect of my work at a time.

Being organized makes my creative time more efficient, fun and smooth. I think of creativity as a constantly flowing river that runs through us and through everything in the world. Our job is to continually work on letting that water flow, lest it become stagnant and disease-ridden mosquitoes hatch their eggs in it.

MEANING

I make meaning by paying attention and by making connection between things. I spin those connections into art.  

A YEAR

Is not nearly enough time to build something. Especially not a blog or a relationship or a business or anything at all. A lot can happen in a year, and yet, building something is a slow process. Especially if you are doing it all by yourself. But I have learned that I don’t want to build it all by myself. I am ready to have more collaborations/co-creations. 

I view creative collaborations as a game that two people agree to make up rules for as they go along.

PROCESS

As an artist, I have always been interested in revealing the process of art. Of artifice. As a way to burn through the ego and get to something more authentic, more spontaneous, more honest, more alive. I believe the truly revolutionary thing I am trying to do here is to study and reveal process. Process is our mess--it’s what happens on the way to what we show to the world. But I think process is what’s most interesting and valuable because it is how we learn, and how we learn is a big part of who we are. 

PERFORMANCE

One of the essential truths about me is that I am a performer. Now, I am not sure if a performer is the same thing as an extrovert, but certainly the two are related. However, I think the essential difference is that performance has around it an air of make-believe. Even if the performer is being him/herself to a certain degree, there is an assumed set of imaginary rules, an invisible (or sometimes visible) stage, frame or context that heightens what is being performed. A performer is creating, ideally, with a certain degree of spontaneity. Another aspect of performance that differentiates it from say, drawing, or writing, is physicality. The body. This is not to say that the body is not involved in drawing or writing, but usually not consciously--not for me anyway. The body is not usually a part of the creative process (except in the case of performance art, or artists who use their body as part of the work.) In performance—music, dance, acting—the body is the mode of communication in a more conscious way. I have really missed that. Performance is also about being seen. Making a more direct connection with the viewer. The viewer becomes the audience—it is more reciprocal. This kind of reciprocity is what I long for. There were moments of performance in zoelab 365, but it certainly was not the main focus, and the kind of blogging I did did not inspire performance. Performance is also a very vulnerable thing—the spontaneity lends itself to that kind of vulnerability which is both an attraction and a fear for me. I am not sure if I was fully ready to embark on that kind of journey—as putting myself out the public in the way that I have was already a new and risky thing. By now, after doing it every day (or nearly every day) I have gotten used to it.

HAPPINESS

What I learned is happiness is not a final destination, but a goal that is in the background of every choice I make. It is a pursuit. Perhaps satisfaction is really the state I am heading towards, and satisfaction is certainly not an outwardly-measured state. Satisfaction has everything to do with the meaning I make and the point of view I take.

PHOTOGRAPHY

When it comes to color, composition and style I have a very good eye as a photographer, however, I possess a certain laziness when it comes to technical skill. After being a photographer for twenty five years, I still basically don’t know how to use a flash, and therefore, almost never use one (except when shooting grass or trees or bugs—which looks awesome with a flash). The camera I use for most of my photos, except for my earlier work which was shot with a Nikon 35 mm film camera, is a Canon G12. It’s a great camera—but it is not at all a professional-level camera. It’s perfect for my everyday uses. I have mixed feelings about creating images that are “magazine style” – one of the key ingredients for this kind of imagery is using an SLR (single lens reflex) that creates short depth of field. This makes all photos look more professional, even when shot by an amateur. I have mixed feelings because an aspect, not only of my aesthetic, but of my art ethic is what as known in the music world as a “punk rock ethic,” or a “do it yourself” ethic. I have always been interested in exploring the high art/low art crossover, and the everyday ness of certain kind of art forms. I like the work to be accessible that gives people a feeling of “I can do that too!” And yet, at the same time, I do want my images to look as good as possible—I may be able to express even more creativity through having a camera that is that much sharper.  That being said,  one of my new goals is to explore using a higher quality camera--using Lucas’ 40D or even his new Mark 2 to get better, cleaner, sharper shots.

EVERY DAY

It was nearly impossible to recover/make up for a missed post. There were weeks where I tried for a while, but I’d get too behind, and then I had to put a little hole so that I could keep up with the current day I was blogging about. 

I love having something creative I do every day, but having to share it everyday created more drama in my life than I would like.

LONELINESS

I would say loneliness was a big part of why I decide to do this project. The interesting thing is my loneliness does not have a self pity feeling to it--I recognize that I could live a less lonely existence if I wanted, but I recognize some part of me needs loneliness. That perhaps loneliness is a an important part of my creative process. As is collaboration. This blog did not so much assuage my loneliness as much as clarify it. I think an artist needs both loneliness and connection. Again, it comes down to balance.

BALANCE

Perfection is the enemy of balance. Or rather, if the goal is to live a balanced life—accepting that no one thing is bad, as long is it is in balance with its opposite--then there is no room for perfection.

