To Do Collage

ZOELAB DAY 73

Indirectly inspired by assignment #56 from Learning to Love You More, mentioned in art world post, I made a collage. It started out free style--I leafed through some old magazines, cutting out images that had significance to me, but instead of being a portrait of my friend’s desires (assignment #56), it ended up being a visual to do list. As I picked out the images, I realized the ones that had significance to me reminded me of things that have been floating around in my head have I have been needing/wanting to do. I added the letter-punched red labels after the fact, simply because I had just rediscovered the punching gun that Lucas found at a thrift store when I opened my hot pink plastic 1970’s Samsonite suitcase, which is the holder of my vast collection of collage papers, fake tattoos (one made by artist Kiki Smith!), and stickers. (I still have a sticker collection, and stuffed animal collection and I’m nearly 40. I have gotten in heated discussions with my 3 year old son over whose Snoopy is whose.) How fun it is to reconnect with all those wonderful tools. I really recommend trying the visual to do list. I had a lot of fun with it. It loosened the pressure I normally feel when I make a written to do list. It would be interesting to make one that is pure image, with no words. Perhaps the images would start to have an unconscious affect on us, subliminally inspiring us to perform the tasks on the do list. What if the tasks on the list were significantly more boring than the ones illustrated above? That would be the real challenge, making boring tasks like “pay water bill” look enticing to ourselves.

Try making a visual to do list and let me know how it goes. Send me your images!

another museum adventure

To continue on the theme of photographing museums, I want to share some images that I took last August in my new favorite museum, The Tate Modern in London. Lucas, Emilio and I took a grand European tour that summer and when were in London visiting our friends, I got to spend a very happy dayalone, wandering around the museum, which shows exciting and eclectic contemporary and modern art collections, in a very impressive industrial space. The museum allows photography, the general admission is free, and it also offers many interactive resources as a way to engage in the art. Though out the time I was in the museum, I periodically welled up with emotion because I was so inspired by the space and the art, and after two years of motherhood, it felt like the beginning of my return to art. I had forgotten to bring my journal with me, but I had my ipod, which has a voice recorder. Here is an excerpt from what I said: 

“I also realized that being at this museum alone is what I really needed because I have been depressed and lost and disconnected.... this happens to me in life and it makes sense but, it’s been hard being a mom and being a wife because I feel like I have no core and I’ve sort of lost track of the other things I care about, my passions. I realize that... I unconsciously think: ‘my life is over, now that I’m a mom that’s all I’m ever gonna be and I won’t ever have time to do any of the other things that I love to do.’ And whenever I have a few minutes or hours it’s not so easy to reconnect with who I was, or who I would like to be... Believing in art as a religion, not just something to do, but it being a deepest expression, not being lost in the world of practicality.”

Here are some photos I took that day of people entering the museum in its great hall--the last one is a video.

museum adventures

De Young in San Francisco

ZOELAB DAY 71

To continue with my insider/outsider perspective of the art world theme, and to honor the photo from yesterday’s post, (which was taken at Mass MoCA) I want to share some photographs that I have taken in some of my favorite places to photograph: museums. There are not very many museums in the world that will let you take photographs inside them. But there are a few. Taking pictures is is a way to have a more interactive experience when I go into a museum. Instead of just being an observer, I become participant. I go from outsider to insider. But, in the end, I feel even more like an outsider.

My interest in this activity started when I was nineteen years old and visited the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. The Musée d’Orsay was a railway station (built at the turn of the 20th century) that opened as a museum in 1986. It is a beautiful space, and when I first visited there, they allowed photography. In those days, I used a 35 mm Nikon FG. I have since lost all those photos (they were actually stollen from my darkroom drawer in college). I loved photographing the art, with the light glowing down from the magnificent dome glass ceiling. I returned to the museum last year with my French aunt, (twenty years later) excited to re-experience the museum with my digital camera, and found out that they no longer allowed photography. Needless to say, I was very disappointed. Since then, one of my other favorite museums to take photos in is Mass MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art.) My parents live an hour away, and every year when I visit them, we make a family pilgrimage. Taking photos there has become a big part of the ritual, especially between me and my brother.

Mass MoCA in North Adams, Massachusetts

de Young in San Francisco

de Young in San Francisco

de Young in San Francisco

Museo de la Historia Natural, La Paz, México

Mass MoCA, in North Adams, Massachusetts

Mass MoCA, in North Adams, Massachusetts

Mass MoCA, in North Adams, Massachusetts

Mass MoCA, in North Adams, Massachusetts

Mass MoCA, in North Adams, Massachusetts

You may ask: is this intellectual property infringement? And the honest answer is: I don’t know. But I do find it interesting to think about: seeing art, and the space that contains it, from a different person’s perspective. Not necessarily as the artist, or the museum, intended. Does that photograph of art become art or is it a sneaky reproduction?

Art World: Outsider/Insider, Part Two

ZOELAB DAY 70

Meanwhile, I was going graduate school school to become an expressive arts therapist. I thought of it as the ideal career for someone like me. I could continue to express myself in all the varying art forms, free from the constraints of making money within that context, and at the same time, I could make a living as an expressive arts therapist. Through my three years of school, and two years (one year overlapping with school) working as an expressive arts therapist, I developed a new relationship to the arts. Making art was no longer about ego gratification and being clever, but it became a soul need. It became a way of living. A way of making meaning out of life, so that I could have a more playful, creative relationship with myself, and with others. It was a way to take myself less seriously, but at the same time take my feelings more seriously. I found something I really believed in. Making art in this way is magical, deep and satisfying. However, as I headed deeper into the professional world of psychology, with its licensing hours, ethical codes and boundaries, I started to feel uncomfortable. I asked myself is this what I really want? I started to find myself feeling less whole, and more split. The connection I had with being an artist in the world started to slip away, but I wasn’t willing to give it up. I wasn’t willing to put it into hiding. In an expressive arts therapy based desire to integrate this split between the Professional and the Artist, I came up with an idea for a sitcom character--an untrained working therapist, who was very unprofessional, with very poor boundaries because what she really wanted to do was to be an artist. Every week she had a new fantasy, and as she sits with clients she fantasizes about her other life. I did not make the show, and we moved to Mexico soon after. (Since then I have been developing the show within the new context of Baja, and plan to start shooting in 2013).

