Archive for ‘Knowing Myself’

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May 16, 2011

I am changing, so there are changes.

It has been a month since I last blogged here. A month. A big part of me is sad, but there is another part of me that deeply knows that my life is changing. Of course, there will be changes here as well.

Most obviously, physically I am changing. In addition to the normal rounded-belly, wider-hips changes, I am learning that I am not in control of my body. All of my life, I thought that my body behaved according to my will and whims. Now I know that my body is capable of doing so much without my intent. I had a moment about five weeks ago where I got to see our Spawn on an ultrasound and I saw its little spine and brain. My body created its flesh, bones, and organs without my conscious involvement. Knowing this has changed me, mentally.

Secondly, my mind is invested in so many new things, some of them mundane and some of them serious. My free time is now devoured by both: looking for cribs and reading about child development, researching cloth diapers and interviewing doulas. The list goes on and on. When I think about this space, I just don’t know how interesting all of this stuff is to anyone but me, especially when this space was devoted to poetry and thoughts about creativity.

That leaves me with a conundrum. I still want a space for me to explore creatively, but I can’t imagine having the time to keep this blog going in its current state. I haven’t written a poem in a month (the last time I posted). I haven’t thought about my creative process much at all, except to wonder where it went. Now, I am looking for a way to keep this space warm for whenever I return to my creative practices. (I am sure that they will return, eventually). I thought about starting a Tumblr blog, where I can post quick links and fun things I find online, as well as regular poetry-postcard type things. But then I realized that I could just as easily do that here.

Therefore, starting this week, I am going to try to post more regular content. But I cannot promise that it will be the content I once posted. It may be full of what is consuming my life right now, either creatively or in preparation for our Spawn’s arrival. It will definitely be shorter and less poetry-centric.  If you visit here at my actual URL (does anyone do that anymore?), you’ll notice that I changed the template to be more conducive to shorter content. And if you few dedicated souls still have me in your feed reader, hopefully you’ll notice more regular content soon. It’s hard to consider shifting gears like this, but since I call my blog “Everything Feeds Process”, I think I cast my net pretty wide. I think the shift will help me to feel more engaged in regular practice, even if it won’t be at the same depth I once practiced.

Thank you for changing with me.

Posted in Body Awareness, Knowing Myself | 4 Comments »

November 28, 2010

Inheriting the Family Cookbook

My husband comes from a big family, on his mom’s side. All of his mother’s family, the Livingoods, are from Postville, IA and have lived there since time immemorial. His mother has six siblings and all of her siblings have over two (and often over three) children. Many of those children, though younger than Aaron, have already started large families of their own.

This is far outside of my experience. My family is smaller and less concentrated in one area. When I first met his family, back in our (relatively) early days of dating, he tried to prepare me for how the large size of his family and the small size of their community. I couldn’t have been more underprepared. On our first trip back, we got a little lost, so we pulled over and ask a passerby for directions. She took one look at my husband and said, “Oh, you’re a Livingood, aren’t you?” He replied yes and they briefly traced their family interactions, before she gave us directions. Let me tell you, this has never happened to me or my family, at least not for a generation or two.

When Aaron and I went to Lincoln, NE (his parents’ adopted city) for Thanksgiving, I learned a little bit more of the Livingood history. In the living room, I found a small booklet entitled “The Livingood Family Cookbook.” It was professionally published in 1987 by a local historian. At the beginning of the cookbook, it detailed the Livingood family history, from my husband’s great-great-grandfather, Edwin R. Livingood and Mathilda Livingood. They were a typical Iowa farm family, in that they had 10 children and each of those children married young and had between four and thirteen children of their own. By 1942, Edwin and his wife had 105 (!) children and grandchildren. My husband’s branch of the Livingoods descended from the fourth son of Edwin, Cecil. It looks as if Aaron’s grandfather was the second son of Cecil.

Following the family history, there are a series of pictures of Aaron’s extended family. I can see great-aunts and uncles, with their families, as well as his grandfather when they were younger. I can see the resemblance of Cecil (the great-grandfather) to Gilbert (the grandfather). In person, I’ve seen the resemblance of Aaron to his grandfather. Looking at the pictures is like seeing the slow distillation of my husband’s physical qualities, over time. The only experience that I have had close to this for my own family was when, at age 19, I helped to sort my grandmother’s pictures after she passed away. I found a picture of her when she was about 19, away from home for the first time. We were identical, down to a similar haircut and a similar way we held our bodies.