THOROUGHNESS

Sometimes it is my thoroughness, my desire to adhere to truth, my compulsion to do what I said I was going to do, that offers a certain kind of dizzy craziness. My oppressiveness in standards. It was the kind of effort that kept me up past midnight many times per week, or allowed me to let the house get filthy, or to let Emilio watch more videos than I think is good for him. It put a lot of my relationship with Lucas on hold, and made it so I had less time for other activities. It put me out of balance, as most of the work I did here was very Left Brain. I developed my mind and my work ethic more than anything, but I miss the more emotional, sensual parts of creative experience.

I cannot say exactly, but I estimate, that on average, it took 2.5 hours to make a post— after 350 days (I missed 15), that adds up to 875 hours of work, divided by 52 weeks, which is about seventeen hours a week. That is more time than I spend doing anything else other than sleeping—cleaning, cooking, exercising, working, reading, etc. It was a big commitment, but it was so worth it. Though I must be honest, I am so glad it’s about to be over.

Tools of the practice: Art Journal Lab

So now, I keep in my zippered pencil case for on the go art journaling: 

• 2-5 sharpies in my favorite colors: neon pink, dark blue, black, yellow, gray (fine, ultra fine)
• 2 mechanical pencils (1.3 mm, .5 mm)
• one mechanical eraser
• 1, 2 black Microns (size 01)
• 1-2 Pigma brush tip pens, in black and green or brown
• A yellow-green neon highlighter
• My favorite writing pen is often hard to find here in Baja, the Pilot Precise V7 Rolling Ball, black in ultra fine tip.

In my purse, I keep a 5.5 x 8 spiral bound journal

In my vintage green Samsonite hard briefcase, which I use as my indestructible computer case, I keep my 8.5 x 11 spiral-bound journal

In other words, I am NEVER with out my journal. And almost never with out my computer.

In 2011, getting ready for a two month family trip to Europe, I decided I wanted to draw and write during my travels, so I bought myself a small square spiral pad, a varied selection of markers, pencils and pens and a little zippered pouch to keep it all in. I was so excited by the idea of creating my own travel kit of varied supplies, rather than just bringing one set of the same type of utensil.

My plan for that trip was to create a drawing for each city we visited, something that summed up my experience and impressions of the place. I made about three, but dropped the exercise after that. But, that book and that idea stayed with me, and I used it to create illustrations for my ZOELAB 365 project, when I blogged everyday for a year. 

Two years ago, I decided to try to sell art journaling supplies at the local Farmers Market, near where I live in Southern Baja, Mexico. I bought the same zippered cases I had bought myself for my trip, as it turns out the company that makes those cases, Blue Q, has its headquarters in the Berskshires, where my parents live, and they know the owners. I LOVE their products because they are made from 95% post consumer materials, 1% goes to charity, and they are so useful, clever and good-looking. So it felt like a win-win to sell their products as way to promote art journaling and meet new people. 

This November, my husband and I opened Luz Gallery, a photography and graphics gallery in the heart of Todos Santos. I knew I would continue to sell the tools that I love to use for art journaling. Spiral bound notebooks of different sizes, moleskines (which are lightweight and great for travel), Micron pens (brush tip and regular tip), Sharpies of different types, and those same zippered cases from Blue Q. 

And now, for this 31 Day Art Journaling/Blogging Challenge, I am motivated again to share my recommendations for the tools of art journaling. Of course, everyone is different. Some people love colored pencils (pencils of color), water colors, photography, collage, or even crayons! I have an amazing artist/illustrator friend who loves to buy herself a full box of 64 Crayola crayons as a treat. 

As for me, I am mostly a marker and pen girl. Always have been. I studied oil painting in high school and college. But then decided it wasn't for me. I also have dabbled in watercolor. And find it very fun and playful. But, when it comes to drawing in my journal. I have always been crazy for that more graphic-y, comic-book-y, children's illustration look. I love black pen. I love filling in those lines with markers. My drawings have a naive look to them (sort of on purpose, sort of out laziness). Sometimes I try to make things look more realistic, but I also love the spontaneity of creating a line in ink and committing to its irregularity. 

However, one day, I did rediscover the pencil, and things have changed for me. It all started when I decided I really wanted to learn hand-lettering (and eventually sign painting) I bought a book on the topic, which was very inspiring and useful. It's a book by Mary Kate McDevitt called: Hand-Lettering Ledger: A Practical Guide to Creating Serif, Script, Illustrated, Ornate, and Other Totally Original Hand-Drawn Styles. Mary Kate advises in her book to pencil out your hand lettering before you ink it in, and then erase original pencil lines. It makes total sense, right? But I had never before thought of sketching letters first in pencil and then inking them. Using a pencil was one of those obvious revelations. Immediately, I started to get that I was capable of making my lettering and drawing more technically correct, if I just allowed myself to take the time. And used an eraser! 