It wasn’t until last year, when I was planning workshops for Art For Life,  my organization that I am building in Mexico, where I teach cultivating creativity workshops and do creativity coaching, that the realization came to me. What if the work I do helping people to access their creativity IS art in itself? After all, this could be a form of art as social practice. When I think about it, it is not so different from what an expressive arts therapist is trained to do. With expressive arts therapy, “the work” or the therapeutic relationship is private, and therefore personal only. But with social practice art, “the work,”  while still just as personal, becomes public, and therefore universal. In this way, the work benefits not only the teacher/therapist/artist (me) and the participant/student/artist, but also, the public, who witnesses the interaction (whether through recordings, or as a live audience.) Another important difference between expressive arts therapy and social practice art is the context, and the language of aesthetics. My goal is to make Art For Life (its teachings and experiences) relevant in different contexts, using distinct languages of expression. Some workshops will be relatable to people with no arts training, while some will behelpful to people who are fully engaged in the art world. I am interested in connecting the gap between the sophistication and internationality of the art world and the depth and empathy of the expressive arts therapy world. The art world can be kind and the expressive arts world can be hip. 

The internet is an integrative space that can hold the kind of approach I am speaking of. This blog is, in itself, my foray into social practice. My goal is to make it more interactive--so that it feels more of a mutual experience. I want to share one of my favorite examples of participatory art--the project by Harold Fletcher and Miranda July called Learning to Love You More.  If you are interested in social practice/participatory art, please write to me and share your knowledge, as this is just a starting place for me. I have been sharing with you a a new thing, a delicate thing. The first seed of a possible direction of my ever-evolving desire to integrate my dreams, passions and skills, so as not to feel compartmentalized, so that I may live the enchanted life of my dreams, and to help others live their creative dreams. Ultimately, to live life as creatively as possible, to live life as art.

Art World: Outsider/Insider, Part One

ZOELAB DAY 69

I have always had an ambivalent relationship with the visual Art World. Even though my mother is a painter, with an MFA in art, and I was a Studio Art major in college and grew up in New York City, getting to go to some of the finest museums and galleries in the world and I have dedicated to my life to the study, practice and teaching of the arts, there was a clear moment when I decided that I would not become a professional visual artist in the traditional sense. I knew, somehow, that I did not want to make art to sell in museums or galleries. I have had a few pieces in shows here and there, but really, it has not been my goal. This project ZOELAB is the most I’ve put myself out there as an artist in my life.

The art world, with its erudite sleekness and exclusivity, is both a real and conceptual place to which I have felt intuitively I don’t belong. And yet, there is a paradox. Because I also feel a connection to the art world, I understand its language, but yet something has been missing. I love to go to museums and galleries. I love to read art criticism (or used to) and have heady discussions with artists about aesthetics and contexts. Many of my friends are artists who are entrenched in the art world. And yet, since I was a small child, art has always meant something else to me, more personal, less categorizable, something in the realm beyond judgment. I felt that art belonged in a different context than a museum or gallery, and yet I loved visiting those very places. And even if I can participate in the culture around art with which I am so familiar, it somehow does not include me. Perhaps it is because art and commodity don’t go together for me. Perhaps it is because even though I love visiting museums, they still feel like places of restriction and institution. Perhaps this is also because I have not yet found the right medium.  That is... until now.

I have dabbled with the idea of performance art. I can get excited about conceptual art. I have taken a lifetime’s worth of photographs, and yet, I have no interest in putting them in galleries. But, there is one art movement that is gaining more and more recognition that genuinely calls to me. It is an art movement that is accepted in the art world, and yet, by its definition, is difficult to commodify. It does not have a clear title, but is often referred to as social practice or participatory art. From Wikipedia: “Participatory art is an approach to making art in which the audience is engaged directly in the creative process, allowing them to become co-authors, editors, and observers of the work. Therefore, this type of art is incomplete without the viewers physical interaction. Its intent is to challenge the dominant form of making art in the West, in which a small class of professional artists make the art while the public takes on the role of passive observer or consumer, i.e., buying the work of the professionals in the marketplace... It may also be categorized under terms including relational art, social practice, community art, and new genre public art. Folk and tribal art are also considered to be "participatory art" in that many or all of the members of the society participate in the making of art. While a painter uses pigment and canvas, and a sculptor wood or metal, the social practice artist often creates a scenario in which the audience is invited to participate. Although the results may be documented with photography, video, or otherwise, the artwork is really the interactions that emerge from the audience's engagement with the artist and the situation."  Here is a quote I found by Andy Horwitz on the site culturebot from his essay on social practice in the context of performance. “...the emergence of social practice as a trend speaks to two fundamental shifts in American culture: one, a broad re-thinking of the role of the arts in society and two, a rejection of corporate capitalism’s demand that citizenship is predicated on being a consumer, not a creator or empowered participant in civic life.” When I first heard about “participatory art” something in me awakened and I knew I had discovered an art form for me. I love its emphasis on altruism and its stance against commodification. Also, I am interested in playing with outsider forms that question the institutional form.

To be continued...

Turning Against The Self

ZOELAB DAY 68

Buddha was said to have said: 

“not getting what you desire and getting what you desire 

can both be disappointing.”

Sometimes we get what we want, and we rejoice.

Sometimes we get what we want, and fear makes us recoil.

Sometimes we don’t get what we want, and we learn and grow.

Sometimes we don’t get what we want, and we turn against ourselves.

There are times when my heart opens up with desire. Especially around my birthday. But if things don’t go my way, sometimes I identify with the child in me, and let it be about the ego. I tell myself a story that makes it all about me. This is how children are in the world. Not only do they easily get disappointed, but they personalize, they think there must be something wrong with them, and that’s why they didn’t get what they wanted. As the story that I tell myself continues, as a balm for the disappointment, I see the cause to be direct action against me. As if the world wanted it that way. And then, instead of soothing the hurt child, I turn against her, unconsciously aligning myself with my projected view of the world. This is perhaps an adolescent response--thinking the world is paying attention to our disappointments. And that we are the only ones feeling that way. When really, the world is in a constant flux of a totality of disappointments and triumphs, as well as everything beyond.

You may be wondering, what kind of disappointments am I speaking of? They are the same disappointments we all feel in a daily way: we didn’t receive the phone call we were expecting, our favorite tea cup broke, our life doesn’t look quite like we want it to. But, when I really think about it, the greatest disappointment is usually in myself. Ultimately I am disappointed by my own abandonment--by not taking care of myself, not keeping my life in balance, not giving myself enough rest, not taking care of my own needs. It is a disruption of function within the inner family of the psyche. It is easy to blame the world, but it is impossible for the world to take responsibility. It is more effective, and far more empowering, to take responsibility for my own feelings, and my own actions or lack of actions. Of course sometimes events happen that are beyond our control, but still, we always have a choice in how we respond. And in how we care for ourselves. Often, when the heart is vulnerable and full of longing, it is a sign that the inner child is needing attention, and the inner adult self, whose job is it is to take care of the child, is wrapped up in the outer world that seems to have no room for those quiet soulful needs.

