Attention

ZOELAB DAY 30

Well we have reached the end of September. The first month of this project. I’ve never been so aware of a month ending. It brings out the desire for some sort of ritual or at least acknowledgment. Today I spent the entire day at home, alone with Emilio. I was so happy not to have to drive anywhere. We were out of diapers and I wasn’t sure we’d make it through the day and night with no diaper, but I still refused to drive somewhere and buy some. Emilio ended up pooping while standing in the shower. And then by some miracle, I found one last diaper right before bedtime.  

I have noticed that Emilio is more needing of my attention recently. I have discussed this with Lucas and we both agree it’s because I have been less generous with my full attention because I have been more focused on myself, or things I want to accomplish than usual. I wanted to deny this at first, but as I thought about it, I became more aware of how something inside sometimes resists giving him attention. I attribute this to my inner child feeling envious of the attention I am giving him. Little Zoë doesn’t want me to give attention to someone else because she feels neglected too. The effect of course, is that he needs my attention even more, and he is less willing to cooperate because he is frustrated by not getting what he needs from me. His resistance, in turn, frustrates me and causes me to give him less attention. Also his resistance to cooperation, and his “acting out” is another method of trying to get my attention, in this case negative attention. It may not be the attention he wanted, but it’s better than none. We become stuck in, according to couples and family counseling theory, “a negative interaction cycle.” The last few days Emilio and I have been spending a lot of alone time together. I have taken it is an opportunity to improve the quality of my attention. Instead of just giving up on my own tasks and needs, or having split attention between us, I have been making sure to give Emilio my full attention at the times when he really needs it. Giving my full attention is not just putting my attention on him passively, but it means engaging him and acknowledging where he is. If he’s rowdy, then I join in his rowdiness, but still on my terms. If he’s feeling gentle, I have him sit in my lap and talk softly to him. After all, “attention is the most basic form of love.” (John Tarrant) And I can see the effect on him immediately. After I give him some quality attention, he becomes more relaxed in a matter of minutes. He then is happy to play by himself in the next moment. Through out the day, I take turns between playing with him or attending to his needs, and attending to my own needs. That way everyone feels cared for. 

Looking back on this month, I see how much my experience of life has changed because of where I have put my attention. This September I have focused my attention on happiness, photography, drawing, writing, parenting, organizing, Elias Calles, friendship, family, the past. I had said that I would pick one form of art per month to focus on. I had picked drawing because I already felt that I was doing more drawing than usual. Soon after that decision, I decreased the amount of drawing I did. Not sure what that means, and I am not sure if I can keep up the intention of focus, but I will continue to try. I will state my next area of focus in the next post. I still have a lot of work to do on this site in terms of organization--including a project page, a theme page, and a newly designed web map based on a drawing I made. I hope to get more of that done in October. Looking back over this first month, what stands out most is how much as happened on an internal level while very little has happened on external level. It’s been hot and humid. I’ve been lonely and existentially bored. However, my inner world has been rich with ideas, personal insights, images, and creative solutions to problems. I think my hypothesis that awareness is a key component to happiness (which I wrote about in an earlier post) is proving to be true. Although awareness does not always bring an immediate sense of joy, it does offer an opportunity to work with or play with difficult feelings and situations. This project is bringing increased awareness on a daily level, which leads me to be more engaged and curious about life. My life is shaped by where I put my attention.

Los Amigos

ZOELAB DAY 29

Tonight I went to the wedding of Marcos y Rocío. I had found about it a week earlier from Marcos when he told me he was getting married. I had no idea he wasn’t married to Rocío, the woman with whom he has two kids. But apparently, they weren’t. Yet. He invited Lucas, me, Emily--Lucas’ sister, and Ruth, Lucas and Emily’s mom. They were all going to be away, so I told him that I would go with Emilio. Marcos seemed surprised, yet pleased that I said yes. 

I know Marcos because Emily, who has also become his friend, had hired him a few years ago as a gardner. We also hired him to make and serve tacos at our wedding in January 2011. We had made up a little fake taco stand with a Tacos sign, for him to stand behind while he grilled the meat and served tacos. Then Lucas hired him as the head builder when they built our house. Starting last fall, they worked together for five months, for the latest phase of our Elias Calles building project (which I will write about soon as a chapter in the Slow Making of a Dream.) Marcos is a man of many trades, and is well known and in Todos Santos. He is sought after for his diligence, intelligence and easy smile. He almost always is able to find work. Even in summer. During the time that Lucas was so busy building, we decided to hire Rocío, mother of a now 4 year old girl and 2 year old boy, to take Emilio once a week so I could have a day off from parenting. Most days, Rocío hangs out at her mother’s house with her children, while her extended family--parents, aunts, uncles, cousins, shuffle in and out of the house through out the day. When we first introduced Emilio to the idea of being taken care of by Rocío and family, we referred to them as “the friends.” Emilio still calls them that. In the beginning, Emilio would cry when I left him at The Friends house, but after a month of weekly visits, he had become so happy to go there that he didn’t even notice when I left, and when I would pick him up, he glowed talked with great excitement.

It felt important that Emilio and I go to Marcos and Rocío’s wedding, especially because I would be the representative of the clan. Earlier today, I realized I had no idea where the wedding was. I would have to call for the address, but since there are no addresses where we live, I would have to get directions. I am inadequate with directions normally, and receiving directions in Spanish for me is the same as not having an address at all. I called Marcos and he tried to explain to me (in Spanish) where the wedding was, but I just couldn’t follow. He finally told me to meet him at his parents in law’s house, The Friends, and I could follow one of his family members in my car. He asked me if I wanted to bring a friend, and I hadn’t occurred to me that I could. I told him I did if I could find one. 

And then I thought of Marcela, another Mexican friend. I had met her and her partner, Sigfrido, three and a half years ago when we all volunteered at an organization of local women who make, share, and sell crafts. We spent that desperate summer of 2009 together. Each of us had no other friends. For the entire summer they lived off of mangos (July is mango season here, and mangos are free, delicious, and plentiful if you know where the trees are.) and tamarindo (they had been given a whole giant tree’s worth of tamarindo), which at they cooked, ate and tried to sell to ice cream shops to use for aguas de tamarindo. While we were camping on our land, they were living on their land, with a partially built house. We commiserated in our experiences of simple living. While we were in La Paz waiting for Emilio to be born, they care of Ping and our green house casita. They had moved away for a few years in hopes of finding work in another part of Mexico, and had returned at the beginning of this year with their one month old baby, Frida, who is now 9 months. Sigfrido has been working tirelessly and mostly alone on their house. I can see his ambition to finish their house for the sake of his daughter in his wild eyes. They are ready to build their septic system, and asked me for a number of a worker. I gave them Marcos’ number. He is now going to do a number of projects with them to help them finish their house. 

I texted Marcela (a few hours before the wedding) to ask if she wanted to come to the wedding with me and Emilio, she texted back “yes, but I have nothing to wear.” I picked her up at their land, and she had apparently found something nice to wear. This is the photo I took of them before we left.

We drove to The Friends’ house and one of Marcos’ daughters from a previous wife explained to Marcela how to get there. The wedding was supposed to start at 7:30 PM and end at 2 AM. It was 7:40 and everyone was still getting dressed at the house. We passed Marcos on the street and he yelled the directions out to us. We finally found it--there was a large colorful sign indicating that it is a space for party rental. The space was a large three tiered pavement courtyard. When we arrived, there were six tables set up on the lower level, with white table cloths, pink runners making a cross, and plastic office chairs with their labels still affixed. There were two men in pink shirts who were placing flowers on the tables, one of them seated us.. It was almost 8 PM and there were about five other guests besides us, seated at different tables. I wasn’t surprised, but being a wedding planner, I couldn’t help feel a little dread. I thought to myself, it is going to be a long time before we eat. This thought usually gives me a good dose of panic. Fortunately, I had fed both me and Emilio lentil soup before we left home, knowing how long it could be until dinner. We sat for about half an hour before any more guests arrived. We just watched as the two men and two preteen girls dressed in strapless knee length gowns set up the tables. There were no drinks or snacks in sight. Eventually other guests began to arrive, all carrying shiny or sparkly gift bags. I had brought no gift, but felt comfort in the idea that I could get them something later. I’d really have to give some thought as to what we could give them. Some guests sat at our table and an older woman asked Marcela if Emilio was her child. Marcela indicated that I was Emilio’s mother. The woman had known Emilio from The Friends’house. She is just one of the many people of Todos Santos who knows Emilio. When we walk down the street with Emilio in Todos Santos, usually someone (that we’ve never met) will shout out “Hola! Emilio!” to him. Among the guests, there were many children. It was already Emilio’s bedtime, and here we were watching children, the girls dressed in party dresses and the boys in ironed plaid shirts, just arriving. I could tell Emilio was exhausted, Marcela suggested she take him to a store for a snack and a drink. It was hot and we were all terribly thirsty. They came back with drinks and a bag of chips for Emilio. He sat backwards in his chair and ate every last chip, drank some of his juice and then later passed out in my lap. They finally began to serve the drinks: 3 liter bottles of soda, one per table, with plastic cups. Servers also carried plastic trays filled with cans of Tecate Light. Once the beer started coming, it was always available. Rocío and Marcos made their big entrance. They got some applause, but not as much as I thought they deserved. It was a very casual vibe, even though Rocío wore a strapless wedding gown, sparkly drop earrings, and an updo. Then they brought the snacks: crackers with a dip made of chopped up hot dogs in mayonnaise and tortilla chips with another kind of dip. It was nine, and after several rounds of appetizers, Marcela and I started to think there wouldn’t be any dinner. Then the ceremony happened. Marcos and Rocío, their kids, and their witnesses all sat at one of the tables while the minister, who spoke into a mic that was hooked up to a very powerful PA system, conducted the ceremony. After the vows, all the guests, about 60, all seated at the round tables, sat in silence while they signed endless documents for about twenty minutes. We couldn’t even see the couple’s faces, M and R were completely blocked by the family members standing around them. When they were done exchanging rings, also, which no one saw, they stood up and everyone gave them a toast. They opened one gift, which was frilly bright pink lingerie for Rocío and something in a wooden box for Marcos. Then the Banda started playing. The type of music that is popular here is called Banda, it has a basic polka beat, and It is fashionable to turn up the speakers until distortion, and in such a way that the bass drives all the instruments. M and R had their first dance, similar to a Texas Two Step, which was very sweet. They were soon joined by several guests and the wedding officially began to feel like a party. I wanted to get some pictures, so I put two chairs together so that I could put the sleeping Emilio down.

