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December 25, 2009

During the Snowstorm

Here in Minneapolis, we are on Day 2 of the Great Christmas Snowstorm of ’09. This 15-20 inch storm will surely rival the Great Halloween Snowstorm of ’93, which happened a year before I moved here.  Since it’s snowy, slushy, and generally inhospitable to walking on crutches outside, we stayed inside today.

Lucky for me, my honey bought me a great Christmas gift – rub-on decals. He found me a really cute set of decals made by Third Drawer Down, which he purchased at one of our favorite shops in Minneapolis, ROBOTlove. The decals included the lovely girl you see above at the desk (I just had to use her) as well as more animals, more books, and small school supplies.

As soon as I saw the decals, I wanted to try them out, so I created a new journal cover, pictured above.  The handwritten caption, which is practically illegible in this picture reads “Today, she thought it best to stay inside.” I’ve been journal-less for several months, ever since one of my lovely cats puked all over my last journal. This is the first time I’ve felt like creating a new journal, so it was darn lucky that I had an extra blank journal lying around for the occasion.

After this first use, I am totally in love with decals.  They’re amazingly easy to transfer and they create images that I would never be able to draw by hand in a million years.  While I used these decals on paper, they can be transferred to almost any material. I can’t decide what else I’ll use these for, but I’m sure I’ll think of something. My hubby says that they have a wide variety of these decals at ROBOTlove, so once it dries up outside, I’m heading down there to find some more fun.

I hope your Christmas allowed you some creative fun time too!

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November 29, 2009

The Space for Daily Ritual

Earlier this week, my mother and I went to the local Aveda salon for spa treatments. My mother got a massage while I got a facial.  This is something that we often do together on vacations, and certainly something that I only do with my mom. I look forward to this part of our time together most of all.

At the beginning of my facial, the technician started the facial by ringing a singing bowl.   When I first heard its clear tone, I cringed and thought to myself: Ugh, really? How cheesy!  But as she dragged the tone out, I felt myself relax more deeply and I wondered why I had that intensely negative reaction.  What was it about the ritualistic moment that triggered my cynicism?As the technician poked and prodded at my face, I thought about the moments I’ve allowed ritual into my life.  Lately, the space for ritual has been less prominent than I would like.

Once upon a time, I had more room in my life for ritual.  I had little mini-altars throughout our apartment, where I would light candles and sit.  Or at least, I would light the candles every so often and admire them as I passed by.  Until my knee injury in July, I made time (almost) every morning for exercise, a practice which helped me to clear my head for the day.  I also had the semblance of a writing practice, an act which helped me remain in touch with my internal rhythms.

I feel like I once had more time for quiet reflection, which I think is now taken up by school work, day-job work, and if I’m totally honest with myself, too much television and “entertainment”. This has left me with a feeling of constant and unrelenting busy-ness, which hasn’t been healthy for me.  There haven’t been many moments recently where I’ve felt truly relaxed. The things I turn to for relaxation (hi Glee and FlashForward) have only exacerbated my tension.

Now that I’m on the homestretch for this trimester’s work, I’m looking for ways to let ritual back into my life. I don’t know what that’s going to look like yet.

I think part of it, for me, will revolve around reorganizing my home space. I have a lot of clutter in our home, but I haven’t created those small sacred spaces that I used to have in my personal space.  If I’m being honest, that to me feels a bit like window dressing, more of a decorating project than a way to allow ritual back in.  The other part, the harder part, will be for me to consider the ways I use my time.  Even if I can’t exercise, how can I give myself time in the morning for quiet and composing myself for the day ahead? Since my last paper will be finished this week (hopefully), how can I use that time for writing and not wallowing in media?

I think it may be time for me to plunge back into morning pages, a technique I’ve used on and off throughout my creative writing life.  At least until I can recover a bit of the balance that I’ve lost these last few months. Perhaps by the time winter trimester starts, I will have developed enough positive habits to propel me and sustain me healthily through the next class.

 

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November 22, 2009

Reflection

Lake of the Isles, Minneapolis taken with my camera phone

My mother arrived in town today, for the Thanksgiving weekend, as she does every year.  She used to live in Minneapolis, several years ago, but moved back to the west coast for better weather.  Back when she lived here, we used to walk around our neighborhood lakes. We called it excercise, but really, it was an opportunity for us to chat and connect. It was my favorite part of living in the same neighborhood as my mom.

Typically, when she comes back for Thanksgiving it’s too snowy or icy to walk the lakes. Yet today, we were blessed with warm (for November) weather and we walked around one of our lakes.  In fact, the weather was so calm that the lake perfectly mirrored the tree border. 