However, that is not the end of the story. Even after I’ve caused further suffering from turning against the little self while it already feels vulnerable, I realize that as soon as I start to have compassion again, and show kindness, the little self didn’t actually come to any permanent harm. It never seems too late to show kindness. Again, like a child, the self is resilient. It can endure great suffering, and responds well to compassion. It is soft, yet strong, like a jelly fish. Maybe it stings a little in self defense, and instead of breaking when poked, it gives just a little, and then its body fills back into the space after the aggravator is gone. 

I notice with three year old Emilio, whose ego is not yet fully formed, that he does not yet personalize his disappointment. If he feels disappointed, which sometimes happens several times a day, his response sometimes is to go into arage, but more and more often, his response is to go into a corner of the room and hide. He goes under a blanket or a desk or a table. Perhaps this is how he tends to the hurt part of himself, or perhaps he is ashamed. Or perhaps a little of both. Either way, after only a few minutes of hiding, he returns to his world of play, bounced back in full recovery (just like the jelly fish.)

Another way to see this cycle of separation and reunion is as a spiritual longing for connection with the The Self. Here is a poem by Rumi to illustrate:

Love Dogs

by Rumi

One night a man was crying,

                                                Allah! Allah!

His lips grew sweet with the praising,

until a cynic said,

                             “So! I have heard you

calling out, but have you ever

gotten any response?”

The man had no answer to that.

He quit praying and fell into a confused sleep.

He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of the souls,

in a thick, green foliage.

                                        “Why did you stop praising?”

“Because I’ve never heard anything back.”

                                                                   “This longing

you express is the return message.”

The grief you cry out from

draws you toward union.

Your pure sadness

that wants help

is the secret cup.

Listen to the moan of a dog for its master.

That whining is the connection.

There are love dogs

no one knows the names of.

Give your life

to be one of them.

GeGe & MeiMei, Part Two

Our feet at the beach in Rio 1999

ZOELAB DAY 67

The other lessons that came from Alexander were cultural. One day, sometime in the mid eighties, while waiting for the bus in Brooklyn, Alexander turned to me and gravely stated: “Promise me, Zoë, that you will never wear designer jeans.” I asked him why, and he said, “just promise me.” So I promised him. I didn’t figure that one out until a few years later. The ironic thing is the only designer jeans I have ever owned is a pair of turquoise Calvin Klein jeans that I had picked out and Alexander bought me as a birthday present three years ago.

And then there was the time I was sitting in my room, and Alexander walked in with a new record. It was David Bowie’s Changes. He showed it to me, and I asked him who it was, and he said David Bowie. I told him I thought he was a girl. And he said, well he’s not. Then he put the record on and I was transfixed. 

When Alexander was in college, he majored in religion and philosophy. He was very interested in Buddhism, as well as other eastern thought. I was a senior in high school at the time, and curious about Buddhism--he recommended that I read the book “What the Buddha Taught” by Walpola Rahula. I read it and recognized what the buddha taught to be truth. But I also knew that I was not ready to transcend my ego. I knew I was still addicted to the highs and lows that ego attachment brings, and that I had I would return to Buddhism later in life.

A year later, I was to go to Beijing for a summer with my high school Chinese class to do a summer course in Chinese language. While I was preparing for my trip, and starting to feel anxious about going so far away, Alexander tried to give me courage. He said, I have three pieces of advise for you about your time in China: “1) Don’t bring your walkman. 2) Speak as much Chinese as you can. 3) Stay aware.” I actually can’t remember if I followed the first piece of advice, but I did follow the second one. I pushed through my fears, and struck up conversations with Chinese people as much as I could. I even made some Chinese friends. But number 3 is a piece of advice from Buddha, via Alexander, that has been with me my whole life. The experience of being aware, being the observer, not only of others, but of my own thoughts, actions and interactions, has led to much wisdom and relief from suffering. It is a wonderful piece of advice for teenager (who can be so self conscious).

During a summer visit from college, my brother introduced me to yoga. This was still the 1980‘s when people still aerobisized. I didn’t know anyone else who did yoga. He would practice his poses on the porch of our house in the Berkshires daily, and I found it fascinating to watch. I took black and white photographs and wrote a poem about it called Yoga in Earshot. A year later, I bought a book on yoga, and started doing headstands in college. I have continued to practice for all these years.

In high school, the influence that my brother had on me made me feel different from people, and sometimes alienated. He initiated me into the world of cultural criticism and spirituality. He inspired me to be rigorous in my thinking and to question everything. He became an anthropologist, sublimating his personal cultural alienation into a discipline of social science. And I became a therapist/artist, sublimating my sensitivity and emotionality into artmaking and helping others. 

We have visited each other or traveled together in many parts in the world, including: Kenya, Tanzania, France, China, Vietnam, Brazil, Holland and Mexico. And now, in some ways, we are going in opposite directions--I have become a sort of society drop out, while at the same time using my memory and knowledge and personal experience to engage in a cultural dialogue. And him, a professor and writer in Amsterdam, living an urban plugged in life with all the bourgeois trappings. We are each going our own paths, influencing each other along the way. As I go, I continue to see all the little and big ways that Alexander’s early lessons have stayed with me. And now, more than ever. I probably won’t ever use Algebra or Latin ever again, and I do hope to play more basketball, but as I look at my life, I am continually reminded of his ideological and intellectual influence. He helped build my school confidence, and encouraged my development as an emotional spiritual intellectual. To illustrate his kind of influence, I will end with an excerpt from the personal statement I wrote for my undergraduate college application, which was an excerpt from my journal (which had only one section.) 

And now I know everyone needs a voice, each person has her own but she needs another to feed on. Another to accept hers and expand its possibilities, to go beyond what is expected. I know that no one at high school is that voice. Alexander is that voice. And even though I have discovered his voice is not always perfect, not always consistent, it is alive. It is there. Not everyone has, or knows they have, or knows they need a voice. A voice of love, of understanding, of influence. I know my own voice follows love; love of the abstract, the personal, the unique… I need a reason to be voice. It has to be person, someone to speak to me… a voice that speaks to mine… My dream is to be a voice. Maybe it is a voice that quivers or that is shy, sensitive, or silly, but it is a voice that communicates.

Okay, now we’re going to the beach.

GeGe & MeiMei, Part One

ZOELAB DAY 66

In honor of his visit, I want to write a post about the person who had the biggest idealogical influence on me during my coming of age--my older brother, Alexander. Just last night, we were having an intense conversation about how freeand authentic I feel in our new life in the desert, and how strange and surprising it is that my life has taken this direction. I found myself confessing how deeply anti-capitalist I’ve become. At first, I sensed a hint of defensiveness on his part--as he had just confessed to his recent shopping spree in LA. But then, the more we talked, he started to remember how it was when we were kids. When I was a young teenager, and he was an older teenager (he is three and a half years older) he would talk a lot about his alienation from American culture, and he would criticize not only capitalism, but the whole bourgeois way of life. There was a part of me that saw what he saw, and agreed with him, but I still loved shopping, American television and all the wonderful mass marketed consumer goods that America had to offer. To show how I grappled with his influence, I will quote from a section of my journal that I had called “Unorganized Thoughts.” My journal during that phase was a small 3 ring binder that had several sections separated by tabs, they were called: diary (a typical girls diary detailing dramas with friends, crushes, and reports of basketball games), Miscellaneous: Unorganized Thoughts, Writing, Vocabulary, and Lists (to do lists, Books I want to read, Famous Good Looking Men (formerly cute boys)). I was fifteen, a sophomore in high school, and he was eighteen, and was in his first year of college.