We sat and watched people dance for a few hours and I gave Marcos and Rocío my congratulations. Eventually, even though we hadn’t eaten, and there were at least three hours of celebration left, Marcela and I decided it was time to leave.

Here is a photo I took of Marcos and Rocío right before I left. They asked me take a photo with their camera as well. It was 11 PM. The dinner started to arrive just as we stood up to go. I drove Marcela back to her house on some of the most treacherously bumpy roads of Baja, which had been made worse by the recent rains. Some are under construction as they are in the process of becoming paved. I got home at midnight, exhausted.  I put the sleeping Emilio in the tent that we’ve been sleeping in on the patio. The moon was bright and almost full, and the night was unusually cool and beautiful. I sat on our stoop and fell asleep while looking at the moon.

Some Creatures

Sometimes it’s the creatures that make the stories. The moths have become a part of our daily life. Many of them are as large as bats. They are attracted to our lights at night, and loudly waver spellbound near our lamps until we turn them off. Then they flutter near the upper windows of our house, transfixed by the light of the moon, trying desperately to reach it while flinging their bodies against the glass. During the day, they stay flat on the walls--looking like intricate decals. I’ve been collecting the dead ones, one of which is in the above photo. Upon inspecting it up close, I discover their huge eyes and hairy legs. I am developing a fascination/repulsion with them.

Our friends’ horse Canela, had a surprise baby. They didn’t know she was pregnant, and then one morning they woke up to discover a miniature horse looking like a carbon copy of his mother.

I found and caught a big spider (which I am pretty sure was not poisonous) and tried to put her on my latest spider web drawing for the website so that I could photograph it with a real spider. But I just couldn’t get her to go on the paper. So I let her be free outside.

I also want to share two poems by Mary Oliver that feel relevant right now. I was introduced to these by one my psychology professors in grad school who started class with a brief mediation, and a poem which she always read to us twice. Sometimes lines from each of them come into my head. I love Mary Oliver’s hauntingly exultant way of communing with nature.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting–
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

 

 

The Summer Day

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean-
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down-
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

The Terrific Freedom and Terrible Loneliness of Expatriating

ZOELAB DAY 27

It’s harder to write these posts when I am feeling down. But writing these posts makes me feel more alive, more connected, and more able to work with whatever it is I am going through. Start from where you are. After all, as the poet, and songwriter Dave Berman (of the Silver Jews) says: “You can't change the feeling but you can change your feelings about the feeling in a second or two.” It is a time of great loneliness and longing for me. I have felt it before. It is very hard to live far away from my dear friends and family. Everyone who lives in the first world seems so very busy out of  necessity that the modern urban life calls for, and it seems people don’t have much space in their lives for communion, relaxation and hanging out. This seems like a luxury rather than a right. The friends and family I have here are all away right now--avoiding the bad weather and the boredom. And some more recent friends that I have made here, have decided not to return, for now. I chose to be here for most of this summer so that we could experience the true seasons of this place, and so that I could have a sense of continuity, and because we finally have a home, and I want to be home.

Moving to another country is a terrifying and exhilarating leap of faith. Even in moments like these, I don’t regret it. And I don’t want to leave. I have always been an adventurer and have strived to have as many experiences as I can, and haven’t generally let fear or the prospect of failure get in my way. In fact, as an artist/seeker/psychologist, I am as interested in failure as I am in success. I find it freeing to let go of the protective grip of the ego that wants to uphold an idealized and restricted view of ourselves, and accept that we all fail as humans. We all make messes. We all feel rejected sometimes. I think our view of a failure changes once you look at it from a further perspective. A failure in a moment becomes a learning experience or just one chapter of a great story. When we don’t get the response or result we want, we want to give up in shame. But it is so important to keep going. To show up. It takes humility, and courage to show up. That’s what this project is about for me. Showing up everyday, even if I don’t want to, even if I feel sad. Because in the showing up, I am continuing to make a commitment to something. I believe a commitment is an important and rare thing in this day and age, where everything seems exchangeable. The few commitments I’ve made in my life have turned out to be the best choices I have ever made because they have forced me to grow up. Everyday of showing up, is like more change in the bank, adding up slowly. I keep going because I have faith that the coins will add up to something rich and meaningful that will give back to me someday. I don’t know exactly what form it will become, but it will reveal itself in another chapter.

In our dream to make ourselves a house in Mexico, which took about five years, and is still in the making, there were some moments of great sorrow and disappointment. We didn’t have money or prospects, getting the paperwork for our title seemed impossible, our friends who also had land near us decided to move back to their homeland countries. In those moments we stopped believing it would happen. We had a dream not only of our own home, but of a community of people who want to live a peaceful, simple, independent, fun and artful life. We have several friends who own pieces of land near ours who have not yet come to build on their land. I do believe they will come. I haven’t given up on this dream.

Our town, Elias Calles, is a valley situated at the foothills of a beautiful mountain range. Our land is on the very last foot hill before the land becomes more or less flat. The view from our land is stunning. Looking West, you can see a nice piece of the Pacific ocean. There is a dip caused by the arroyo (dry river bed) that allows visibility of the ocean through there. Looking South, you see more of the thick tangle of desert plants, looking East, there are more rolling mountains, and looking North, my favorite view, is a valley of pure cactus forest, with rolling mountains behind. There are no houses to block the pristine view. The only sign of culture is the Telcel (cellphone) tower built jutting out of one of the mountains. This tower was not there when we were camping four years ago. So we had no cell service or internet then. Elias Calles is on the verge of getting electricity, when that happens the town will change greatly. There will be more than forty people living here. There will be lights on at night. There will be stores and restaurants and a gas station. Right now Elias Calles has: a one room school house that teaches kids from age 5-12 (the teacher is known to be the best in Baja, and provides programs in filmmaking, and traditional pottery making from local clay). A church. Two small stores with no electricity--the drinks are kept in coolers. A sometimes-open taqueria. A sometimes-open highway side flower stand. And a small handful of Mexican and Gringo families living here off solar power or a generator.

I realize that building happiness is a long, slow process and we have to be willing sometimes to endure difficulty for the sake of realizing who we were meant to be. I just received a comment from my mother that said: “It’s taking me a long time but I am realizing my daughter is a 21st Century hippie.” I prefer the term bohemian, but she’s right. The process of discovering this truth about myself has taken me a while as well. For all the times of loneliness, there are many more times of great happiness and gratitude. I am so grateful that we are able to spend so much time with our child in these invaluable early years before school. I appreciate that Emilio is receiving a wonderful natural education. He has a considerable amount of physical freedom. I am reminded, and now it feels like foreshadowing, of the subject of my 9th grade term paper--Jean Jacques Rousseau’s book on education called Emile, or On Education. In the book, Rousseau recommends that children receive a natural education that emphasizes the child’s experience of the physical world, and in particular, of the five senses. Written in 1762, it was a book of great controversy at first, that later became an inspiration for a new system of education in France (which lead, based on Rousseau’s recommendation, to a nationwide increase in breastfeeding).