I see my mom so rarely now that she lives half across the country that it becomes a special event. We see each other twice a year and each time I get caught up in the preparations.  I clean or pack, plan activities, and cram Fun into every waking moment.  I love it, but it’s exhausting. I’m glad that today, we had this hour at the lake.   We walked, chatted, and watched mallards cut paths through the lake’s reflections, just like we used to. 

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November 15, 2009

Me & The Oven

We don’t have the greatest relationship.  In fact, I’ve come to cooking pretty late, compared to most people.  When I was a teenager, I resisted all attempts to learn cooking, since it seemed too expected of me as a girl and future wife.  In my twenties, I fell in love and married a man who was an excellent cook, so I didn’t need to learn anything beyond the microwave.  Lucky me. 

These days, I realize that I want to learn how to cook.  I’ve always loved eating, so it seems natural to me (after 32 years) that I should know how to cook it well.  So, I’ve been subscribing to cooking magazines, accumulating cookbooks, and reading some cooking blogs. I also spent six weeks acting as the main cook in the house, while the husband taught some evening classes. And it’s all starting to rub off on me. 

In the past week, I’ve bought 3 very cool cookbooks: Vegan Soul Kitchen by Bryant Terry, Almost Meatless by Joy Manning, and How to Eat Supper by Lynne Rossetto Kasper.  Since buying them, I’ve been itchy to try a recipe or two. So last night, when our plans broke down, I decided to try something out of How to Eat Supper.  With our excess squash, I made Sweet Roasted Butternut Squash with Greens over Bowtie Pasta.

I don’t know if it’s the extra practice or the accessibility of this particular cookbook, but this was one of the first times that I’ve tried a recipe where everything worked like it should have.  The cooking time was exactly right, even with some squash and greens substitutions, nothing was burnt and it turned out wonderfully.  (Sorry, I was too busy eating to take a picture.)

I can’t quite describe the feeling of victory I felt when this relatively easy recipe turned out right.  It felt similar in some ways to writing a poem or making a collage, in that I had that sense of a flow experience.  It also felt like good stress relief after a busy week at work, which cooking has never felt like before. 

So, I think I’m going to continue to play some more and nail down this cooking thing once and for all.

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November 1, 2009

What I Was, Yesterday

I dressed up as an unfinished poem.

unfinished 1

Note the eyes bleeding ink and the mouth that is stitched closed.

unfinished 2

I took this in the bathroom mirror, so the “Write Me” is actually written backwards. Redrum, redrum!

unfinished 4

I didn’t get a very good picture of the full effect, as it gets very dark in our condo after the sun sets. So, this morning I took a picture of the piece de la resistance, the skirt. It was an $8 silver satin skirt from a thrift shop, which I decorated with the drenched flowers and half-finished lines of poetry.

Yesterday, I was asking my husband why it couldn’t be Halloween every day. 364 more days until the next costume.

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October 30, 2009

What I’ve Been Working On

flowers

Tonight, I’ve been drenching cloth flowers in diluted black acrylic paint.  No, I’m not turning goth again. I’m working on my Halloween costume.  And I’ve been working  on it for the past two days. Maybe I’m a little obsessive, but I don’t think so.

See, I’ve been working at my day job for the past nine days straight.  I started on Tuesday, October 20 and due to a conference in Wisconsin, I worked through the weekend and then the week. As much as I love my job, and I do love it, this was a lot of working. Coupled with my new added responsibilities, I’ve been drowning a bit. 

Somewhere in the middle of the work week, I was invited to a Halloween party.  Since I love everything Halloween, I jumped on the opportunity to make a new costume.  My recent Halloween costumes have taken a literary bent, such as zombie Virginia Woolf and the personification of this Dorothy Parker poem.  I just couldn’t think of anything to top those. 

Then suddenly on Thursday, it occurred to me and I was off. (I’ll post pictures tomorrow or Sunday and reveal my costume then.)  Right now, my costume includes the following materials (among other things):

  • a paper clip necklace
  • the above drenched flowers
  • a black Betty Page style wig
  • gun metal gray ballet flats
  • multiple lines of poetry from people like Sharon Olds, Edna St. Vincent Millay, Ed Bok Lee, Joy Harjo, Matthea Harvey, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, Percy Byshe Shelley, and e.e. cummings.
  • 2 scarves, 1 gray and 1 black

As I was painting my flowers this evening, I realized that this was the first creative outlet I’ve had in nine days. My headphones were in, my were stained with paint, and a little bit of calm descended upon me.  Apparently, I need a little more of this. Why can’t Halloween be every day?