April 22, 1989: 

[This started out as a poem, but kind of became a diary entry.]

I am an observer

of words

of actions

of relationships

I am a poet

or am I?

Is it critical to be clever

when writing poetry?

yes, I mean that in both senses.

Alexander is a bohemian intellectual

Is that what I sometimes

think I am?

Though I do no hate all T.V. except Channel 13

and I don’t only watch foreign movies

and I am not totally against

superficiality.

Though should I be?

I am allowed to be different than him.

I wondered at first, where did this drive or interest that I was intellectual or anti-America, or at least against some of the things that America represents like: Capitalism and well I don’t know exactly. But my point is that all this thought was instigated by the influences my brother has on me... I can’t align myself in this world. What the hell am I...

EARLY TEACHINGS: ALEXANDER’S SUMMER SCHOOL 

BASKETBALL

The summer before 5th grade, Alexander decided that he was going to teach me how to play basketball. He took me every week to one of the schoolyards in our neighborhood, and showed me how to dribble and shoot. Sometimes we’d play “around the world” or “HORSE”. If there were other kids his age around, he’d play a little one-on-one, while I watched. Afterwards, he bought me a Welsh's Strawberry soda. There was only one store I knew of that sold it, and it was across the street from PS51-where the court was. I felt pretty cool playing basketball, and ended up playing on my school’s basketball team for seven years.

LATIN

The summer before 6th grade, before I was to enter a new school, a private school that didn’t have grades, but written reports, and taught subjects like painting, poetry, modern dance, Latin, Chinese, where you were encouraged to think for yourself and write essays, Alexander decided that I should learn Latin. He knew I would be learning Latin the upcoming year, but he wanted me to have a head start. We spent the summer at our house in The Berkshires, and Alexanderheld daily lessons on the grass. He even gave me quizzes. My first lesson was to memorize the conjugation of love: Amo Amas Amat Amamus Amatis Amant. I repeated over and over until it became an automatic mantra. And I still remember it. Though I never did study more than one year of latin--the next year I switched to Chinese.

ALGEBRA

The summer before 10th grade, Alexander decided it was time for me to learn algebra. Again, he wanted to me to be prepared for the subject when it was to be introduced the following school year. I don’t remember what instigated this, perhaps it was a compassionate response my expressions of insecurity about new school subjects. In Elementary school, I had had low self esteem and school anxiety. Every summer I would fear that I wouldn’t be able to handle the next grade. My parents had to reassure me by saying that everyone was going up a grade, and we would all be in it together. I don’t know if it was because of Alexander’s teachings, but I ended up loving algebra, and even though it was difficult, I did well in the class. There was something about the abstraction and the perfection that appealed to me. I really surprised myself with that one.

Deregulated, then Supported

ZOELAB DAY 65

My brother has come from Amsterdam for a visit! I am very happy about it.

The past few weeks, I got a little knocked off my routine due to work. My work is fun, and enlivening, but it brings me away from the inner world. It is a saving grace to have ZOELAB to bring me back to that other, emotional and subtle world of experience and expression. Normally, getting knocked off my routine would result in feeling lost, but thanks to this built in structure, I cannot get lost for very long.  This is something I like to teach in my workshops: structure or routine is very useful for our creative productivity.

I was feeling uninspired and exhausted and was considering giving in to the temptation of losing myself even more into someone else’s world in a movie rather than engaging in a ZOELAB process. I decided to check my email, and had received a birthday note from a dear artist friend and loyal reader who sent me some very inspiring words of encouragement about my new paintings, (and play dough) which lifted me up. It was just enough to give me the ignition to dig down through the tiredness, and produce another painting about the experience of deregulation and then support. I also had a wonderful phone conversation with another dear artist friend earlier today, which helped put into focus how important it is to support art-making--our own and each other’s. 

It’s a wonderful reminder to all who risk existing in the precarious and vulnerable territory of being an artist. I give a lot of thought to what it means to be an artist and how difficult it is and how strong one has to be. We live in a culture where the arts are not as supported as they should be. Not only on a governmental, financial level, but on an unconscious cultural level. We all carry around with us mostly unconscious assumptions about what it is to be an artist. There is a voice in us that supports those assumptions, the voice can be subtle, so it is not always easy to catch it. I have spoken with many self-professed and closeted artists about the discouraging voice they carry with them, and how often it keeps them doing what they need to do. It takes real strength and courage to keep creating, despite this voice, which I call the inner critic. The more aware we are of our inner critic and the familiar phrases it tells us, the more likely we are to defeat him/her. If we are not aware of the presence of the inner critic, we unconsciously project him/her onto others around us, or the general public, rather than seeing that our biggest detractor is most often inside us already. I know the inner critic to say such things as “no one cares about your art, it’s too personal. It’s not really art. It’s selfish to be an artist. Your writing is too serious, not enough humor. No one cares about abstract art. People feel alienated when you talk about spirituality.” Etc., etc. etc. I don’t mean to say that the inner critic doesn’t have some use, but too often it comes in too early or too strongly, before we are ready to put our work under the discerning and sometimes distorted eye of the inner critic.

I find that the antidote to the spell that the critic puts us under is reminding ourselves that it is not up to us to judge the work we make, we make art out of human and spiritual necessity. It is the need to express, communicate to ourselves and to others. To find different forms of language within the realm of imagination, dreams, emotion, the body. To use our creativity to find new ways of experiencing and describing that experience. We share our art with others so that we can make a full circle of connection. Not to judge or be judged. We all need to support ourselves and each other, so that we keep finding the courage to create.

Thank you to all of you that have encouraged and supported me in this project. Your encouragement inspires me to keep encouraging others.

Birthday Wishes

ZOELAB DAY 64

I turned 39 today. I worked all day and got to spend no time with family or friends. I got lots of virtual love but Little Zoë feels neglected. I am going to buy her a vintage “gold” heart necklace, break my sugar diet with a piece of wedding cake, and make a photo collage.