In our life here, I feel grateful everyday for the opportunity to have time for hanging out, artmaking, being part of a community of people who look after each other. My whole adult life I have tried unsuccessfully to create communities. Living here is the first time I have really felt part of one. I love living in a place where you run into people you know everywhere you go. People rely on each other here. We take showers at each others’ houses when the electricity shuts down. We make trades for services and goods when we can’t pay with cash. One of my goals, which I have been working on lately by having weekly Spanish conversations with one of Mexican friends, is to improve my Spanish so I can be more connected to the Mexican community here. One of the blessings of living as an ex-patriot is the inexpressible feeling of cultural freedom. The feeling of not belonging can be lonely, but it can be extraordinarily freeing. As a parent, I feel free from the judgment of my own culture. We can make up rituals and rules as we go. We are free to live according to our natures, the unique expressions of the culture of family that we are creating. I am learning a new relationship to nature, which keeps me present. I am learning about and finding appreciation for things I never had to think about: water, electricity, privacy, ownership, wind, phases of the moon, plants, creatures. I continually feel their presence and lack of presence. I also appreciate the food. The fish here is very inexpensive, and some of the freshest and cleanest you can find in the world. Vegetables grow here like crazy. We have discovered both watermelons and cherry tomato plants on our land that have grown with out our planting them. And no one makes grilled meat like the Mexican taquerias.

I want to end with a good old fashioned want ad. The photo on top of the post is of a for sale sign for the lot on the North side of us, directly across the road. We are looking for a neighbor. We will be good neighbors to you, and trade fresh vegetables, eggs, and interesting books for something you have to offer. Any takers? Think about it, it could be a lot of fun.

                                  The view of our land from your land.

Today

ZOELAB DAY 26

Lucas left yesterday, so it’s just Mio and me. The rain came in short great gusts. A little rain came through our roof and puddled on our tile floors. Mio and I made pancakes this morning (from scratch for the second time in my life). After we had mixed most of the batter, I realized we had no eggs. Emilio and I went to our nearest neighbor to see if he had any eggs, but he wasn’t home. Then we went to the minisuper 79 (which opened several months ago), a little store a block away from us, with no electricity. I knew they wouldn’t have eggs, but I asked anyway. The storekeeper shook his head and then I said “quiero solo uno.” He went behind the store, into his house and brought me one egg from his kitchen. We were so triumphant that we didn’t have to give up on the pancakes. I used a recipe (from a compilation of the best of cook’s illustrated) that tells you to separate the yolk from the white, stir the yolk into melted butter and  to whip the white into the milk mixture. The recipe also asks for buttermilk, but if you don’t have buttermilk, you can put 1 tbs of lemon juice in the milk to curdle it. I only had limón, but it worked! The pancakes came out light and fluffy, with a hint of citrus. The two of us ate enough pancakes for 4. 

Also, Mio pooped in the potty for the first time. I was so excited about it, I couldn’t keep my cool. But my excitement was embarrassing to him--he kept asking me not to be loud. He was secretly very proud though. He just wanted to play it cool. After he made it, he asked me: “is this a baby poop or a little boy poop?” I said “it is definitely a big boy poop.” And it really was.

Here is a series of photos I took today of Emilio in the circle of trees. I was inside the house, and had just stepped outside the kitchen door to catch sight of him sitting in his little green plastic adorondak chair in the middle of the circle of trees. I said I wanted to take a picture of him and went to get the camera. But just as I got the camera out, he jumped out of his chair.

Honoring the Child Inside

ZOELAB DAY 25

 

“And the only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really counts at all. ”

This is an excerpt from a beautiful letter that poet Ted Hughes wrote to his 24 year old son. It made me feel better about being human. (taken from a site that publishes interesting letters.) 

But in many other ways obviously you are still childish—how could you not be, you alone among mankind? It's something people don't discuss, because it's something most people are aware of only as a general crisis of sense of inadequacy, or helpless dependence, or pointless loneliness, or a sense of not having a strong enough ego to meet and master inner storms that come from an unexpected angle. But not many people realise that it is, in fact, the suffering of the child inside them. Everybody tries to protect this vulnerable two three four five six seven eight year old inside, and to acquire skills and aptitudes for dealing with the situations that threaten to overwhelm it. So everybody develops a whole armour of secondary self, the artificially constructed being that deals with the outer world, and the crush of circumstances. And when we meet people this is what we usually meet. And if this is the only part of them we meet we're likely to get a rough time, and to end up making 'no contact'. But when you develop a strong divining sense for the child behind that armour, and you make your dealings and negotiations only with that child, you find that everybody becomes, in a way, like your own child. It's an intangible thing. But they too sense when that is what you are appealing to, and they respond with an impulse of real life, you get a little flash of the essential person, which is the child. Usually, that child is a wretchedly isolated undeveloped little being. It's been protected by the efficient armour, it's never participated in life, it's never been exposed to living and to managing the person's affairs, it's never been given responsibility for taking the brunt. And it's never properly lived. That's how it is in almost everybody. And that little creature is sitting there, behind the armour, peering through the slits. And in its own self, it is still unprotected, incapable, inexperienced. Every single person is vulnerable to unexpected defeat in this inmost emotional self. At every moment, behind the most efficient seeming adult exterior, the whole world of the person's childhood is being carefully held like a glass of water bulging above the brim. And in fact, that child is the only real thing in them. It's their humanity, their real individuality, the one that can't understand why it was born and that knows it will have to die, in no matter how crowded a place, quite on its own. That's the carrier of all the living qualities. It's the centre of all the possible magic and revelation. What doesn't come out of that creature isn't worth having, or it's worth having only as a tool—for that creature to use and turn to account and make meaningful. So there it is. And the sense of itself, in that little being, at its core, is what it always was. But since that artificial secondary self took over the control of life around the age of eight, and relegated the real, vulnerable, supersensitive, suffering self back into its nursery, it has lacked training, this inner prisoner. And so, wherever life takes it by surprise, and suddenly the artificial self of adaptations proves inadequate, and fails to ward off the invasion of raw experience, that inner self is thrown into the front line—unprepared, with all its childhood terrors round its ears. And yet that's the moment it wants. That's where it comes alive—even if only to be overwhelmed and bewildered and hurt. And that's where it calls up its own resources—not artificial aids, picked up outside, but real inner resources, real biological ability to cope, and to turn to account, and to enjoy. That's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That's why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shells—he becomes one of the walking dead, a monster. So when you realise you've gone a few weeks and haven't felt that awful struggle of your childish self—struggling to lift itself out of its inadequacy and incompetence—you'll know you've gone some weeks without meeting new challenge, and without growing, and that you've gone some weeks towards losing touch with yourself. The only calibration that counts is how much heart people invest, how much they ignore their fears of being hurt or caught out or humiliated. And the only thing people regret is that they didn't live boldly enough, that they didn't invest enough heart, didn't love enough. Nothing else really counts at all. It was a saying about noble figures in old Irish poems—he would give his hawk to any man that asked for it, yet he loved his hawk better than men nowadays love their bride of tomorrow. He would mourn a dog with more grief than men nowadays mourn their fathers.

 

And that's how we measure out our real respect for people—by the degree of feeling they can register, the voltage of life they can carry and tolerate—and enjoy. End of sermon. As Buddha says: live like a mighty river. And as the old Greeks said: live as though all your ancestors were living again through you.

me at three

The Slow Making of a Dream: El Campo Elias Calles, The End of Camp

ZOELAB DAY 24

After six months of camping, and seven months of pregnancy, we decided that we needed to find a house to live in for the end of my pregnancy and the beginning of parenthood. I had met a woman who had taken pity on us, and offered to let us live in a casita on her property in another town in exchange for basic caretaking. We moved in and soon made ourselves a little nest. (For a post about the summer of 2009 and Jimena see Day 1.) A few weeks after Emilio was born Hurricane Jimena hit Baja a few hundred miles north of where we were. The destruction wasn’t devastating in our area, though there was some destruction. After the hurricane, which was a few months after we had left camp, we decided to go back see what had happened to our land. We had half abandoned our camp--we had been in such a rush to make a home for ourselves indoors we hadn’t even bothered to pack away our tents. We had left them out in the open to disintegrate in the sun, and then be blown around by the storm. Everything was a mess.

It was hard to see our beloved camp so destroyed, but I found relief in knowing I had documented it in its glory days. We also knew part of its beauty was its transience. 

This is what the circle of trees looked like that day (to see the circle of trees in the spring, click:)

The next year, we also re-discovered the forgotten superhero nativity scene and fake christmas tree that our friends Jeremy and Charlotte had brought for the Christmas we had spent at camp (which was also our first night at camp.)  

The next year, we also re-discovered the forgotten superhero nativity scene and fake christmas tree that our friends Jeremy and Charlotte had brought for the Christmas we had spent at camp (which was also our first night at camp.) 

Three years have passed since the summer of Hurricane Jimena, and now another hurricane--Miriam--is due to hit Baja this week. Lucas and his sister are heading out tomorrow to drive up the Baja with an empty trailer. Their plan is to get North before the hurricane hits. Lucas is going to get the last of our stuff from our storage space and drive it down. I’ll be excited to reunite with it. Among what I remember of our belongings, there are four vintage pachinko machines, my journals, and Lucas’ incredible collection of rare art books. This also means nine days of a certain kind of aloneness. I’ll use art and creativity and compassion to make the best of it.

The Story of Elias Calles to be continued....

The Slow Making of a Dream: El Campo Elias Calles, Part Two

ZOELAB DAY 23

“It was extraordinarily peaceful to be pregnant and surrounded by nothing but vast amounts of sky, desert, ocean and mountains.”