My mother-in-law was so pleased that I was interested in the cookbook that she let me take it home. I’m interested to review the recipes, just to see how the family marks their culinary history. The food is simple and basic, a remnant of times when you cooked with what you have. (After reading the amazing United States of Arugula by David Kamp, I can place this type of food into the some of the same American foodways that James beard was intent on preserving.) I don’t know if I’ll ever cook any of these recipes. I am more thankful for the photographic evidence of at least a part of my husband’s family.

Posted in Food, Knowing Myself | 2 Comments »

November 15, 2010

The Story of Blameless Mouth, Part 2

In case you missed it, you can read the first part of the story here.

Uncovering (Discovering) My Subject

I was at the point in my process where I was just beginning to sense the shape of a larger idea. Through dozens of poems, I was writing about hunger in as many ways that I could imagine.  But I couldn’t yet find a way to distill the poems, so that each could stand alone as a single piece of work.

Pretty soon, I found myself characterizing poems as either “hungry” or “full”. I used the idea of either HUNGER or SATIETY as my means of editing. A poem could either describe a hungry experience, a memory or a cultural story about not having and not being fulfilled, or a satiated experience, a time in which I or another was fulfilled either emotionally or physically. As I was writing these hungry or full poems, I realized that there was a third part of this relationship: the act of CONSUMPTION. I began to write a third type of poems, in which I used personal or cultural stories to describe the act of eating.

Before I knew it, I was intentionally exploring the cycle of hunger, consumption and satiety, in all the ways that it was evidenced in my personal life, the lives of women, and in Western culture. I started to research hunger and eating, using poetry, essays, and mythology as my source material. (Some interesting books I read while writing this manuscript include: Gluttony by Francine Prose and Appetites: Why Women Want by Caroline Knapp.)

While this all sounds very intellectual, the theme of hunger is a very personal one for me. As a child, I was raised by parents with their own conflicted relationships with eating and material consumption.  I could see the very real and devastating effects of wanting and not having in my life, and the lives of those I love. As an adult woman, I still struggle daily with maintaining a healthy relationship with food and body, with all the hypocritical cultural pressures to want (and be) less but have (and take) more. Moreover, I resonate with the conflict of benefitting from a materially wealthy culture but remaining spiritually and emotionally unfed.

The more I wrote about my childhood memories and my adult experiences, the more I realized that all of this was connected. I could trace my personal legacy of hunger through my family, as well as our cultural legacy of hunger, through our fairy tales, myths, and religious stories. But it wasn’t a clear line. Like all of my inheritances, I could see the faint outline of a narrative about hunger and satiety, but it was barely perceptible. While writing this book, I felt like I was unearthing a fossil, and finding more and more pieces of the whole body, the longer I dug. It was only through the final act of editing and ordering the manuscript that I began to see the full shape of the work, for what it was. It was a book that took a circuitous route through my personal history and our cultural stories, just to find a path to physical and spiritual fulfillment.

***

If you want to stay connected to my progress with bringing Blameless Mouth to publication, I hope that you will join the Blameless Mouth Facebook page .

Posted in Blameless Mouth, Knowing Myself | 4 Comments »

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November 8, 2010

The Story of Blameless Mouth, Part 1

Failure

Blameless Mouth began as a failed poem.

While in graduate school, I tried to write a poem in which I explored my childhood relationship with consuming media with my adult desire for consuming precious and disposable objects. I was inspired, oddly enough, by my frequent trips to the Mall of America, where I often pressed my nose against the store windows, but never felt that I could fully satisfy my needs by buying more things. The poem failed, because I had found a topic much larger than the confines of a single poem.

In my creative mind, I knew that my childhood experience and my adult behaviors were connected by a single root cause. I began to name it hunger. Hunger felt like the right word, a heavy enough word, with enough personal and cultural connotations to serve as a touchstone for this vague sense of rapacity that I was trying to capture in a single poem.

After drafting and redrafting this poem dozens of times, I realized that I needed more space so I wrote more poems about the same theme. I pulled in my own memories around food and eating with my family, and tried to connect it to my consumption of media as a kid. That didn’t quite work. Then, I tried to tackle the ideas by writing about my adult relationship with food and eating, and connected that to my desire for owning more things. That almost worked, but not quite. The longer that I wrote, I pulled in the stories I remember reading as a child about starving children and hungry women, like Hansel and Gretel, Perspehone, Eve and others.  I started to explore my childhood experiences with loss and wanting, despite having a relatively safe and affluent upbringing. It was then that the poems started to feel interconnected.