Checking In

ZOELAB DAY 63

It’s a new month, (my favorite) and the beginning of a new season. The busy-ness is upon me. Weddings and such. I wish I had more time to commune, relax, create, share on here. But in the spirit of keeping up, and not letting perfection get in my way, here is a list that sums up last month for me:

discovered new (for me) art form : 

illustrations using watercolor or gauche and fine pen!

discovered other new art form:

(photographic chronological autobiography)

got through summer and am enjoying early fall weather

Didn’t get any sewing done

Got to re-connect with old friends through internet

Discovered some amazing blogs

Found new ways to bring new readers to this blog

(through my grad school)

Received encouraging comments

Gave up sugar

Got sick and recovered twice

Experiencing the full circle contagion of inspiration

Is this daily project of ZOELAB increasing my happiness and creativity and connection to self and others?

YES

Is it creating a challenge with my relationship

with my family and housework?

YES

Is it worth it?

YES

Dia de los Muertos

ZOELAB DAY 62

It’s the first day of November. It’s also Dia de los Muertos. A day whereMexicans honor the dead. The two most recently deceased beings I know are Bashi, our friend Bruce’s white german shepard, and Da Sol, our friend Omar’s blue healer. Bashi died on Tuesday, October 23rd of old age, and complications arising from that old age. In the last year of her life, Bashi’s two hind legs no longer worked, but she was still able, miraculously, to swim and walk around by dragging her legs behind her. Da Sol, who was also quite old, died a few weeks ago shortly after receiving a hard kick from the neighborhood donkey, Einstein. Lucas and his sister, Emilia buried Bashi in the dark, on our land. Her owner was in Vera Cruz making his yearly pilgrimage to traditional parts of mainland Mexico to capture the enigmatically beautiful Dia de Los Muertos festivities. He owns the plot of land next to us, but the land was undiggable there, so she is resting very close to her home.

Because he is respectful, and speaks excellent spanish, Bruce has been given access to the some intimate moments of the reverent and ancient practices of honoring the dead. Some day, I would like to go with Bruce to witness the traditional Dia de Los Muertos celebrations. In the meantime, I can look at his vast collection of colorful and solemnly dignified images, which I had the privilege of working with closely when I designed his website. For our wedding present, Bruce gave us a large photo depicting hundreds of observers of the holiday in Chiapas. See below.

Day of the Dead, San Juan Camula, Chiapas by Bruce Herman

Getting Sugared Up on Halloween

ZOELAB DAY 61

We took Emilio to a Halloween party for kids at a local bar/cafe. Lucas had found a very official-looking NASA space suit at a thrift store in California--it just happened to fit Emilio perfectly. After we already had the suit, he said he wanted to be Spiderman, but we had no time to make him a Spiderman costume, so he had to be spaceman instead. It took a little cajoling (with the sweet sweet promise of sweet, sweet candy) to get him to wear it. But once it was on, it didn’t seem to bother him as he had many more important things on his mind. As Emilio is only three, and has not been in day care or preschool, he is still not used to large crowds of people. His normal super gregarious and expressive self shuts down and he becomes extremely shy. When he feels nervous he tends to put a finger in his nose, or mouth. It issomehow utterly heart breaking to watch this shy, sweet, innocent Emilio emerge amidst the sugar-driven chaos of Halloween. We witnessed the same thing, which was even more hectic last year, when we spent Halloween with some friends in Los Angeles.

The photo above depicts a game all the children were playing called freeze, where all the kids dance to music, and when they turn the music off, the kids are supposed to be still. If they move, then they are called out. Emilio did quite well at this game, as he did not move the entire time they played. He just stood quietly in his spaceman suit, with his finger in his mouth.

Now, let me explain that all that I have described above is pre-candy. Then the trick-or-treating happened. The adults at the party were given bags of candy to offer to the children who approached them. (No stoops and ringing doorbells like we had in Brooklyn). Once Emilio had gathered his loot, he was allowed to eat three pieces of candy. Within minutes of a few pieces gummy candy and a lollypop, Emilio brightened considerably. His eyes became wild and he was suddenly chatting it up with strangers about the robot boy he saw. Then he noticed that cartoons (vintage Scooby Doo) were being projected on a screen. For the rest of the evening, he sat, sucker in mouth, eyes glued to the soundless screen. During the car ride home, as he continued to suck on his lollypop (it took him the better part of an hour to finish it) came the question of whether there was gum in the center. As he is still too young to have gum, due to potential choking hazards, we were concerned about it. He refused to let me take the tiny bits of gum away from him, but eventually he spit them on the floor. Now, the issue of gum has special significance to Emilio. Because it the only treat he knows of that we never allow him to have, it has come to symbolize all that is good and great in the world of being older. He has often said, “If I grow up, maybe I can have some gum.” When Lucas and I repeat this line to each other, and he hears, he says: “hey that’s my question!” We didn’t realize it was a question, but I can see now, how it is.

After years of making a big effort to avoid giving anything sweet to Emilio, except for rare special occasions, we have come to a place with parentingwhere his asking for treats is a constant occurrence, and our giving in is much more than we would like. How I miss the days when he ate only plain yogurt, didn’t drink juice, and never asked for treats. Now, the first thing he says when he wakes up is: I want something sweet. We never give him candy (except for this Halloween) and we don’t keep any treats in the house. But now he’s wised up to the sweet things available at home and he will ask for honey, with yogurt. (Yes, in that order.) It’s a little scary how it has come to this. It is difficult in a country where strangers give sweets to Emilio every where we go. Sweets and children seem synonymous. Now, I can’t go blaming Mexico, but I know I must not be the only parent who struggles with issue of sweets (as well as video watching). These two things are some of the most addictive substances in the world, are unhealthy and have psychoactive effects. Yet... they are so hard to resist, bring such joy, and make great bargaining tools. A daily parental dilemma for sure.

One of the benefits of my recent two week long intestinal bug, is that it got me to stop eating anything with sugar. Now I am not as much of a sweet tooth as some people, so it wasn’t that difficult to give up. But, what I did notice, is how beneficial giving up sugar has been for my mood and for regulating my blood sugar. Due to tiniest fluctuations in my blood sugar levels, I am susceptible to dramatic mood swings. Cutting out sugar has stabilized me more than any other trick I’ve tried (5 small meals a day, eating nuts, whole grains, etc.) I am going to really stick with this. Now I have to find a way to break Emilio from his obsession.

Happy Halloween!

Links to Poetic Truths of Animals, Communication & Health

ZOELAB DAY 60

In writing classes that I’ve taught and taken, we have sometimes used prompts, small pieces of writing by others to get the juices flowing. In this case, I am offering pieces of random news as possible prompts for ideas and for interest. Many of these were found on a blog called shines like gold by Imp Kerr, “an insightful fiend living in New York City” that compiles interesting news on the new inquiry.