Our campsite continued to develop over the months we were there. Eventually Lucas made a mediation and yoga spot for me. Spring came, and the trees started to spring leaves. We found a beautiful arrangement of elephant and paper trees that naturally made a semicircle. Both kinds of trees are short, and they had no leaves because it was winter. The paper tree has peeling skin that is very fun to peel, but apparently once you peel it always stays smooth. We cleared around this circle of trees so that it would be more noticeable.

At the time I was avidly collecting rocks, shells and small animal bones that I had found in the area. I started arranging these around the circle of trees. Having been a city girl my whole life, it was a real shift for me to live in nature. I became very fond of it. It was extraordinarily peaceful to be pregnant and surrounded by nothing but vast amounts of sky, desert, ocean and mountains. The simplicity of life was comforting, even if I wasn’t always comfortable.

The Slow Making of a Dream: El Campo Elias Calles, Part One

ZOELAB DAY 22

I've been putting off telling this story even thought it's the story I most want to tell. It's a difficult story to tell because it's complicated, and we're still in the middle of it. And also because it occurred (with many breaks in between) over several years, and I documented it thoroughly (not knowing what I'd do with all the images.) I just spent an hour looking through 2,283 images (photos & videos) that I have taken so far of our land, and the surrounding area of Elias Clales.

I have another more recent impetus to tell this story because an artist friend, Tia Factor, who makes uniquely gorgeous paintings, is doing a project where she asks people to describe a place that they have been to, and often return to in their imagination. The place represents comfort in the person’s imagination, so the person returns to it over and over in his/her mind. Then, after doing some image research, Tia makes a painting of the place based on the person’s description. I had wanted to participate in this project, but I hadn’t been able to think of a place that I had returned to over and over in my mind. But then I realized I did. Elias Calles is that place, even though I live here now. For so many years it was an imagined place, imagined and experienced from so many different perspectives, a place that contained hopes and dreams, and then loss of those same hopes and dreams. And even though we still continue to live here, there is so much about it that is still in our imaginations. All of our plans yet to be realized. This is what I wrote as my description to Tia (plus a few more words) for her painting:

Elias Calles is a hard place to describe because it is not like anywhere else I have ever been. I don't really have a point of reference. I had first heard of it from Lucas about five years ago. He told me he found a piece of land he wanted to buy in Mexico with some money he inherited from his grandmother. We thought of it as an investment. A few years later, we decided that we wanted to build a house on our land, move to Mexico, get married, and have a baby. This was all before I had even seen our land. I had been to Baja only once in 2004, after we had left New York City and before we were to move to San Francisco. It was a different part of Baja, and I had had a difficult time. (Another story for another time). I am not sure exactly what made me want to do something so uncertain, other than I was done with the particular chapter of our life, and we both wanted the experience of living in a different country and having a child. It was an intuitive decision based on what felt right. The plan was that Lucas (who had been going down to Baja often for many years) was going to build us a rudimentary house out of earth bags the year before we moved. He got started that year, but he was never able to finish. We were going to live in our house, try to have a baby when we got there, and then build ourselves a life. Things went a little differently then we had planned. I was a few days aware of being pregnant as we drove the 1,500 miles to Southern Baja from Northern California in our fully packed 1985 Toyota Landcruiser with our dog, Ping. During our journey, the World economy collapsed, two of our tires exploded, (we were saved within five minutes of our first tire exploding by Los Angeles Verdes--a Government road side assistance group that drives up and down the highway helping people with car trouble) and the frame of our car cracked as we literally pulled into our destination.

The first time I saw Elias Calles was in early December, 2008, a few days after we moved to Mexico. When I first saw it, I have to say I was disappointed. It looked like a scary, poisonous forest from a Disney movie. All plants had large points sticking out of them, everything was brown, and dry. There was nothing cleared on the land.—it was a dense low forest of shrubbery and cactus. I could not see the beauty--at first. I just didn't get it. Lucas was going to build us a campsite (because the house wasn’t ready and we didn’t really have the money to build). We started clearing the land with the help of our French friends Charlotte and Jeremy, who had made a little campsite on their piece of land nearby. Charlotte saw how uncertain I was, and tried to reassure me by saying that you created your little spaces out of the land and it starts to become yours. Fortunately for us, our friends allowed us to stay in their house in a nearby town, for our first month here, which was my most nauseous month, while Lucas built our campsite.

Lucas began to build our campsite--we cleared two 12 by 12 areas with the help of our French friends and Lucas’ sister (who is co-owner of the land). He made a temporary floor out of adoquin (red colored cement hexagons). We put our sleeping tent on one. And the other became our kitchen. To create shade for the sleeping tent, Lucas created a tensile structure, using large pine poles and a tarp. To create a space for the kitchen, we put up a four post canvas tent and screen walls. We filled the kitchen with a small folding table covered with bright Mexican oil cloth, for eating, a wooden freestanding counter for cooking, a high intensity 2 burner metal camping stove, a vintage 1920's sink resting on two tables (this sink is now in our kitchen), with a drain that went into a bucket. We also had our water tank on top of our broken landcruiser (it could no longer be driven after we arrived.) which Lucas filled by climbing up a ladder, and pouring water jugs into it. The water pressure was great, due to the high flow, gravity water pressure system. Our water drained out into a bucket below the sink which we dumped on the trees around the campsite. We also had sleeping tent that was large enough to stand in, and fit a closet and queen size mattress. This was deluxe camping.

Our campsite developed over the months we were there. Lucas hooked up a solar panel, and we had enough electricity to charge our laptops and have LED Christmas lights on at night. Our kitchen was fully functional and we were able to create delicious meals. We had our families and friends come to visit us in our little desert oasis--some who had never camped before in their lives and fell in love with the experience.

To be continued in next post...

Photography as Spiritual Practice

Taking photographs can sometimes be a way to transcend judgment of certain experiences or sights. Judgment (whether it’s good or bad) about the objects and people around us can create a barrier to pure experience. By photographing something close up, the image becomes more about form than content. It helps me to find the beauty in something that might otherwise disgust me. Included here are photos from the last few days of domesticity.

Mixing blue food coloring into yellow play dough

Cleaning the burners on the stove

Bubbled over oatmeal on the stove

Dead spiders and moths and compostables in the sink

Wanting a shot of tequila, discovering a cockroach in my cup

Summer

ZOELAB DAY 20

It’s still summer. Most of our friends are away in the States. All cafés but one are closed for the entire month. There’s no work. Except there is for me, because I am planning weddings for a local hotel. It’s hot. It’s humid. It’s buggy. Really buggy. Every night we are visited by hundreds or possibly thousands of: moths of all sizes, dragonflies, no-see-em’s (bobos), flies, mosquitos, tiny flying beetles, giant flying beetles, spiders, cockroaches, scorpions, and countless other bugs that I don’t know the names of. Not to mention other types of beasts: little mice, geckos. During the day we hear the clinging of cow bells who roam the area and the whinnying of horses, who also roam the area. Some days are hotter or buggier or more humid than others. Some days it rains, but most days it does not. The sky feels like it’s closing in on you. Your skin feels heavier, drenched and sticky. Your loneliness turns to boredom. Bad moods erupt out of nowhere when your body has decided it’s had enough. 

But, there are moments of sweetness. The relief of a cool breeze from the Pacific Ocean. The irrepressible greenness of growth covering the ground. The joy of seeing a friend, lifting you into mutual understanding. Simple pleasures of ice cream, tamarindo water, grilled meat tacos, fresh mangos, ice cold beer. The low and fast ocean waves, freshly delivering you to the shore. Long mornings sitting on the floor, making a mess, playful lethargy. Feeling the comfort of continuity. Loving a season for it being now, knowing it doesn’t last, and feeling the certain promise of fall.

On Television: Part One

ZOELAB DAY 49

I have a confession to make:

The main, if not totally conscious, reason I chose to do this project of blogging 365 days for a year, was to knock myself out of the indelible, lifelong habit of whiling away the evening (the most precious free time of the day, especially for a parent) watching television. We don’t actually have a television in this phase of our lives, but we do have computers where we watch shows that were once on television. This is the habit of western culture at large. Watching TV (in whatever form of screen) before you go to bed. How many of us have spent a lifetime doing this? TV watching is the most addicting habit I know—or at least within the context of the time after dinner, before bed. There have been a few periods of life that I  was able to break this habit, which involved either a creative project that I was really excited about, or lack of access. Please understand, I love television. Well, I love some television. It has provided such pleasure to me for much of my life. At its best, it provides a unique balm to the troubled soul living in an uncertain world.  A kind of home that doesn’t quite belong to you, but gives you the illusion that it does. At different times in my life, I have fallen in love with: The Mary Tyler Moore Show, I Love Lucy, Freaks and Geeks, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Arrested Development, 30 Rock, Flight of the Conchords, The Magic Garden, The Muppet Show, Saturday Night Live, Six Feet Under, Kids in the Hall, Taxi, The Office (yes, the American version), and most recently, Girls.