But more recently, I have developed another hand-lettering technique, which is spontaneous and improvisational, which truly is much more my style. It's block letters made with a sharpie, with no sketching involved. I used it for this promo I made for my new song Rock-n-Roll Thing using this technique, which I videos on time-lapse with my iphone. The iphone is another tool that is very new to me. I just received my first smart phone as a gift in May, and it has changed a lot of how I do my blogging and social media creativity. 

If you want to jumpstart your creativity, whether you are an artist, writer, performer or just someone who wants to feel more engaged with daily life, I highly recommend that you create a system of capturing that works for you. Keep a notebook by your bedside table. One in your bag or purse. One at your desk. Always travel with something to sketch and take notes with. 

This is how we develop ideas, capture insights and engage with our daily life, even the most mundane aspects. Nothing is too shallow nor too deep to capture. 

There are so many more tools out there. But I wanted to start with the basics. Those are my basics.

What are yours?

A List of Future Blog Posts and Essay Topics

I have an opportunity to start blogging for a major website, yet I have hesitated to publish there. It's not fear exactly, that has kept me from taking that leap, but maybe a need for clarity, before I feel ready to put my voice out there in a bigger way.

Here is my list of blog post ideas (as well as longer essay pieces that I will eventually publish) that I have been mulling over.

• What is creativity?

• What is art journaling?

• How I lifted myself out of postpartum depression through art journaling, blogging and dancing

• How to use technology selectively

• How to be authentic on social media

• Phases of Creativity

• Is Our Obssession with Yoga is Killing Our Creativity?

• Art Advice in Opposites

• How to discover your soul’s code

• How to deal with the inner critic

• On being both an introvert and an extrovert

• What I love about living in Baja

• Narcissism, how to cure it and how it’s the last taboo

• How to be all your selves

• On death and the afterlife

• How you can bring more singing, dancing, writing, drawing & acting into your life

• Why I think Buddhism is sexist

• Why it’s important to be in love with yourself

• Love is the antidote for shame

• I am not an expat, I am an immigrant

• Creative Motherhood

• My philosophy: Living Life as Art

• A personal history of spirituality

• On Being In-Between: Androgyny, bisexuality, bilingualism, biculturalism and multi-identity

• How to create a class from a place of complete selfishness

• The paradox of parenthood and childhood

• How to slow down

• How to live your dreams after 40

• How to be a bad off-the-gridder, but an off-the-gridder all the same

• Why I want to be the voice of my (very small) generation

I am curious to hear what you think, which ones resonate with you or spark your curiosity? 

Why I must write

To write

before they wake up

before the sun rises

before the tea boils

before my thoughts become practical.

To write before I say why I shouldn’t

before I eat something,

before my stomach settles,

before I take a shit,

before I take off the layers of me that I put on for other people,

before

before

before.

Because if I do not write, something in me will surely die.

What is it? This something?

It is rain.

It is paradise.

It is the smallest voice of the surest truth.

It is the part that cannot speak.

It is the part that needs protection.

It is the part that saw me grow into a woman.

It is my voice.

Of invisible knowledge.

Of inside celebration.

Of inner heartache for the invisible and indescribable and untouchable.

I must get others to join me—in this waking up of the voice. 

In this holy act that no one will ask us to do.

I must lead the way for the others who are even quieter than me.

I ask you to wake up your own voice!

Let this voice

lead you to faraway places

allow you to end jobs and relationships and situations

that squelch this voice.

Or, at the very least,

if you cannot leave anything,

Make a space for yourself:

It can be a very small—

Small enough for you and your hands, and whatever you need to express your voice.

But, by all means, express this voice inside of you.

Because if you do not,

Something in you will surely die.

You will find it again, one day, when you return to the gentle listening,

But the voice will need some thawing and some massaging.

Something to WAKE IT UP!

So instead of waiting, 

Just do it now.

Okay?

Do it first. 

Before the kids wake up.

Before the sun rises.

Before the coughing stops.

Before you feel alright.

Before the other voices call you away.

Because I have a secret to tell you:

you were born an artist.

Because you have a soul,

and that soul speaks.

Your soul speaks!

It speaks in languages that are quieter and complex and sometimes unseen.

The language it speaks

is a kaleidoscope of pain and longing

And celebration.

The soul is eternal, as is art.

Which is to say, it exists outside of time.

Your job is to become alive to this language, this voice.

To ride inside time,

Like a mother attuned to her child’s quiverings and stirrings.

It belongs to you, but it belongs to the world.

Your soul doesn’t care 

If your voice sounds good.

It only wants to sound like itself.

Start From Where You Are For Blogging and Art Journaling

This is not the first time I have titled a blog post with this title. And it won't be the last either. 

Start from where you are.

It's the best advice I can give anyone looking to explore their creativity, find truth, or get started on a project that feels daunting.  For this advice, I am thinking of the bloggers and art journalers who have joined me on this month-long challenge to blog or art journal every day. I am thinking of my commitment to this practice, and the inspiration that I want to offer people.