A breast cancer detecting bra

Research shows that secrets can be beneficial

A small collection of items about dropped and bounced cats

A Whale learns to speak English and an elephant learns to speak Korean

As we watched tiny yellow butterflies gathering pollen around the yard, Emilio exclaimed, as if offended: “Mamma, they’re not talking!” At first I told him that butterflies don’t talk, and then after a moment of consideration I said, “well maybe they do, they just talk to each other in a language we don’t understand.” Of course he expect animals to talk because they do in his books and movies.

I will end with some beautiful words from the writer and naturalist, Henry Beston:

“For the animal shall not be measured by man. In a world older and more complete than ours they move finished and complete, gifted with extensions of the senses we have lost or never attained, living by voices we shall never hear. They are not brethren, they are not underlings; they are other nations, caught with ourselves in the net of life and time, fellow prisoners of the splendour and travail of the earth.”

Storm

ZOELAB DAY 59

With the east coast of the United States on my mind, I remember a poem I wrote in 2001 when a hurricane hit New York. It is strange to now be the one far away from the storm. I fear for my friends and family and all people under the monster storm. Sending love...

The invisible signs of summer

Switch me over to September style.

There was a hurricane in

New York City last night.

It knocked upon my window panes.

It murdered seven people.

It made me late.

It made me cry.

It created a space in heaven

for the insane

(which today includes the nearly-sane).

At night,

that’s what I become:

terrifyingly frozen in time.

Nearly hit by storms.

Nearly Sane.

On Television, Part Three: The Office

ZOELAB DAY 58

After a year in San Francisco, we moved to Oakland, and had inherited Lucas’ grandmother’s tv. We used it only for watching DVD’s because it didn’t receive a signal, and we didn’t want to have to pay for cable. But then, one day, miraculously, cable appeared. We suddenly had cable television and we hadn’t ordered it and didn’t have to pay for it. I was still in graduate school, and still liked having an escape. I didn’t exactly get hooked, I just couldn’t afford to because I always had schoolwork to do, but I developed a watching pattern. As soon as I had finished my work, I would turn on the tv and watch until it was time for bed. This is the year that The Office (American) came out. I just happened to catch the pilot. I was immediately intrigued. I had seen the British version, and had admired it, but I had found it too squirmy and painful to watch. It had a sort of relentless quality, which is what so many love about it. But the American Office felt different. It was uncomfortable, but there was something else to relieve this discomfort—heart. And it was funny. Our cable went on for about six months, and I happily enjoyed watching my prime time slot. And then one day, as mysteriously as it had appeared in our lives, the cable disappeared. And that was the end of watching the office. For a while. It was not until I was pregnant and living in Mexico that I got to watch it again. The Office got me through the last long days of pregnancy and the first painful months of motherhood.

It is hard and strange to write about a show that I have spent so much time watching. (I have watched most of the episodes from season 1-7 dozens of times.) So what is it about The Office? What makes it my favorite sitcom of all time? Mostly it’s the characters—what makes them so lovable or at least watchable? As with the other shows mentioned in this ongoing piece, they are deeply flawed, and unlikable if you knew them in real life. How can it be that this group of people, each with their own brand of unfavorable human trait, working in an ugly office of cubicles under florescent lighting, for a failing paper supply company in a two bit town, be so appealing? I would say it is the same thing that makes all sitcoms appealing. It is precisely that familiarity, that we recognize our shadow selves in them. We have all worked at ugly offices doing jobs that were not particularly enlivening with people who could be terribly annoying or mean, or shallow, or petty, and occasionally charming.

Of the many jobs that I have held in my life, I had one particular job that was not at all glamorous, but, because it was the longest held job of my life (almost 3 years), I have a special fondness for it in my heart. From August 2001 to March 2004, I was the publications coordinator at the headquarters of a children’s social services agency in the Wall Street area of Manhattan. I have referred to this job here before (Eleven Years, Focus, Job List). I developed a real fondness for the people I worked with—each was a unique character, and each had a distinct role in the office. A sitcom could have definitely been made about this office, as one could about any office, if you studied it carefully enough. The experience of being part of something, a borrowed family that is given to you at random, that you have shared experiences with day after day after day--that is the material for sitcoms. Going to this job was a great comfort to me, because it provided a stable place while the rest of my life was in perpetual flux. The three years I was there spanned over different relationships and career choices: I started the job when I still pursuing acting because it was flexible and part time, and then I went into my rock band phase and then, finally there was my applying to grad school phase. I got to experience asking for a raise, and getting it, adding skills (I learned Quark and became the in house graphic designer), new employees, I took on volunteer work (there was a volunteer tutoring program within the office). I grew as the agency grew. At the office, our private lives commingle with our work lives. And as the years pass, we find ourselves interconnected with the people we work with. After all, if we work full time in an office, we spend more time with the people we work with than the people we live with.

Now, this brings me back to The Office. I believe the self conscious, narcissistic, petty, insecure, pathetic, invasive, power hungry, and yet somehow, lovable Michael Scott, who I believe is the greatest television character of all time, would agree with me. As the boss (for the first seven seasons), his raison d'être is to make the office like a home, and the people in it like a family. He will stop at nothing to make this so. He wants to not only know the personal lives of all of his employees, he wants to be the central figure in them--as best friend, father, son, nephew. He abuses his power as Manager not so that he can be above everyone, but so that he can use it as leverage to get closer to everyone. Everyone, that is, except for his nemeses Toby, from Human Resources. Toby’s job is to bring rationality, rules and boundaries to Michael’s exploits, so naturally Michael hates him with a fervor and disgust that I have not witnessed in any other sitcom. Most of his employees, with the exception of Dwight and Andy (who have their own competitive power struggle) resist his efforts for intimacy, but as the seasons go on, there is a loosening of their resistance. Some of the characters, especially Jim and Pam, develop a real caring for Michael. The moments when Jim or Pam make gestures of real kindness to Michael, is if he were their embarrassing yet beloved kid brother, are very subtle and deeply moving.

During my time studying and performing improvisation, there were several rules and guidelines that we played by. One of them was the idea of heightening. It is important to take a joke or an idea to the most extreme place you can, while at the same time, staying true to your character. The reason The Office is so funny is because it does just that. The situations and events that occur on the show are absolutely absurd if you were to write them down: Michael sleeps with Pam’s, his receptionist’s, mother at her wedding; the office members have a funeral for a dead bird in the parking lot; Michael hosts a café disco in the empty office space that was the office space he used when he quit Dunder Mifflin and started up his own paper company. However unreal those scenarios may seem, they are always believable because they all emerge out of the needs of the character.