When I was living in Brooklyn and pursuing my acting/ screenwriting/filmmaking career, I had the habit (as many urbanites do) of going home late after a full and tiring day pursuing my dreams or at least trying to survive in an expensive and energetic city, picking up take out on the way home, and then watching syndicated sitcoms until it was time to go to sleep. This was the period of my life when I was a syndicated sitcom serial monogamist. I went from favorite sitcom to favorite sitcom, based on what was syndicated at the right time: 10:00, 10:30, 11:00, and 11:30 at night. Two hours of time (equivalent to a feature length film.) There were some sitcoms that I thought I’d never watch, because I hated them at first, most especially: Seinfeld and Friends. Friends was extremely popular when I was in college. I didn’t watch any TV while I was in college, except during visits home, and when I lived in China for a semester. I lived in a foreign student dorm (which was really a hotel) and each room had its own television. American syndicated sitcoms were a welcome friend. Anyway, back to Friends. I had a deep disdain for it. Maybe my disdain was on principal because it was so popular. But somehow, when I moved back to New York, and started watching it in its syndicated time slot, its charm warmed its way into my heart.  And then it became one of my ten, and ten thirty favorites. I particularly loved Lisa Kudrow’s portrayal of Phoebe. I suppose I most related to her character. Lisa Kudrow was brilliant and funny in the roll. I loved how her character was almost dumb, but not quite. It was a subtly different take on the ditzy blonde. Phoebe had edge and she was always a little bit surprising. Which reminds me of my personal definition of comedy: the truth delivered in surprising package. Seinfeld I also hated at the beginning. I found Jerry so whiney and his hair so terrible, that I had to turn away. But, the show’s undeniable funniness lured me back in, and I became an ardent fan. I remember watching it on Thursdays during its Prime Time slot and then again, later, and every night, during its syndicated slot. I even tearfully watched the last episode.

There were two other sitcoms I had love affairs with during this phase that were both because the show was great, but also because I had developed an awful crush on the male star of each of them. Those sitcoms were: That 70’s Show, the crush being on: Topher Grace (Eric). Were you thinking it was Ashton Kutcher? I know you weren’t thinking that. Maybe you were thinking it was Danny Masterson? Who definitely was crushable. But no, it was Topher Grace. His boyish charm with just a hint of cockiness, which, somehow, always got teased out of him. It was also his laugh, because when he laughed he seemed like he was breaking character--it felt so real. It is said in the acting world, and I agree with this, that laughing (far more than tears), is the hardest thing to “act”. And the other sitcom? Newsradio. And the crush? Dave Foley. Dave Foley’s character Dave, had a very similar appeal to Topher Grace’s Eric. Actually, now that I think about it, they were very, very similar. In looks, in the boyish charm, with that touch of cockiness that got teased out of him. And in the very sincere laugh where you feel like you are seeing just the person. Hmmm.

This essay will have to be continued over the next day or two. I have a lot more to say on this subject, and I can’t stay up all night writing. After all, I still want to watch a little something before bed.

One more thing. A behind the scene irony:

Just today a video projector and screen came into our possession (how it came into our possession is a story in itself that I will tell at another time). As I write this, Lucas, who has hooked up the projector and screen, is watching Boardwalk Empire. The screen is set up just a few feet away from where I sit, at the painted ivory table (which I use as a background to many ZOELAB images). I can see only the back of the screen. Only just yesterday we received a bunch of shows and movies that we had ordered. Perhaps this is not at all ironic, but rather, writing this is helping me to resist the temptation to melt back into the couch with him to be blissfully entertained by new content in a new form.

Inspiration from Children's Books

ZOELAB DAY 19

The artwork from children’s books has always captivated me and has had a great influence on my aesthetic. One of the great pleasures of parenthood is getting to reenter and share the incredible world children’s books with my child. Luckily, Emilio loves books as much as I do, and loves a lot the same ones. I am also lucky that my mother was kind enough to save my favorite childhood books. Most of which are in their house for Emilio (and me) to read when we visit. Three of which I have removed from their home (sorry mom) and have scanned tonight to share with you. 

Illustration from Where the Wild Things Are by Maurice Sendak

There is an ineffable quality that children’s book illustrations have. There’s a sweetness because of the innocence and hopefulness that they convey, and yet at the same time, there is a darkness too, a sense of a larger, mysterious world somewhere lurking. Maurice Sendak illustrates this dichotomy so well in his books. 

Illustration from I am a Bunny by Richard Scarry

This was Lucas’ favorite childhood book, which I didn’t have as a child, but have come to love as an adult. It’s illustrated by Richard Scarry, who was also one of my favorites as a child (as he is to so many). But here, his illustration style is more painterly than the more cartoonish style for which he is known. This is my favorite page from the book--someday I want to make a light box out of it and hang it in our house. 

Illustration from Goodnight Moon by Clement Hurd

This book is a classic of course. The images are still so haunting to me. Again, the dichotomy: the innocence of a child’s play room juxtaposed with the darkness of night approaching. And the colors are so unusual and otherworldly.

On an aesthetic level, this was my favorite book of all. It was given to me by my grandmother, Nana, whose first husband, my Dad’s father, was a communist. The book was published in China in the 1970’s. It was perhaps the instigator to my affinity for Chinese aesthetics and culture (which led to eight years of Chinese language study, and living in China for a semester of college.) The book contains several tales with no words (other than the title) teaching children how to be cooperative. I remember how much the book enchanted me as a child. There was something about the drawings-- the colors, the line quality, the utter cuteness of it all. My love of this book is so special, that I have never been able to adequately qualify it. It was as if the book had been made just for me.  

I have come to believe that each of us has a unique aesthetic that expresses something about our soul. Aesthetics are the language of our soul. When we are children, we are living closest to our souls. I think this is why books or music from our childhood continues to have such a powerful impact on who we are as adults. The best way to inspire ourselves, is to inspire the children we once were/still are.

Focus

“My whole life I have been self-critical about being a dilettante, a dabbler, an amateur, someone who doesn’t really stick with things.
”

Last night, while I was drawing, I had a revelation about how I want to continue with ZOELAB. I had been considering doing resolutions or organizing the year in a certain way, so I wouldn’t be so all over the place, but I couldn’t quite come up with the right format. I was worried that piling on resolutions would add too much pressure. And then as I was drawing, it occurred to me! I realized how much I was enjoying drawing, an activity I don’t normally put a lot of effort or time into (not since being in school.) But because I had been spending more time with it lately, I was focusing on it, the focus shed more light on it. It allowed me to get deeper and also wider with it. So I decided that I would pick an art form to focus on each month. It would be just long enough to go a little deeper with one of my art forms, with out having to give up too much of another one.

My whole life I have been self-critical about the fact that I move from medium to medium. It is easy to be disparaging about it, and call myself a dilettante, a dabbler, an amateur, someone who doesn’t really stick with things. Especially because there is pressure from our society to pick one thing and become really good at it. From as young as I can remember, I wanted to be an artist. Actually, I had written in my journal at age eight that I wanted to be R & F (rich and famous) or an artist. When I was about seven years old, I went to visit my dad at work, which was a film production company. I got to use the typewriter and the copy machine. I typed myself up a resume that had my name, address and what I did: artist. writer. dancer. I drew a picture of myself typing at a typewriter, while wearing dance shoes, and a painting covered my mouth. I made as many copies of it as I could. Soon after that I went through my movie star phase. I dreamed of my big movie role every night before I went to sleep. It all started when a friend of my father’s was casting a hollywood movie, and was considering me for a part. I really thought I was going to be cast, but they ended up choosing a kid who looked more like the adult version of the character. I was heartbroken. But I still continued to want to be an actress for many years. Always trying out for the school play, never getting even a call back. I was told my voice was too soft. I even asked my parent’s friend who was an actor, to coach me before one of the auditions. Still no call back. I also began studying piano, which lasted a few years. It ended in frustration and sadness when I switched to a new piano book that no longer had the finger numbers written over the notes. I discovered that I hadn’t actually learned to read music, I had just been following the numbers. With out the numbers, I was lost. I also started keeping a journal at this age. Most of it was lists of presents I had gotten for christmas (I was thorough and wrote down every single present I received) or secret crushes (describing the exact way that the bangs of the goalie on our soccer team (I was one of two girls on the otherwise male team) would bounce up and down on his face when he caught the ball), or lists of colors in order of most favorite to least favorite. I also kept lists of every Beatles song I could think of, and every movie I had ever seen. I started writing lyrics to songs, and I even wrote a play. It was a mystery. At this time, I also did a lot of dance and choreography. My audience was usually my parents, but later on I performed modern dance in school. In high school, I decided I wanted to be a painter, and also took up photography. Then I decided I wanted to be a filmmaker and made a super 8 film in high school that was based on the ideas from a Milan Kundera book that was about kitsch and the opposite of kitsch (shit). I also started playing the guitar. I decided that I was going to major in art in college, even though I knew that I really wanted to be a filmmaker after college. This was a practical decision because the college I really wanted to go to had a film program, but I didn’t get in. The college I decided to go to (and am so happy I did go to) didn’t have a film program, but they had a great art program. In college, I fell more in love with photography, as well as conceptual art, and postmodern theory rocked my mind.