I love this advice so much that I even teamed up with my friend/collaborator/colleague Holly Mae Haddock, and together, we wrote a song about it when I told her how I was going through a stuck period with songwriting, singing and guitar playing. It's called: Where I Am.

Here is the chorus:

I'm gonna start from where I am.  

With no memory or plan.                                                                                                                

I'm gonna offer who I am.                                                                                                                    

I'll be my own biggest fan.

How do you start from where you are? 

For me, it's always about looking within. Connecting within. It usually means closing the eyes. Slowing down the breath. Opening the imagination. It means turning on our awareness. What do we actually feel? It means noticing what kind of energy do we have right now in this moment, before we change it all with a thought, with a "should" or a "have to"?

And then, once we get a little taste of it, we create from that place. Maybe I notice I am feeling anxious and I focus on that feeling for a moment, and then draw that feeling. Or maybe it means I have an image of a little girl, and I want to create from the space that she occupies inside me, using crayons, or dancing to music she likes. 

For art journaling, it means capturing an essence of our experience, what is up for us, what feels important, juicy, or even scary. If you are art journaling, it is most likely private, and so the space of the journal page is a really safe place to let it all out. There are no limits to what you can create there--sometimes it's nice to start with something really simple. A feeling, an image, something that you are connecting with in this very moment. And then let it flow from that place.

Every blogger is different in terms of your goal, themes, styles, topics. My blogging sweet spot is about communicating something that usually stays inside. Sharing something that I would normally want to hide from people in everyday conversation. I like the feeling of the risk of sharing that kind of material on my blog. The shadow. It's what drives me. My shadow material might not look the same as yours--and it might not seem risky to you. But what's important is how it feels to you, the blogger. 

Morning Pages

One of the best, easiest and most rewarding practices for art journaling or blogging, is morning pages. For those who don't know, morning pages is an exercise that Julia Cameron invented in her book about the spirituality of creativity called The Artist's Way. It's basically the same thing as stream of consciousness writing. Her version is write 3 pages in a notebook with a pen or pencil with out stopping. I have adapted her exercise for my Art Journal Lab class, and set the timer for 15 minutes and do not limit the exercise to the morning (as our class meets in the afternoon.) Also, I am okay with doing the practice on a computer, though Julia insists on doing the morning pages with paper and pen. What matters most, in my opinion, is that you write with out editing, with out stopping, with out letting the critic get in your way. You write out the most mundane stuff in your mind, as well as the deepest stuff. It's a writing meditation, and it works. It allows us to get to know the contents of our mind before we block ourselves. The writing does not have to be good or even interesting. It's a process exercise designed to empty the chatter in our mind, and to let out the thoughts and feelings that are under that white noise. So on days you really don't know what to do with your blogging or your art journaling. Just write for 15 minutes with out stopping. If you are blogging, you might find something useful in there that you can edit or expand afterwards and turn into a blog post.

For the visual component, one thing you can do with your morning pages is scan the words after you are done to look for words that feel important to you. You can circle them with a colored pen (pen of color) and then choose one or a few to illustrate your blog post or your journal. Let yourself play--it's not about perfection but about exploring your visual senses in addition to your verbal expression.

In June 2015, I decided to quit Facebook because I was feeling frustrated by the lack of authentic expression on there--mine and others. I wanted to be real, but I didn't feel safe to be real, so I returned to my blog and committed to blogging daily for the month of June. I gave myself the parameter of writing daily for 15 minutes (morning pages on the computer). Then I gave myself another half hour to edit and expand, and add imagery and turn into a blog post. It was such a wonderful way to make my blog feel more alive, and I developed a more confessional style. I will be sharing some of those blog posts with you soon!

Let me know in the comments below how it goes for you to start from where you are.

Does any resistance come up?

If so, start from there. 

31 Day Art Journaling and Blogging Challenge

Join me on January 1st 2017 for my next 31 day challenge. I will be blogging and/or art journaling every day for the month of January in order to promote art journaling, return to my hiatus from blogging regularly, and to develop my art journal lab online course which I plan to release on my website in 2017. 

This creative challenge combines Art Journaling and Blogging. Meaning, if you choose to join this challenge, you can pick one of these daily practices, or both—alternating between the two, however you feel inclined to do it. In some cases your art journaling practice might become a digitized blog post. 

I imagine your reasons for joining this challenge will be varied. Some may use it as a way to get back into blogging or to start your first blog. For some, it may be a very private practice of meditative writing and drawing. And for others, it might a wild time to experiment, with no goal other than to unleash your creativity.

For me it is about four things: 1) To get back into blogging 2) To develop and my material for the upcoming art journal lab online course 3) To promote and teach art journaling 4) To attract new readers to my blog

What is art journaling?

Art Journaling is a process that combines visual art (drawing, painting, collage, or photography) and text. Art Journaling can consist of intimate journal entries, poetry, doodling, hand lettering, free associative writing, list-making. Putting those two aspects of our experience together on the same page: visual and verbal is the basis for all art journaling.

