A List of Projects is a List of Dreams

One of the things I love about being an artist is that there's really never an end to making things. Even if one project isn't taking my attention, something else is. There are a lot of projects currently in the works including my Yes I Am photo project, my New Orleans vacation assemblage, and my coconut shell mobile.

Then there are the half-abandoned projects, like the numerous half-completed counted cross stitch pieces I have sitting around. The pile of books I started reading that I want to go back to. The home improvement ideas that range from "almost done" to "just a sketch on paper". The stories I've started writing and never finished.

And then there's the list of Things I'd Like To Do Some Day. The list is always evolving. Sometimes I add things, sometimes I outgrow ideas and I remove them. There are no rules for this list. This is the list that keeps me going. Some ideas are fully formed, but just not ready to begin. Other ideas are nothing more than wisps. A color. A texture. A word. A line of a song. Sometimes I think about all the things I'd like to do and it seems so overwhelming. There's no way I'm going to get all these things done in my lifetime. But that's ok. That's not the point. The point is that these projects are dreams, and my dreams are what keeps me going.

Creative DNA

I'm working my way through a new book, The Crafter's Devotional. It's not exactly a workbook, and it's not a how-to book either. It's a set of 52-weeks worth of ideas and activities to help spark and nurture creativity. Today's entry asked an interesting question, along the lines of: If you had to only make one kind of art for the rest of your life, what would it be? What medium expresses your soul?

I'm not sure I have an answer. I am reading a book about assemblage right now, so that seems very appealing off the top of my head. It uses a lot of the same techniques and materials as a lot of other crafts I like. I can include beading, decoupage, altered books and scrap-booking, and all sorts of other things. The trouble is, I don't think I could ever actually limit myself to one medium. I enjoy dabbling in things, and although sometimes I do wish that I had more skill in one area or another, I'm generally thankful that I don't actually have to choose. Jack of all trades, master of none, is a very comfortable place for me to be most of the time.

The question did bring up another idea though. I have this old day-dream of some day making a living (or a retirement) running a small shop where my friends and I can sell our arts and crafts. I have so many talented friends: jewelers, photographers, a leatherworker, musicians, fine artists, seamstresses, assemblage-makers... the list just goes on. I wish there were a place I could gather us together to share our work and our worries, our joy, our struggles, and our successes. It would be wonderful if we could actually sell some stuff, but the real point is to have a community of people who encourage us to make what we want to make, and to have a place to share those items with the world. I've always imagined it being a little shop in a New England-ish setting, with lots of sunlight pouring through the windows and tons of foot traffic wandering past and drifting in because something in the window catches their eye. I don't know what we'd call it. I already have my own "brand", and most of my crafty friends do too, so we'd need a name for the shop that was its own thing. In the spirit of creative dreaming, I'm taking suggestions!

Preparation

There's a great song Richard Shindell sings called "Waiting For The Storm", which contains the following lines:

I've opened all the windows wide

I've left the doors ajar

Everything that was inside

I've spread out in the yard

I've made my preparations

There's nothing more to do

But sit here in this rocking chair

Waiting for the storm

It's a solid song, and it's most definitely about someone waiting out a hurricane, or some similar natural disaster. This evening though, it carries overtones of a life lesson.

Tomorrow I am going to get up early, get in the car, and go to Ohio for the weekend. The purpose of this trip is to take the time to go through all of the things still left in my parents' house that I have yet to sort. These are all my things, which I left there when I moved to Chicago seven and a half year ago, and I have never gone back to retrieve. There is a filing cabinet full of things, a dresser, two bookshelves, a closet, several boxes in the attic, and a hodge-podge of other small things that are living in my room, awaiting the fate of the trash can, Goodwill, or coming to a new home. I too will have to spread things out in the yard, symbolically speaking, and wait for the emotional storm to come pass over them and see what remains.

It's the boxes in the attic that I'm the most conflicted about confronting. Some of the things up there, like the backdrop from a play I did at Girl Scout camp one summer, can be photographed and thrown away. Although these items are attached to memories, they aren't so strong that I need the actual items around anymore. Other items will need to be savored. I have a box, and by this I mean a box, not a shoe box, full of letters from my friends from junior high and high school, and even a few notes and letters from college. Many of these can be let go - I will keep the ones that are most special to me, but not everything. Then there are the more complex items, like my Senior Scrapbook. I spent hours assembling that thing, though I don't know why. I do like to look back at it from time to time, and the sensible thing to do would be to scan each page and then throw the book away once I have the images, but... all that time, and all that creative process seems to be a bit wasted if I do that.

Honestly though, those aren't the hardest items. They may be emotionally connected to the heaviest parts of my life, but there are ways to work with them to keep the memories and lose the clutter. The thing that's really getting me stuck is a blanket I owned when I was a little kid. It's an interactive blanket, featuring a farm scene, and there are pockets for putting these little stuffed ponies in. (That explanation in no way does it justice; I'm going to have to take a picture.) The trouble with this item isn't that I kept it, it's why I kept it. I saved it because it's something someone made for me, that I wanted and planned and hoped to some day pass along to my own children.

I will be thirty this summer. I know that women are having children later and later in life, but I have to be realistic. Between the demands of my job, my marriage, and my own desire for free time, I have to be honest with myself - it is highly unlikely that I am going to be having children of my own. I'm not even entirely sure that I want them. There is certainly a part of me that would welcome them, that has dreamed and hoped and planned all my life to have them, but there is another part of me that enjoys not having to worry about child care and what time I come home in the evening or about being responsible for anyone other than myself. And so... what do I do with that blanket? Or with the books that I kept with the sole purpose of passing them on to my own children? I'm really not sure. Maybe those things will have to stay in a box in the attic, because that's not a dream I'm ready to let go of, no matter what my more practical mind is telling me. I don't know that I won't have children, and I am someone who hangs on to possibilities, no matter how slim, so... someday I might have kids of my own. Therefore, I will keep these things. And if I don't use them, then I know that I will get to the point where I can let go of them. Some day. And then I can give them to someone else to love. Eventually.

The Doing and The Being

Words are hard and mischievous, and they slip from my mind like sand through a sieve. I want to capture memories and moments, to record them and the essence of them, but words will not do. I get one sentence in:

I am reading an interesting book.

I went to see True Grit today.

I spent the day yesterday grading papers and writing lesson plans.

I am ready for spring to get here.

and the ideas can no longer be expressed.

Today is definitely more of a day for being than for doing, but all of being is doing something. Breathing is an act. Swallowing is an act. Smiling, pushing my hair back from my face, even sitting in the car watching the world go past - all these little things are moments of doing that make up some of the essence of my being.

Even those words are not enough. Maybe I will delete this post tomorrow, but probably not.

Alice, and in the mirror, a hallway of doors

Last night, I had a dream. I dreamed that I was walking down a hallway full of doors. It was a narrow hallway, and dark, and all the doors looked the same - heavy wood, with a small square window made of one-way glass looking out just at eye-level. Each door opened onto a path, asphalt-paved and winding, unkempt around the edges. Some of the paths ran through the woods, others through the desert or the tundra, and all under a twilight sky. The only sound was the blowing wind.

Sometimes I think I am like Penelope unraveling Ulysses' shroud. I walk a path each day, and at night I run back to that hallway of doors, undoing all the progress I've made. The hallway of doors isn't endless, but I haven't yet found the end, and I cannot bear the thought of choosing one door only and losing all the rest of the possibilities.