When I graduated from college, and moved back to Brooklyn, I tried to start my film career as well as my acting career. After one year of misery working a lowly full time job, I applied to the two New York film schools. I was rejected from both. I didn’t give up. I worked at as many film type jobs I could and I met a lot of famous people in the film world. I worked in film publicity, production, script coverage... I made some great friends, and had a wonderful, glamorous time, but it never led to any actual creative work. I was convinced that someone would discover me. No one discovered me. I studied acting for several years, as well as film production and made a 16 mm short. I also wrote a feature length screenplay that I directed a staged reading of, but I never took it to the next level. I decided it was time to apply to graduate school again. This time to theater programs for acting--I applied to seven schools. I got rejected by all, except by one which wait listed me-- eventually they rejected me. I didn’t give up, I dove into studying acting. I continued to study the Meisner technique, I also took classes in comedy improvisation which was thrilling. One of my dreams since I was a kid had been to be on Saturday Night Live or be in my own sitcom. After six years of really trying at acting, a last embarrassing stint in an experimentally bad play, and several months of therapy, I decided to quit acting. Being an actor was turning me into someone I didn’t like. It was no longer creatively fulfilling.

It was then that I decided to achieve another unrealized dream: rock-n-roll. I got back into playing guitar and I wanted to try songwriting. I took classes in music theory, voice and guitar at the same conservatory that I had studied piano at when I was nine. I had no idea how to write a song, but somehow I thought I could. Songwriting had always been one of the mysterious arts to me. It seemed like magic to be able to do it. I had bought myself a digital four track recorder, an acoustic guitar from a stoop sale, and I developed a method where I would take out one of my poems and then try to sing over the chords I played. Soon enough I was actually writing songs, with different parts that I layered with the four track. I actually liked my songs. My boyfriend at the time bought me an electric guitar. I was hooked. One day I ran into an old friend from college who worked in the same building as me (120 Wall Street). It turned out she had just started learning drums. We decided we needed to start playing together so I showed her my songs. She liked them and we started practicing at a seedy music space. We knew we needed a bassist. A few weeks later I met a British woman at a party who was a trained classical musician who played several instruments. I asked her if she knew how to play bass. She said no, but that she wanted to learn. She showed up to our practice with a bass and started learning to play while we were learning our instruments. Even though we were green, each in our own way, there was instant chemistry. We were stumbling our way through magic. Suddenly I was the leader of an all girl rock n roll band. It was creative ecstasy. We practiced weekly for several months. We all worked at non profit type jobs and called our band Social Service. During that time my therapist and I had decided I needed a career other than being a dabbling artist. After an intensive investigative survey of what career I was to choose (that involved actual excel spread sheets), I decided I was going to graduate school for counseling psychology focusing on expressive arts therapy. The day I found out, from a google search, that expressive arts therapy is a mode of therapy that involves not just one discipline, but all or any of the arts disciplines: music, dance, writing, visual art, drama, and that there is a school in San Francisco that offers a MA in it, I knew I had found my new career. This meant, though, having to give up the band, which was, and still is, heartbreaking. We did record a five song demo and had two live performances the month before Lucas and I moved to the West Coast.

This story is not over yet... (there are more art forms, more stories of failure and success) but I have to make my deadline of going to bed by 10:30... However, the point of this story is that I haven’t been able to focus on one art form. I no longer want to see this as a negative thing. I have decided that I don’t need to discount what I do because I am interested in so many forms of expression. I am not a dilettante, I am a multi-disciplinary artist. I am spider woman, spinning twelve webs at once. It makes me kind of dizzy. I may not achieve as much at each one, or my progress may be slow, but that doesn’t make what I do less valid. I couldn’t possibly choose just one art form, and I don’t have to. But I do think it would be nice to have the experience of focusing on something for a little while. Say, a month at a time. This is how Gretchen Rubin formed her Happiness Project by focusing on one thing each month. For my project, I like the idea of the focus being the art form (or maybe sometimes a project). I am considering adding one aspect of life that I am focusing on as well. Something I want to bring light to, in order to make a change. I know this month is more than half over, but I definitely think drawing has been the focus and will continue to be the focus of this month. After all, it was while drawing that I had this realization.

Time & Unhappiness

DAY 17

Time is has become my enemy. But also my teacher.

According to Eckhart Tolle time is ego. This is what he has said about the subject:

“To be identified with your mind is to be trapped in time: the compulsion to live almost exclusively through memory and anticipation.”

“Why does the mind habitually deny or resist the Now? Because it cannot function and remain in control without time, which is past and future, so it perceives the timeless Now as threatening. Time and mind are in fact inseparable.”

I find that one of the biggest hinderances to my creativity and happiness is my perception of time. I constantly feel rushed, I have this idea that is well engrained that everything I do has to be done as quickly as possible. I don’t know where this idea comes from. It’s interesting because I come from one of the quickest places on Earth and I now live in one of the slowest places on Earth. If I can’t do something with presence, meaning, while feeling connected to the present, then I tend to feel anxious and mentally unfocused. There is no real joy when we aren’t present. Even if we get joy from a memory or from a fantasy, we are still missing out on what is actually happening. Feeling time pressure takes all the pleasure out doing. When I start to notice this, it means I have to stop doing and find my way back to presence. Usually physical activity is the best way back to presence. Or going into the receptive state. My favorite way is to lie on the floor, listening to calming music on headphones and look up at our beautiful palapa ceiling.

My perception of time also creates a lack of patience. With myself, and with those closest to me: especially Lucas, and Emilio. If I take away the idea that certain things needed to happen in a certain time frame (which usually is: right now), then there’s this sudden feeling of relief, that everything is as it should be. Going back to what I wrote the other day: I can have it all. Just not all at once. This is especially important to remember because I am trying to do so many things at once—I am the spider building 12 webs. If I am really building 12 webs at once, the progress I make on each will be much slower than if I was only to work on one at a time. With Emilio it’s the same. If I ask Emilio to do something, and he’s in the middle of doing something else, he won’t do what I ask until he feels done with what he’s working on. And even though he’s playing, he’s really working. For children, play is their work. Play is the work of childhood. It’s their most important form of learning. If I am patient and let go of the time line that it needs to happen now because I want it to happen now, what usually happens is in a minute or so, he tells me he’s done, and then he’s ready to do the thing I asked. He wasn’t being defiant. He was busy working. With Lucas, it’s also the same, I could prevent so much frustration if when I asked Lucas to do something, if I was no longer attached to when it needed it happen. I am a doer, and he is a thinker. He thinks things through before he does something. I just jump in and figure it out as I do it. When I trust his way, and stop trying to control it, he responds better to me, and he is more likely to do what I ask because he feels free to do it the way he wants instead of responding to me as “the taskmaster.”

Lately, in particular, I have been under my own spell of feeling rushed. It causes anxiety and it makes it hard to focus. I especially feel it in relation to my blog posts. The pressure I put on myself to post everyday can be both motivating and paralyzing. Tonight, instead of going into a heady process, I decided to use an expressive arts modality to work with my issue about time. I drew this picture, which expresses the constraints that time, and ultimately, ego puts on my experience.

Then, I drew a picture, purely from the unconscious, of the image I have of what it would be like with out the self-imposed constraints that time puts on me. I’ll refrain from delving into a deep analysis of the drawing for now (as is my tendency), and let it speak for itself in its yet to be finished state. (When Emilio saw my drawing, he wanted to draw on it too, and I let him! Can you see which marks are his?

The drawing is quite different from my usual style—a bit out of my comfort zone. I think the new style was inspired by some drawings my mother drew recently and also by the film Ponyo by the Sea, by the great Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki. (I met him once when I worked as the Directors’ Liaison at the NY Film Festival, when his film Princess Mononoke was screened. He is a huge celebrity in Japan, which I got to witness when a mob of fans came up to him at the film festival.) His animation is breathtakingly beautiful and imaginative. The stories are sophisticated and delightful and are immersed in Japanese mythology, they often have strong, yet complex female heroines, and promote environmentalism. If you haven’t seen his films, I strongly recommend watching them. Most especially Ponyo by the Sea, My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away and Princess Mononoke. The versions we have of Ponyo and Totoro are only in Japanese. These are the first films Emilio watched--they’re so visual, he never seemed to mind that he couldn’t understand the language. Or perhaps he has picked up some Japanese from them. Maybe one day I’ll watch them in English.

In honor of my letting go of the time pressure I put on myself, I didn’t do this post last night. And so I broke my commitment a little--which I don’t like to do. But it really helped to focus on drawing and to let go of feeling rushed. On top of that, it helped me to keep my new resolution of going to bed earlier and waking up earlier. Last night, for the first time in who knows how long, I went to bed at 10:30 and woke up at 6:30, a few minutes before sunrise. I took a walk up the small mountain near us and even though I didn’t get to work on the blog as Emilio was awake before I got back, it was refreshing to have some time to myself in nature.  