My version of art journaling combines techniques, theories, and assignments from my work as an expressive arts therapist and creativity coach. I also have been teaching Art Journal Lab, a class that combines these techniques, in Todos Santos for the past five years. I teach people the tools, philosophy and basic skills they need to interact with the different parts of self, which I refer to as the inner family of self. I create a structure that makes it possible to connect to the invisible parts that we feel, but don’t always acknowledge or express. I have a Masters’s in Counseling Psychology, with a focus on Expressive Arts Therapy, meaning I use drama, dance, music, writing and visual art as a form of therapeutic intervention with the goal of integrating the personality, healing trauma and practicing new ways of being. I also teach creativity, not only for all types of artists, but for anyone who wants to practice a more empowered, creative and compassionate way of being in the world. I believe the most important relationship we have is with ourselves, but this is often the relationship that gets shoved by the wayside as we tend to prioritize everything else: our spouse or partner, our children, our work, our home, our family of origin. I believe if we cannot engage in a creative, conscious, curious and compassionate way with ourselves, we are not living up to our full potential and cannot offer the full version of ourselves to anything we do. The more we know ourselves, and ultimately, accept and love ourselves, the more good we can do for our families, friends, communities and our world. It’s an inside out approach—which is the reverse of what we have been trained to do in our culture.

You do not have to be a trained artist or writer to do art journaling. Anyone who can pick up a pen or pencil and has a blank book can do art journaling. There are no special supplies that are necessary, though I will be sharing some of my favorite tools on the blog. My mission in life for a while now, has been to show how everyone is creative, and that the arts were meant to be used by all of humanity as a tool to discover the soul, and to engage in life in a more balanced, compassionate way. Through our engagement with the arts, we are able to make space for expressing the darkness, the unconscious parts of ourself, instead of acting those parts out on others. It is particularly this, this engagement with the shadow (the parts of us we do not see or do now want to see, or feel) that is the creative gold of this work. When we have the courage to bring our light of consciousness to our own shadow, we are able to unearth our previously buried psychic energy so we can make use of even our darkest pain.

I know this not only from the work I have done with my students and clients, but also from my own personal journey, which I recently shared in my talk at Women Awakening, the first women’s summit in Todos Santos. In my talk, I shared my philosophy, artwork, music and personal story, about what it means to be yourself, which is about being, and ultimately loving, all your selves. Sharing this talk was a personal revelation for me, as I discovered what it felt like to open myself up and share authentically, weaving my professional, personal, intellectual and artistic life in one space. My goal, recently, has been to integrate these disparate parts of myself. I have intuitively felt that this way we separate our different selves is not just a problem for me, but for many others, and especially for women, who struggle so much with disappearing into our roles. The goal is not to disappear into any one role, but to bring your whole self to every role you do, so you have access to all your selves whenever you need them. I believe this is the goal of human development. And through our working with what we are, in an honest way, we also access our spiritual power. It has been my experience that when we contact our soul, spirit arrives, aiding that process.

What is Blogging?

As many of us know, the reasons and ways to blog can vary greatly. It can be a tool to promote business, a way to keep track of your travels or other kinds of adventures, or a way to promote and share your creative work, political ideas, or simply to connect with your inner life. Whether it is for your business, for personal, or political expression, I believe a successful blog always stems from personal truth. If your business or your politics has no degree of personal connection for you, then perhaps you already have a great topic to or journal or blog about why this is so.

The most difficult and most important part of what it means to blog, or even journal, is that it is regular, preferably daily. It is also, as many bloggers will attest, the key to success. (Getting readers to read your blog.) From my experiences with daily practices, which is something I promote in my art journal lab class, as well as personally, I have come to believe in the amazing power of creating a daily practice, especially something that helps you connect with yourself, with the invisible world, feelings and other parts of us that we usually work hard to avoid, push down or unconsciously act out on others. These types of inward-directed daily practices keep us holistically healthy because they keep us connected to something true and deep in us.  These kinds of daily practices have helped me out depression, anxiety, a sense of loss, relationship issues, and more. They have helped me enormously with my creativity as an artist and as a mom and human being—when you do something daily, it forces you to be more creative with it—otherwise you get bored. We tend to look for new ways, new approaches when we know we have to do it everyday. 

So, use the term blogging however you feel connected to it—my definition is as follows:

To share words and images (hopefully self-generated) online about any topic, as long as it has has meaning or importance to you personally. One additional other feature: it must be dated for it to be a blog post, otherwise it is just a webpage. The date makes it time-connected, and therefore, applicable to a certain moment of time for you. This is the same for art journaling.