When I was an actor in NY, I took a class called Mask, where I learned about the first improvisers and comedians—Commedia dell'arte all'improvviso of 16th Century Italy. They were traveling troupes of performers who wore masks, and performed improvised comedy based on sketches. These troupes also featured the first actresses (before then, female characters were played by men). In my mask class we learned that all comic characters from situation comedies emerge from this first group of stock characters. One of the central themes of these stock characters was the two lovers and the elders who got in their way, and the servants (fools) who helped them reconnect. The basic scenario of lovers torn apart, is at the heart of many modern sitcoms. Of course this was one of the central themes of The Office for the first three seasons between Jim and Pam. It is often said a sitcom is ruined once the two main love interests (who love each other from afar) get together. But The Office has gotten around this pitfall by having an exceptional ensemble cast to choose additional love stories from after the union of Jim and Pam.  Angela and Dwight, Ryan and Kelly, Erin and Andy, and then Michael and Holly.

Another important element of acting that I learned from studying and performing improvisation is playing with status. Status, which is either high or low, is an interesting way to convey a character’s relationship to another character. There are certain physical ways to express status. For example, high status people don’t look other people in the eye, but look slightly above, they take up a lot of space and tend to move and talk more slowly. Conversely, low status characters tend to take up little space, look people in the eye, or down, move and talk quickly, and keep their hands close to their body. Status play is a key dynamic of character interaction in The Office. Within the office each character is clearly high or low status, though for many, his or her status changes depending on who he or she is interacting with. For example, Dwight is high status with his cousin Mose, and with at times with some of his co-workers, but with Michael, he is low status. His competitive and contentious relationship with Jim is a constant game of status, with Jim always winning. But then it is so fun to watch when the smug and cool Jim has his status lowered when Charles Minor, the new boss (for a few episodes) does not see his charm or appreciate his low work ethic. And Michael, he has status purely because he is the boss, but his high status is so precarious, so thin, that he is continually finding ways to distract people from seeing how little status he really has. The moment he has the opportunity for a status boost, he gives his low opinion of himself away be becoming overly excited about it.

The other aspect of The Office that makes it so special and satisfying to watch is the wide story arc of the characters. Of course, over eight years (it has just started its ninth and final season) the characters have to develop. And yet, with most long running sitcoms the characters don’t change all that much. Sure the characters’ hairstyles are updated to match the current styles (thank god for Jerry Seinfeld), and their relationships with each other change and grow, but each character usually ends up basically the same as where they started. This is not so in The Office, not at least with its main characters. As the years pass, Michael becomes more sweet and less desperate, Jim becomes less self satisfied, Dwight’s character doesn’t change overall, but, as mentioned earlier, his character can be quite changeable depending on what is happening and who he is relating to. Pam’s story arc is the most compelling and palpable. Pam starts out as a very timid, mousy receptionist with badly permed hair who doesn’t stand up for herself. As the show progresses, not only does her hairstyle become slick and her makeup become thick, but she starts to develop a voice for herself. She blossoms creatively, she speaks up for herself, she sticks up for Michael, to the point of quitting her job so that she can join his new paper company. She goes from receptionist, to sales person, and finally (in an ingenious plan of manipulating her coworkers) to self-appointed Office Manager. It is such fun to watch Pam shed her meek self and become who she really is, which is partly because she allows herself to love who she really loves.

I know that I can go on a lot longer, but I will stop here to say that really at the bottom of it all, The Office is full of heart. Not only is it the funniest, most realistic, most absurd sitcom of all time, with incredibly talented actors playing fleshed out characters, it is also the most loving. Even though the episodes are rife with animosity, horrific offensiveness and embarrassment, there are equal amounts of love and heartbreak. In the end (at least at the end of Michel’s reign) Michael gets what he had wanted all along: a family. And as I write this, I realize that essentially that is what all these television shows are about: family.

Addendum: I so far have watched and own most of Seasons 1-7. There are two seasons left to see, the one from last year and the one currently showing on primetime. Even though Michael Scott is not in them, I will definitely be watching the next two seasons. It will be a sad day when it is all over. But not really so much, because I will be continuingmy own personal syndication, by watching the episodes over and over on my computer.

Expressive Arts Therapy: Making Art Out of Trouble

ZOELAB DAY 57

For three years I went to graduate school for counseling psychology, focusing on Expressive Arts Therapy. Outside the field of psychology, expressive arts therapy is the natural impulse to transform our suffering by turning it into art. I have witnessed this impulse in the work of famous artists, outsider artists, and children. For people who don’t discover this process on their own, there are expressive arts therapists, who are trained to help people to develop a new relationship to their troubles, and to make use of their inner resource of creativity for healing, transformation and growth.

In Freudian terms, this is the use of the mature psychological defense called sublimation. We sublimate or channel the sexual and aggressive drives of the id into something constructive. It is a positive use of psychic energy.

Jung thought Freud got it wrong, he saw sublimation as a mystical alchemical process of transformation: “Sublimation is part of the royal art where the true gold is made... This is just about the opposite of what Freud understands by sublimation. It is not a voluntary and forcible channeling of instinct into a spurious field of application, but an alchemical transformation for which fire and prima materia are needed. Sublimatio is a great mystery.”

Sanford Meisner, the great acting teacher, whose methods I studied for several years, put it this way: “All of us have two barrels inside us. The first barrel is the one that contains all of the juices which are exuded by our troubles. That’s the neurotic barrel. But right next to it stands the second barrel, and by a process of seepage like osmosis, some of the troubles in the first barrel get into the second, and by a miracle that nobody fully understands, those juices have been transformed into the ability to paint, to compose, to write, to play music and the ability to act. So essentially our talent is made up out of our transformed troubles…. I’d always thought that two of the luckiest, happiest people I could imagine were Shakespeare and Beethoven, but the doctor to whom I told this parable said, ‘No, no. Shakespeare had plenty of trouble—that is, neurosis—and so did Beethoven,’ and he pointed out some of their more obvious troubles. This proved to me that the osmosis between the barrels doesn’t work completely. There is always some juice in the trouble barrel, no matter how full the talent barrel is. The trouble cannot transpose itself into talent without leaving some residue behind, even in the most talented of human beings.”

This is how I would put it: the deepest wounds in us, the ones that show up for us in every day in a myriad of ways, leave a longing to be healed, and they can only be healed by us. We can have guidance and help, of course, from a counselor, friends, family, but only we can truly heal ourselves. This is why I teach the expressive arts. I teach people how to heal themselves, instead of thinking that I can heal them. And we heal ourselves through our creativity, through our interactions with our world, through being present, curious and compassionate. The arts lend themselves so beautifully to cultivating these very qualities, the conditions for healing. We have been created brilliantly, with the tools for healing built into us. When we use these inner resourses while engaging with the most elemental forms of human expression: dance, song, storytelling & drawing, we enter a new relationship with ourselves, where we allow ourselves to feel more, and see that we have choice in how we respond to our pain.

Why all of these arts and not just one?