Keeping Balance

DAY 16

Speaking of balance, from yesterday’s post... I struggled a lot today, which let me know I am out of balance. I am out of balance with this blog. Spending too much time working on it every night (2-3 hours), going to bed too late, waking up tired with Emilio. Feeling irritable and not remembering to slow down enough to enjoy life. The problem with being ambitious, is forgetting that non doing and doing just for fun are also important. For every truth, its opposite is also true. I have been too focused on trying to accomplish things which brings out the “taskmaster” in me. (The part of me that has endless tasks and to do lists and little patience for how long they take to get done.) The result is I become perfectionistic and anxious and constantly feel rushed. Feeling rushed is one of my biggest blocks to happiness.

Resolutions are forming for the week:

1.    I want to to get 8 hours of sleep each night. I also want to try going to bed earlier and getting up earlier.

2.   I want to spend less time working on my blog and trying to accomplish things in general and more time relaxing and having fun. (Not to say my blog isn’t fun. But it isn’t relaxing. It’s very stimulating, and it’s hard not to want to make every entry as intricate and thorough as possible. But I need to lighten up with it a bit, or I won’t last the full year.) Maybe I will experiment with writing earlier in the day.

3.   I want to take the pressure off--stop myself from feeling rushed by reminding myself it’s okay to slow down.

4.   I want to set up my sewing space so I can start sewing again. If I sew something, that’s great. But I don’t HAVE to.

Here’s something I wrote in my journal several months ago:

Being happy is a choice, 

and you have to work at it, 

or at least put things in place, 

(according to your heart)

so you can open up to grace

the grace state of happiness =

gentle attention + discipline + compassion

Here’s something I read today by Carl Jung:

Meaning comes... “when people feel they are living the symbolic life, that they are actors in the divine drama. That gives the only meaning to human life; everything else is banal and you can dismiss it. A career, producing of children, are all maya (illusion) compared to that one thing, that your life is meaningful.”

I think Carl Jung is rad. In the true meaning of the word, radical. He is the grandfather of the art therapies, and the indirect grandfather of AA. (He believed spirituality was a cure for addiction.) His theories on the process of individuation and archetypes are gorgeous. I need to read more of his works. I will do a future post about his theories and how I have integrated them into my life. I also want to see that movie called A Dangerous Method about his relationship to Freud.

Here are some things that made me happy today:

I went out to our new microbrew pub to hear our friends play some great music: a mix of rock, classic r & b, and even some swing! Some of us danced like no body’s business. I love living in a small town where going out means just a few people enjoying music, there’s always room on the dance floor, there’s parking right out in front, there’s no traffic, and I almost always see someone I know.

I borrowed my mother in law’s ukelele and started writing my first ukelele song. Ukeleles are fun to play and their sound is so cute and old-timey. 

Today is Mexican Independence day. A real fervor. Everyone was at the beach, or out on the streets. There were celebrations galore.

Already I’ve kept my resolution, this post only took an hour to write (with a few interruptions.)

Thinking about Happiness

DAY 14

I’ve been gathering my thoughts on happiness. I’ve been thinking a happiness project is a lifelong pursuit, an orientation, a process, but it’s never a fully-realized place. It’s not perfection. It’s not a permanent state. I have often had difficulty with the word “happy.” A lot of people do. Few admit to being happy, especially people who live on the East Coast of the US. To me the word happy comes with a feeling of pressure and disappointment--I should be happy, but I’m not. I used to think happiness was complacency. It sounded boring. Or it was a feeling that was fleeting, just as all feelings are. But now, I see happiness in a different way. I see it as a worthy goal to set out for yourself. 

As we evolve we learn about ourselves--what our unique and universal needs are, what our individual and situational limitations are, and then we gain acceptance of those needs and limitations. We start to learn how to go about getting those needs met given the limitations we have. Of course this is an ever evolving process, but I started to feel like an adult (at age 30) when I started to think this way. This is partly what the pursuit of happiness is about. But it’s also about something more than basic needs. It’s about growth and evolution, and connection, living out your potential, not only as an individual, but as a family, a community, a society. It’s about aligning your inner life’s purpose with your outer life’s purpose (this idea comes from the book A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle, a book I return to over and over.) There is real effort involved in trying to be happy. And then, sometimes all that is needed is surrender. The practice of balance is also integral to the practice of happiness. We never actually achieve perfect balance, as something is always out of balance a little bit. The idea is that we are always trying to be balanced, like a yogi practicing tree pose, making micro adjustments several times a second, trying to keep the pose. Sometimes we lose our balance and fall out of the pose, other times we become as graceful as a tree, and can even close our eyes. We do the same with our lives--sometimes I fall off my path for several years at a time, and rebalancing requires therapy and major life changes, and sometimes the balancing happens within a single day, the adjustments are small enough that no one would notice. What needs to be in balance depends on the individual, of course. But there are some universals for all of us: some combination of the physical, mental/emotional, spiritual. We all need a sense of inner and outer purpose. I realize that I can’t have it all. At once. But I can have it all spread over a lifetime. Once we accept our limitations, we can let go of our expectations, and give our attention to what’s happening right now. We can try to find balance through out a day, or we can try to find balance over a lifetime. The range of balance is up to each individual.

I also have come to believe that happiness is a choice. It has to be something you want first. It doesn’t often feel like a choice, it is so easy to feel like a victim of our situation or ourselves. I make an exception for people who suffer from severe depression, mental illness, physical illness--sometimes our faculties are too damaged or restricted to be able to make choices. However, no matter what difficulty life gives us, we still have a choice in how we react, what story we tell about ourselves and our situation. With practice, I can now start to make choices that will bring happiness (not only for me, but for the people around me). We are used to having certain thoughts or experiences that bring up certain feelings. In fact, there are patterns of synapses that fire in our brain that occur based on certain stimulus. After years of practice, our brains become trained to release certain chemicals that make us feel a certain way. Our brains are malleable, however, and we can change the patterns of how the synapses fire. It takes awareness, and effort. Once we slow down enough to notice the thoughts and reactions that cause unhappiness, we can start to feel empowered to make a change. The most powerful way to make that change, I believe, is to get out of the head. To stop thinking. A cycle of thought can be the most destructive of activities. If I notice myself thinking thoughts that cause unnecessary suffering, I turn my attention to something else, to whatever’s available to me, especially the physical realm. The quality of light in the room, the callous on my foot, my breathing, the sound of trucks driving up the hill. That momentary shift can be revolutionary, even if it only lasts a few seconds. Each time I have that shift in consciousness, my attachment to my thoughts loosens. Every shift brings a little glint of empowerment.  Meditation practice has been proven to help us develop awareness, take control over negative thinking, reduce addictive cravings, as well as many other mental and physical health benefits. I believe a mindful arts practice is another way to increase awareness. It is a more active form of consciousness raising. In fact, any activity if it is done mindfully, can increase awareness. I believe mindful art making (in any form), is a particularly uplifting, and beautiful way to increase awareness.

In her book The Happiness Project, Gretchen Rubin (to whom I’ve sent an email about how she inspired this project) lays out some guidelines to start your own happiness project. I thought I’d try experimenting with her basic method here. First she suggests identifying what interests you and brings you joy and then what causes more difficult feelings, such as anger and remorse. I’ve been collecting lists like this in my journal for a few decades. Resolutions, what I need more of, what I need less of, goals, dreams, etc. Of course they’re always changing and shifting, but the same themes return over and over again. 

She came up with many resolutions based on what she believed needed changing in her life, that she put into practice each month over the whole year. Gretchen also came up with a list of lessons she learned while becoming an adult which she calls Secrets of Adulthood. Additionally she made a list of 12 commandments that were to help her keep her resolutions. Now I think my system will be a little different, as I imagine I will add to my resolutions through out the year, as well as secrets my secrets of adulthood. My lists will evolve as I continue to do this daily project of sharing writing and images, while trying to bring more consciousness, productivity and creativity into my life. I have started my lists, but I will share them in a later post.

Here is list of books on the art and science of happiness, published on an a very interesting website Lucas just turned me onto called, Brain Pickings: “a human-powered discovery engine for interestingness.”  Click the yellow star. 

Art with Children

Last winter, Emilio, who was two-and-a-half at the time, started to get interested in drawing and painting. I had gotten him an easel with a dry erase board on one side and a chalk board on the other, and a roll of butcher paper to use for painting. He took to painting right away. I was amazed by how careful he was in his choice of colors and strokes. He actually seemed to be thinking about what the painting needed next. I consider this a spiritual approach to art, an inner knowing about what the piece needs as if its future were predetermined. I discovered abstract art in this way. 