I love blogging because it delivers a sense of immediacy that appeals to the performer in me. Blogging is a digital performance—the act of baring a personal truth, an art piece, or just a slice of life, with others, sometimes strangers, sometimes not, brings me a certain thrill. If it doesn’t feel thrilling, a tiny bit risky, I usually don’t blog about it. For each of us the thrill will come for different reasons, in different areas. What is risky for me may not feel risky for you. And so it is very much up to you to come up with your own topics to write about. A blog post can be very simple or complex. There is no rule in this department. A blog post might simply be sharing a photograph you took that day and sharing a little caption or small story or sentence that explains it. Other times a blog post might be a highly informative piece that is designed to help and/or inside others learn a specific skill (EG: this post you are reading now.) Some blog posts have taken me 15 minutes to create, others have taken four hours. Neither is better than the other—the beauty of blogging is that it keeps going. We can’t get to hung up on our last blog post, because we are already thinking about our next one! This represents the natural flow of life. We cannot afford to get perfectionistic about our daily practices, they are designed for us to make mistakes, and to learn and grow from them, that is why they are practices. If you think of your blog or your art journaling as a practice and it will help you let go of the inner critic.

Those are the reasons I create these challenges--creativity, connection, personal truth. It is most certainly a challenge to do something everyday with out fail. But it is also very rewarding. 

I can't wait to see what it might do for you!

STAY TUNED FOR JANUARY 2019 ART JOURNALING/BLOGGING CHALLENGE!

She's a Rock-n-Roll Thing

I have a birthday wish that I’d like to share. I am taking the risk of not keeping it secret, because this is a wish that needs to be voiced in order to come true.

It is vulnerable to promote myself or ask for help. This is because I received the message at an early age that females are not to be proud, show off, or even love ourselves. We are to be humble, and hide our shininess because we our power or vulnerability might offend someone, make them jealous or uncomfortable. I have lived a double life for as long as I remember: walking the thin and anxious line between the silent, good girl who people-pleases and stays safe and the outspoken, spiritually-open, emotional, powerful part that has a LOT to fucking say.

“I want to tell you that that dream is your truth.”

After hearing a little bit of the hateful response to Ms. Hillary, and other women of power, I can see why this message exists. It is indeed a dangerous thing to be a girl or woman of power, a woman in the public, a woman with something to say. It makes sense because women who stand in power are targets. It is scary to be a target, especially in the age of the internet. However, it is even more dangerous to be a woman who keeps silent, and does not speak her truth.

I know so many women who struggle with this daily, as well as men, teens and children too. It is a terrifying thing to not conform, to express the dissenting view, to be original, to stand out, to follow your own path, to embrace the shadow, to feel and express our darker emotions, to embrace all of our selves.

I see a lot of quotes floating around the internet about how important it is to be your self, but with little advice or help in how to actually do this. I see becoming one's true self as the ultimate work of art, and the highest goal of life. Only from becoming whole, can we reach our fullest potential and highest purpose. Only from becoming whole within can we transform our culture and world. This is the work that I am called to do—teaching, supporting and encouraging people to live out all of their selves. And after a life time of studying, teaching and practicing the many art forms I am called to, I have come to believe the arts are the perfect container to speak the shadow of your truth. To express the vulnerability and shame that holds us back, to speak our soul’s longing, to communicate the unique way we don’t fit into the box society conveniently made for us, to own both our power and love, our masculinity and femininity. The arts allow us to express all of our selves because the arts are a container that allow that raw material to be symbolic. This is my professional work as well as my own personal journey of self-actualization, selves actualization. My very vulnerable work lately has been integrating these two sides of me: healer/teacher/coach with artist/performer/writer. In fact, I will be speaking on this topic and singing my songs at the concert following along with a group of other outspoken and heart-centered women, in exactly one month, Dec. 3rd, at the first Women Awakening, an international women’s summit in Todos Santos, the town in Southern Baja where I work.

I want to share with you my shadow side today, the part of me that I have worked hard to hide, especially from myself, for most of my life. This shadow side is powerful, masculine, and fucking loves to curse. This shadow side is critical of culture, has some strong opinions, and is non-conformist. This shadow side is angry, loves to take up space and has a powerful voice. This shadow side is also witchy, emotional and mystical and holds a deep spiritual faith. This part of me is a rock-n-roll thing. 

I have had some bold moments through out my life where I expressed this shadow side, in the safer, smaller contexts of the fancy private schools I was lucky to attend, and with my first all woman rock band, social service, in NYC. But then, eight years ago, after receiving my master's in psychology and expressive arts therapy, I got pregnant, and moved to a piece of land in the desert off the grid with my husband, started a family, let go of all of my previous selves, and completely started over from scratch. I dropped out of the society I had always known, transforming from city girl to pioneer woman. This new way of living put me in everyday contact with culture’s shadow: nature. Bugs, scorpions, snakes, hurricanes, off the grid toilet adventures, camping, even motherhood. All of it has kicked my ass, grew me up and made me deeply grateful for the loads of privilege I was born with and continue to experience. This gratitude has fueled a volunteer community work, and has given me a simple and profound enjoyment of everyday family life. This appreciation for life has also led me to create classes, workshops and relationships that are deeply meaningful and fulfilling, and has kept me writing and reading fervently, looking deep within, and continuing to practice my music in my living room.