Because each art form represents a certain part of us. Music calls in our sense of hearing. Dance tunes us into our body. Visual art awakens imagination and sight. Storytelling or writing creates meaning, illuminating our human purpose. Drama shows us new ways of being in the world, gives us access to our different selves.  We can also build on these basic art forms with digital arts, film and theater. There are also many other art forms that could be added to this list: gardening, martial arts, cooking, etc. The ones I work with are considered “the expressive arts,” which means they are designed for human expression. We can express ourselves in any art form, but the expressive arts are the most elemental, the most hard-wired into the human system. With the expressive arts, we need only a few external tools: a pencil and a piece of paper, or maybe a musical instrument, but most of all we are working with ourselves: our body, our soul, our mind and our heart. Through contacting our own humanity we magically remake our wounds into art.

To end this post, I want to share a list of my favorite films that illustrate the power of art to heal while at the same time transform suffering into something beautiful and true. If you have one to add to the list please add it in the comments section.

Inspiring Films about the Transformation of Suffering into Art

Rize

(about youth discovering dance (crumping and clowning)

to rise above social and economic oppression)

Born into Brothels

(about the children of Indian prostitutes

using photography to create beauty out of their lives.)

Frida

(about the power of painting to transform

a woman’s emotional and physical suffering)

American Splendor

(about the power of comic book making to

transform a man’s emotional and physical suffering)

Slam

(about the power of spoken word poetry to rise above

social and economic hardship)

Her Master's Voice

(about a female ventriloquist's journey towards her self)

This is what we touched or where we stood and when

ZOELAB DAY 53

It’s so difficult to draw hands and feet, yet so easy to photograph them.

You don’t really know someone until you can picture their hands and feet in your head.

To be continued...

How did it get this way?

ZOELAB DAY 52

The freedom is inside, the outside is a mess. The life I see before me is not the life I ever imagined. It surprises me daily with its fiction, its ability to tell stories.

Don’t worry about me. I’m okay. I still have nothing. And that’s everything. Embracing what I don’t like is a new exercise that brings the same kind of comfort that rocks bring.

A transformation from city mouse to country mouse where the city mouse lives inside the country mouse. And this little mouse is busying herself. She is still making her nest. She’s surprised at how long it takes, by how far she has to go to find the right materials. She busies herself and then she rests. She rests for days. And after the dreaming, she is back at it again.

How strange to have lived a life so far away now. How beautiful to be suspended between memory and newness. How comforting to rediscover beauty.

It is said that deliverance is dead. I say let death deliver us.

Let us be delivered. Let us be returned to our own hearts who cannot hear unless they are heard. And cannot be heard unless they hear.

Instead of Television

ZOELAB DAY 51

For almost two weeks, I have been suffering from a lower intestinal infection of some variety of bacteria or protozoa. Don’t worry, I won’t give the intimate details, but the point is I haven’t been feeling well. I have been powering through it, trying to keep on living as always. The last few days I have tried to changing my eating habits (eating only simple foods and absolutely no sugar) hoping not to encourage the beasts inside, which has alleviated the pain and urgency, but has brought on a different sensation that I am not fond of: hunger. I don’t do well with hunger, I become testy, unfunny, and spacey. It is very hard to write, let alone think, in such conditions.

Through much of this I have been trying to write this seemingly endless manifesto on my relationship with television, which I am taking a break from for a moment, but plan to continue later today. I was unable to write last night (and every day I am catching up on the post from the day before.) Yes, I recognize that in the big picture, if I break my commitment to make a post one day there will be no real consequences. I have a very small readership, and most of my readers don’t read every day. But still, I am a woman of my word. And if I say I’m going to do something, I’m going to do it. However, my health is adversely affecting my ability to keep up with ZOELAB at the level that I would like. Additionally, the organization of the household, my job, my parenting, my physical self-care—all are faltering. In other words, I feel pressured and overwhelmed. And the worst part is, the pressure is self-generated, so I can’t blame anyone but myself.

This morning I wanted to spend some quality time with Emilio before Lucas whisked him off for the day so that I can spend some time catching up and unwinding myself. I told Emilio we could do anything he wanted (except watch a show, which was the thing he most wanted). He chose to make watercolors together. After we got our paper out, he asked, as he often does, what I was going to paint.

[I was just interrupted by our neighbor who wanted to find out if we knew of anyone interested in buying the land he has for sale. See post in reference to this land. He told me if someone is interested, he will knock 15,000 pesos off the price. About $1,200 dollars]

I told him I didn’t know. Usually my desire is to paint something abstract, with no plan at all. But pressured myself into painting something figurative so I painted a picture of a woman with my hairstyle. It was flat and lifeless. Then I let myself paint the painting I really wanted to make. This is improvisational painting, when I get to have fun with paint, experimenting with different layers of translucency and colors and forms. I layered and layered and layered and then I looked at my painting and I knew what I had painted. It was an image of the infestation of single celled organisms living in my intestine. This is a great example of accidental expressive arts therapy. My unconscious gave me this image as a reminder to go easy on myself, to not push myself beyond what I can reasonably do. To write this post instead of pushing ahead with what I woke up at 6:30 to write this morning about--The Office. Instead of writing last night, I fell asleep while doing “research” (watching episodes of The Office). Once again, I am reminded: Start from where you are. That which hinders your task is your task.

This reminds me of what was more present with me last month, if you are a parent, and want to be creatively productive and happy, organization is key. I find that I sometimes get ahead of myself, wanting to “do” before I am ready, before I am organized. I often find myself struggling in the balance between organization and creation. Creation is usually the messy, expressive side of the duality. Organization is the mental, linear part. Both are necessary if you are trying to achieve something difficult. I have so many things I want to do, and sometimes I jump into them before I am ready. During those times what I really need is to take a breath first, and actually plan and organize first. Hence, I become a listmaker. But a list is not always enough. Because the lists pile up and then the lists need to be categorized, prioritized. Then the list becomes creation in itself, and I get lost. It becomes a vicious cycle. Listmaking can sometimes increase the overwhelming feelings, and the only way to feel better is to take a deep breath, and just start doing something. Anything. What helps to ward off the overwhelm is to stay present in the doing. If I’m washing dishes, for example, I focus my attention to the senses: the feeling of the water and soap on my hands, the view out the window. And try to ignore the grumbling monologue in my head “I hate washing dishes. I just washed all the dishes yesterday. It’s endless. Just endless. I can never get ahead. I can never get ahead with everything. Really what I need to be doing right now is make that phone call for work. But I don’t have the phone number…” That monologue is always there, but we don’t always have to give it attention. We can put our attention in the physical realm, the realm of the senses. This is a way of focusing my attention. Another way of saying it is, presence. Being in the present moment. Slowing down enough to feel the floor under my feet and the breeze on my skin. This creates space in me and around me. So the task before today is to breathe, slow down, and focus on one thing at a time. I’ll let you know how it goes.