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As a child I made hundreds of little pen and ink drawings in little black notebooks. I remember the day I discovered this particular style of drawing. I suddenly realized all I had to do was listen to what the paper needed next on its surface, and then draw it to the best of my ability. Much like improvisation. It was if the unconscious had its own particular destiny. And sometimes the most appropriate language of the unconscious was abstraction. One school morning when I was about eight years old, I was drawing a picture in the little office of our house. I was supposed to be getting ready for school, but somehow I got entranced by a little sketch I was making of a monster who was pooping out some sort of abstract shape. My mother, who is a painter, suddenly discovered me and was about to scold me for the fact that I was going to be late for school, but when she what I was drawing, she couldn’t help but praise me because she saw how intently I was drawing and she liked the drawing. She saw that I was discovering a new way of drawing. It was then that I realized the idea of art being holy on some level, and that it may be more important than other more practical things, like getting to school on time. This was a wonderful thing growing up in my family. Art came before other activities. Both my parents value art as a form of communication and presence. When I was in high school, I started making abstract paintings--my parents gave me a book for my birthday called The Spiritual in Art: Abstract Painting 1890-1985. This book expressed my language.

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I love watching Emilio discover his own painting and drawing styles. He had one phase that lasted a few weeks where he experimented with little groupings of energy connected by line. (Drawing above on left is an example of it.)  It’s very inspiring to watch him discover and play with form and line and color. I think we all need to draw this way sometimes. Creating marks because we want to see what it will look like and feel like. Not because we have a plan. I started to draw with Emilio and he would sometimes make marks on my drawing. At first I was annoyed because he broke the rule we’re always taught: “you’re not allowed to draw on someone else’s drawing.” But then I started to get curious about the idea of embracing the presence of his haphazard marks over or near my more controlled marks. Again, I learned to let go of my preconceived notion of how something is supposed to look, and realized his style with my style was really fun to look at. So I got out a bunch art cards and had him draw on one, and then give it to me and then I added something to what he drew. Then we tried the reverse, where I drew on a card, and he got to draw on it next. This is what we made:

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A few months ago, Emilio’s friend Georgie, who is one year older, came over for a sleepover. The three of us sat and made a drawing together. I had the middle of the paper, and each boy had a side of the paper. This is what we drew:

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Drawing with children is inspiring and fun. I recommend trying it. If you don’t have a child at home, try drawing with your inner child. I am sure s/he would love the attention.

temporary art

DAY 13

When I went to La Paz, I also purchased a new set of dry erase markers to use with my various dry erase boards. Each marker has its own eraser at the tip of it. Today I cleaned the house and moved my office space from the bodega to the living room so that we could put the rest of our stuff into our bodega. I created a little nook for myself with bookshelves, desk, dry erase board, art supplies  inside our vintage coleman icebox. The wooden cubby box I bought at the segunda the other day stacked above the coleman. I tried to put my markers out of sight from Emilio, who has a keen eye for new things in the house. Especially a brand new set of markers! But sure enough, even though they were out of his reach, he somehow found his way to them while my back was turned. I told him they were mine (sometimes we actually fight over toys!) but he could use them as long as he was gentle with them. Lucas suggested we get out my largest dry erase board (the one I use when I teach workshops) and draw on the floor. Emilio loved drawing with the markers on the large smooth board. But what he loved even more was erasing! He was careful to erase every single mark. We came up with a game where I would draw something, and he would guess what it was in a funny, round about way: Him talking to himself: “Is it a rug? no, it’s not a rug. Is it a car? No it’s not a car. Is it a pig? Yes, it is a pig!” He had such fun getting to erase anything I drew. It was hard for me at first, but then I realized it was a great feeling to let go of my ego. (We feel attached to objects (even art objects) because we identify with them--they are a part of us.) We have another similar game where I build something with bristle blocks and he gets to destroy it. The one rule is he has to wait until I’m done making it before he can smash it apart. With this game as well, it was hard at first for me to watch him destroy something I had made. But I got used to it, after all, and now I find the game invigorating. After all, destruction is a part of the creative cycle.

Tonight, like last night, I was at a loss for what to write about. I felt I have been too heady lately, and I wanted to get into an art process. Lucas suggested I bring out the dry erase board again. So I propped the board on my bed, put some headphones on, listened to music (a mix including: Chopin and Ratatat) and drew using 4 of the 6 markers in about 20 minutes. This is what I made:

It was very fun to draw with dry erase markers with expressiveness. (I also love office art. Art done with office supplies, or art done at work. I have a growing series of projects on this theme.) And then, I knew it was time to erase it. But of course I photographed it too. And then I erased it. I hesitated for a moment, and then I erased. Again, the same exhilaration.

Start From Where You Are

DAY 12

Here I am with nothing to say.

For the past few weeks I’ve been taking a lot of notes. They pile up in my computer, and in my journal. They will all eventually become something cohesive. A book, perhaps, or maybe something less concrete. Ideas and thoughts tumble out of me, I write them down as quickly as I can, often another one comes before I have finished writing the last one.

But now, I am here with nothing to say.

So I am going to reveal a little of my process, by sharing with you some of my recent notes:

I feel like a spider, simultaneously building several webs at once.

* * * *

For creative flow and productivity:

If you come to an obstacle with a project, immediately move onto something else, to keep the momentum going. Therefore you need several projects going on at once, so you can easily move from project to project, instead of letting the obstacle stop you from being productive at all. 

* * * *

A bohemian lives outside the laws of culture, while engaged in the ideas of culture.

* * * *

When I was in graduate school for counseling psychology and expressive arts therapy, my friend  Holly and I connected with a phrase: “start from where you are.” One day I was talking to Holly about how I was having trouble with my music, and I listed off my criticisms of myself. She suggested we write a song about it, and we did that night. We both contributed lyrics about the things we told ourselves when we felt stuck with making music. We later recorded it and sang it as a duet with our guitars at graduation. 

Where I am

by Holly Mae & Zoë

I’m so bored

With playing the same chords.

Over and over and over again.

My friend says

This is a test

Of how you’re living in the world.

I think she may be right.

But I don’t want to admit it tonight.

I can’t strum up.
It fucks my thumb up.
I can only play rock-n-roll down strums.

I can’t sing

for anything.

But I got a voice that’s shy and course.

And you’re using it right now.
You don’t have a choice anyhow.

I’m gonna start from where I am.

(I think I like the way I play.)

With no memory or plan.

(I think you’ll love me anyway.)

I’m gonna offer who I am.

(I think I like the way I play.)

I’ll be my own biggest fan.

I’m so mad cuz

I’m so bad at

Lyrics that don’t really rhyme so good.

I’m so sad

Cuz I’m not rad, 

Or hip or cool or whatever the word is.

At least you’re holding your guitar

This is where we are so far.

I’m gonna start from where I am.

(I think I like the way I play.)

With no memory or plan.

(I think you’ll love me anyway.)

I’m gonna offer who I am.

(I think I like the way I play.)

I’ll be my own biggest fan.

Do Do Do

Do Do Do

Do Do DO DO DO DO Do

The idea is whenever you want to make art, (or do anything for that matter) but you feel stuck, start from wherever you are at that moment. If you’re feeling frustrated, or bored, or insecure. That’s where you create from. That is what you need to express because that is where you are. If you deny where you are/what you are feeling in the moment, it won’t go away. It will linger in your subconscious and get in the way of whatever you’re trying to do. 

Another way to see this idea comes from a phrase I learned during my two year study of the Meisner technique, Joe and Phil, our teachers, had put a large banner in our acting studio which read:

THAT WHICH HINDERS YOUR TASK IS YOUR TASK

Meisner was all about the truth of the moment. When the moment is gone, you discover and react to a new emotional truth. It is really a practice in staying present, especially emotionally present. When I was studying counseling psychology and worked as a therapist, my Meisner training was very useful. The basic technique we learned, which is the underlying technique of all his teachings is called “the repetition technique.” Two actors go up on stage, each of them sits in a chair facing the other one.  A and B. A makes a truthful statement about something s/he notices about B. B repeats the statement, but from his/her point of view. EG: A: “You’re smiling.” B: “I’m smiling. A: “You’re smiling.  B: “Yes, I’m smiling. A: “You’re smiling,” (starts to laugh). B: (starts to laugh) “You’re laughing!” A: “Yes, I’m laughing!” They both laugh. Then a new moment begins. Now it does not sound interesting if you just read the transcript, but to watch the actors’ behavior change in response to one another is intoxicating. The thing is, they’re not being actors. They are being themselves. The experience of doing the repetition technique was also intoxicating. Revealing and expressing your true emotions as they continuously unfold but with out analysis and story. When watching others, I got better and better at knowing when the actor was being congruent. That was our teacher’s job-- to make sure the actors responded to the present moment, and didn’t hold onto what had already happened. It’s amazing how quickly we change emotionally, if we are really attuned to another human being.  Being a therapist is very similar to this, the therapist attunes his/herself to his/her client, and stays present with the client, no matter what emotional journey the client goes on. The goal is not to judge, but to stay connected, and listen. I have taught this technique with different people who were not actors. They boldly jumped tried it, and instantly came alive from the experience. I also showed this technique to my parents. After just a few minutes of repetition, I had never seen them so giddy. 

I started from where I was, which was emptiness, went to a few random notes, and ended up remembering my acting training.

I’ll end with something I thought about today:

Through the process of this project, I am starting to believe that consciousness might be one of the key underlying elements of happiness. If you are conscious then you are able to know what you need, and take care of yourself. If you are able to take care of yourself, then you can see the world from kinder, clearer eyes, and therefore do what is right for others. Something to think about.