But... there is still one thing that nags at my heart.  There is still one part of my self that I continue to hide more than I would like to, because I am afraid. As much as I long to reach a wider audience, I am still deeply afraid to be heard and seen, of what could happen in my life if I truly put myself out there and pursued the huge dreams that I have kept mostly to myself. I am afraid of alienating others, of people’s judgment, criticism, ridicule, jealousy. I am afraid of how raw it feels to share all of my selves, to use my voice. Of the vulnerability of not fitting into a pre-existing category of identity, especially gender identity. But, there is something I am even more afraid of: NOT doing it. Staying silent. I know too well what that feels like. I am afraid of dying with out having lived out all of my selves, with out connecting with the people in the world I would like to reach. With out people hearing my songs, and reading the books I am writing, with out watching the sit com I have been developing for over eight years. As afraid as I am of being seen and heard, I am even more afraid of staying silent. As Anaïs Nin famously said, “and the day came when remaining in the tight bud was more painful than it the risk it took to blossom.” That day has come.

And so here’s the part where you come in--the wish part, the part where I am asking for your help.

I want to share with you my latest song, Rock-n-Roll Thing, which is my first release in 13 years, since my first band, Social Service. I have at least 20 more songs to record and release. I hope this song will inspire others to ignore the voices inside that tell them what they can’t do, what they shouldn’t do, and instead listen to that other voice, that quieter voice, that speaks for your soul, and that dreams big. I want to tell you that that dream is your truth. I know this because as a child I wanted desperately to be a singer, but I was told not to sing, that I was no good. I wanted to be an actress, but I was told my voice was too quiet and I couldn’t get into the school play. I continued to stay silent while I expressed myself in other forms. I continued to pursue these dreams, despite all the rejection and heartbreak. Over the years, as much as I tried, I just couldn't turn away from that shadow self that part that had something to say, the part that dreamed big.

Some of you may know that I am a huge Lena Dunham fan, who is a controversial creative person and an outspoken feminist--a beloved voice in our culture, as well as a target. I have read Ms. Lena's book twice, Not That Kind of Girl, and lend it out to anyone who wants to read it. I have watched every episode of Girls at least 3 times. Even though Ms. Lena is many years younger than I am, we attended the same high school and college, and she has been able to be massively successful in multiple creative careers, the very same careers I pursued at her age. When I was in my twenties, I was only just beginning to learn how to use my voice. I admire Ms. Lena for her commitment to being herself, the quality and honesty of her work, for being willing to be transparent, vulnerable and stand up for and support other women and for what she believes. I admire her for sharing her shadow side, her mistakes and regrets. She is not perfect and neither am I. No one is perfect. It’s time for women and girls, and all humans, to own our imperfections and be willing to be seen and heard. It's time for us to make it safe for ourselves to share our shadow selves, and all of our selves.

I shared this one minute promotional video on instagram a few weeks ago, which I have been using as a microblogging platform, a relatively safe way of practicing being all my selves. Every day for the past few months, since I received my first smarty phone as a very generous gift, I have challenged myself not to hold back from sharing my passions, creativity, life and work online. But I have now decided, on my 43rd birthday, to share my song with a larger group in hopes that it makes its way to Ms. Lena Dunham and that she might consider the song for Girls. She has recently finished shooting the final season, and I imagine the show is still in post-production. There may be time for this song to still be considered. It’s a long shot, but it’s worth a try. I figure with my Saint Ann’s and Oberlin networks, someone knows someone who knows Ms. Lena Dunham.  All I ask for is a listen.

If you have five minutes, please listen to my song, Rock-n-Roll Thing, and if you like it, please share with others who you think will like it. Please show your support by buying it and downloading it, and sharing with your networks. Please share this blog post. Anything you can do to spread this message and this song.

Soon I will be shooting the music video, which will feature four of my selves-the singer, the drummer, the keyboardist and the guitar player. In the video I will be playing with gender roles and instruments and parts of self. In this version of Rock-n-Roll Thing I am playing all the instruments, and did all the recording and producing myself on Garageband. I turned myself into a one woman band just to prove to myself that I could. I have come far from that little girl who got rejected from the school play in 6th grade on account of my voice being too quiet.

Together, we can make this birthday wish come true!

Thank you from the bottom of my heart for your support.

Love and creativity,
Zoë

That which is all of you

Today I meditated, and I felt through all my chakras. And I saw again how my stuckness is in chakra 3 and 4. Power and Love. And that through my love of 3 and 4, my liberation of 3 and 4, I will become whole and fulfill my destiny.

I talk about destiny because I feel it. It’s a feeling in me, that I’ve always had. It’s consistently there and it always relates to voice, of being seen and heard. Of reaching many people. My destiny always speaks to me of the child, of the woman, and the man. My destiny speaks to me of love. My destiny speaks to me of innocence and kindness and creativity. My destiny speaks to me of community. Of human potential. My destiny speaks to me of transformation—the butterfly. And annihilation and creativity—the spider. And what is the symbol of love? The heart. And what is the symbol of wholeness? The circle. And what is the symbol of integrating opposites—the mandorla. The circles overlapping. And so these are my symbols.