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October 5, 2009

The 20-Year Old Me

Made good choices about friends. I knew who I was and who I wanted to be.  I was (and am) a feminist, an artist, a writer. I wanted to make a difference in the world, somehow.  I surrounded myself with friends who were similar to me and yet possessed distinct differences.  I found men and women who were (and are) feminists, artists, writers, performers, activists, who worked towards making a difference in the world.

All of this came into focus for me this weekend, when my husband and I went back to our alma mater for his 10 year college reunion.  As I’ve mentioned before, many of my friends have dispersed across the country and this was one of those rare moments when I could spend time with a large group of them.  Taken in a large group like this, I got to see the commonalities in our lives. We are educators and writers, social workers and public health educators, professors and theatre professionals.  Many of us are (finally) in the places where our work lives and personal lives are aligned with who we are and who we want to be. Some of us are still working out that piece, day by day and month by month.

When we left, my husband and I asked ourselves the same question we always ask: Why don’t we live closer to our college friends? Then we remembered, there is no central place for us to pick. Where is the center between Madison, Minneapolis, Chicago, New York City, and Seattle?  There really isn’t one, unfortunately. 

So today, rather than feeling a loss of connection to these awesome friends, I’m feeling blessed that I picked such a cool and eclectic group of people and that I got to spend the past two days hanging out with them all.

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July 25, 2009

Taking Time

Towards the end of the school year, I had an unusually brilliant idea, if I do say so myself.  I had a surplus of vacation and time and I thought, why don’t I take three day weekends for the whole summer? This thought was unusual for me, because like so many of us, I don’t normally think of things to do to relax or take care of myself. Especially if I have to choose between working and taking care of myself through relaxation.  It was brilliant because my husband only works Monday through Thursday and frankly, I needed the free time.

The school year for me (and for the students with whom I work) runs September through the end of June, with every other weekend reserved for work.  The concept of a three day weekend is so foreign to me, since half of the time I have a one day weekend.  I began my three day weekends at the end of June, but the time has been taken up by Other Things, like the vacation with my mother, my father’s visit, and recuperating from my injury. So this weekend in late July is my first real three day weekend with Nothing to Do. 

Like any good workaholic confronted with free time, I’ve been desperate to fill up this Nothing with a whole lot of Somethings.  I’ve almost worked myself up into quite a lather. How can I best use my free time?  What will be the most productive, the most successful, the most relaxing?  Not a great start to the weekend.

Lucky for me, I’ve found some good activities are things that are feeding my creativity, such as…

  • Hunting for CDs at my local library. This weekend, I found Edith Piaf, an American Roots Music CD, some Interpol, Patti Smith, several Belle and Sebastian discs, and KoKo Taylor.  I’m looking forward to listening to them while I cook and create.
  • Speaking of cooking, I’ll be making a batch of Potato, Chicken and Fresh Pea Salad for my lunches this week. Over the past year, I’ve slowly fallen in love with cooking. I’m a really late bloomer in this respect, but I am so glad that I’ve come around.  I’ve finally found that meditative aspect of chopping, boiling, and seasoning in silence and I tend to look forward to it.  As long as I’m not starving while I’m doing it, of course.
  • Working on my handmade gifts for my five friends on Facebook. One of the projects is really ambitious (for me) and I just don’t know if I’m going to be able to pull it off.  I can’t wait to find out.
  • Writing a bit. I’ve already written one poem for next week’s Read Write Poem prompt. I’m hoping that I can ride that creative wave for a bit longer, and perhaps make up last week’s prompt that I missed.
  • Aaron and I are also, of course, taking some time to have plain old fun. Yesterday afternoon we took a rare trip to the casino on the edge of town and won $30, which we promptly spent on a dinner out with friends.  Later today, we’re attending two festivals today and I know I’ll have pictures to post for each of them. 
  • Catching up on reading. Even though I have a stack of books to get through, I just bought a used copy of Julie & Julia yesterday, in preparation for the movie. 

I have to remember, of course, how lucky I am to have this free time right now. Hopefully, I’ll be able fill my well enough to have some reserves for the early school year, at the very least.  I think this is the most important part.  I’ve got to get over the panic associated with free time to fill and focus on balancing my errands, chores, and mandatory fun with enough time to be creative by myself. 

I always wonder how other people accomplish this, especially if they have families to care for and stressful jobs.  So, how are you filling yourself up this weekend?

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