What is unique in you that must emerge in this lifetime?

It is your duty to give birth to it.

During my meditation, I wrote something in my head.

It went like this:

Let’s assume for a moment that you do have gifts. That you possess something so unique and so beautiful that no one can touch it. No one can reproduce it or steal it. It belongs only to you and will be with you through this lifetime and possibly into the next.

And if you trusted and had faith in your gifts, you would know how to nurture and protect them as if they were your children.

And then what?

You must find a way to look unflinchingly at your inner truth. You must find a way in, and bring wholehearted compassion to all the dark corners of your being. You must love all of yourself. The pettiness of the ego, the fear, the hatred, the intense neediness of the child. You must love all of it. And through that love, you will find the secret gold of your empowerment, and the fullness of your unique gifts.

You must, by any means, find a way to let your ego work in service of your gifts. You must learn to work hard, harder than you thought you were capable of, not hard in the sense of rushing around and busyness, but hard in the sense of steadfast and devoted. A labor of love. That kind of labor—where it transcends work, and feels like deliverance of your soul.

And then, by all means, you must find a way to share the fruits of your labor. You must be willing to dig down deep and face the fear that keeps you hidden and keeps your vulnerability disguised. You must find a way to let this work by seen. Not by anyone. But by those who have earned your trust. One at a time, gradually, with gratitude and non-attachment, lifting the veil, sharing the truth of your soul.

I came here to liberate the soul from the constrictions of culture. The constrictions of gender, of identity, of race, of abuse, of neglect, of trauma, of avoidance, of apathy, of the illusion of isolation, of brokenness. I came here to teach you how to liberate yourself from the box in which you put yourself. I came here to remind you who you really are. That you are complete and full of love. That you are much more than your mind. Or body. That you are both a fully unique soul that lives on this planet in this precious lifetime, and you are part of something much larger than any one mind can fathom. Your heart beats in the universal rhythm of the one heart, the one love. This is the one love of Bob Marley, and Jesus, and Buddha, and Mohammad. This is the one love of Rumi and John Lennon, and Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. And what about the women, hidden in history, who felt and feel this message? Who know this with out even speaking its name. Yes, them, too. Us, too. This is the one love of all of humanity.

We are all of evil and of good. We are all of darkness and of light. When we encompass all of who we are in love, we no longer suffer. We find our wholeness, and we can shine.

7.4 billion bodies. 7.4 billion minds. 7.4 billion souls.

One Heart.

Lower East Side Photo Essay

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Found on the bathroom wall at the Whole Foods

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Professional Sign Painter Dos Equis Ad

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School Mural

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Can you see the public art on this building?

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All the layers of NYC

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Rapper who sold me his CD

Last week I went to NYC for my 25th high school reunion. After several intense days of fun reconnecting with friends, I left my last day to walk around NYC with myself on "art date".  I didn't want to overplan my day. I wanted to keep a certain degree of spontaneity and discovery. I wanted to do a little shopping, and then take in a little culture-a museum, or some galleries. That is if I could find any with out the help of a smart phone.

I took the train to Prince Street, and after visiting some stores, I decided to walk East to see if I could find some interesting culture.

I walked downSuffolk street looking for galleries or shops. As I walked I found only one tiny gallery. It took a look inside, but it didn't inspire me, so I kept walking.

As I walked it occurred to me that I had never actually walked down that street before. It was a residential neighborhood, and what struck me most was how much it still looked like the NY I remembered from the 80's and 90's (I left new York in 2003). I had been hearing reports from people that NY had gone completely corporate, and no longer had any grit or a vibrant art scene. I had even experienced that myself. But as I walked through the lower east side--I saw more and more evidence of vibrant community.

I passed by a giant mural in front of a school, and I started to feel inspired, and I took out my camera and took pictures. I have such a big crush on sign painting. And then it started to occur to me very gradually as I walked. I don't need to go to a museum to see art. There's art here all over the streets.

I decided to let my intuition or guidance from higher self lead the way, and found my body naturally leaning towards certain streets as I walked. Sure enough I would turn the corner and find yet another giant mural. One after the other.

Eventually I walked north of Houston, and then up Saint Mark's Place towards the subway on Broadway. I took all of these photos along the way. Luckily, I had light on my side. That kind of crisp late afternoon sun that I associate with the fall in NYC.

As I headed up Saint Marks' I ran into this guy: a rapper. (I have to look up his name, which I have forgotten.) He asked me if I liked 90's hip hop as I passed him. He must have known from my age. "Yes," I said. "I do." He pitched his new CD to me, and I bought it for $10. Another example of good old fashioned marketing and public art.

I admit it: I do miss the 90's.