At this point, I felt like I was on to something big. I had the sense that I had an interconnected theme that I was exploring, but I didn’t quite know how it would turn out. Little did I know that I would spend the next two years trying to write and rewrite this one failed poem into a larger manuscript.

***

Next Monday, I’ll continue my thoughts on how Blameless Mouth became a manuscript. Stay tuned!

If you want to stay connected to my progress with bringing Blameless Mouth to publication, I hope that you will join the Blameless Mouth Facebook page.

Posted in Blameless Mouth, Knowing Myself | 4 Comments »

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October 6, 2010

Fill in the Blank: I am too____to be perfect.

This is me, at about 6:45 on Tuesday evening. I was trying (again) to do too many things at once. I wanted to run a bath, eat a snack, and take a somewhat decent picture for the perfect protest.  I am (again) late for the party, having finally decided to write something about perfection after reading about it on Ali Edwards’ blog and Andrea Scher’s blog. But I didn’t know what I wanted to say, until I had to enter Ali’s giveaway and complete the following sentence: “I am too______to be perfect.”

It came to me quickly: I am too in progress to be perfect.

I have been a perfectionist for most of my adult life. You may not know it to look at me, because I turn my perfectionist eye towards a few things. For instance, I will not care if my nails are done or if my house is spotless, because they rarely are. Instead, I care whether I use “this” or “a” as an article in a final draft of a poem. I care if I do everything exactly right at work. My laundry can wait, but I will spend extra time and energy on projects that are near and dear to me.

I (wrongly) think that this is a sign of care, as in I care enough to make it perfect. But, I know deep down that I am flawed, as we are all flawed. I am incapable of making something perfect, because I am human. I am capable of making imperfect beauty and not-quite-right solutions.

I also know that my quest for perfection prevents me from completion. I recognized this on Tuesday morning as I edited my manuscript. I haven’t read this manuscript in about a year, and the work itself is five years old. I had lost some of the intimacy with the poems that I had developed while writing and editing the work. Now that I was in the middle of reading the manuscript, I was doubting whether this book was good enough to put out in the world. Is it finished yet? Is it perfect?

I know that it will never be perfect, because I made it. It contains good poems, none of which are perfect. Several of them are downright broken. But they reflect a real part of my work and my life. These poems, and this manuscript, are drafts. They are in progress.  When it comes down to it, I realized instinctively when I filled in the blank that I will be forever a work in progress. And that is much better (and much more beautiful) than being perfect.

Posted in Knowing Myself | 3 Comments »

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August 7, 2010

Postcard from My Future

***

This morning, as I was walking to one of my local art fairs for the weekend, I came up with this idea for my postcard from my future. Rather than try to imagine a specific image of my future life, I thought about all the things I will retain from my present. Just as my past informs who I am, my present will inform my future self. I began to think about the things I want to keep in my life, the things I need to keep in my life and the things that I will probably bring along whether I like it or not.

I began to envision my life getting carved into smaller and smaller portions. It was a simultaneously hopeful and terrifying moment. I felt all of my time being filled with good things: my relationship with my husband, my art, the work that I love.  At the same time, I felt all of my free time being divided between these good things, often into uneven portions.  That is truly the hallmark of my life. I love a lot of things and I do them all at once and messily. Eventually, I exhaust myself as I try to do them all together.

I realized at that moment exactly who I am, whether I like it or not.  I am a creative omnivore. I am constantly hungry, constantly seeking sustenance through all of the things I do.  I am not one of those lucky people who finds the one thing that they want to do and then focuses intensely on that one thing until they achieve success.  Instead, I have about three to four things at a time that I want to do, and I hop from one to the other, hoping that one gets done well.

On my good days, I love this about myself. I love that I am a voracious learner and an active participant in multiple areas.  Unfortunately, I am not having those good days lately. I’m seeing the flip side of this voracity. I do a lot and none of it very successfully.  I want the type of stability that comes with doggedly pursuing one thing. But I also want to have that stability in my work, my writing, and my personal life.  That’s a lot of wanting.

I know the way out of this: I have to accept who I am. I am, and will always be, driven to pursue meaningful work, a creative practice and a strong relationship. I will not want to sacrifice one for the other. I will continue to strive, sometimes succeeding and sometimes failing. But hopefully, I will find satisfaction through my active pursuit.

Posted in Knowing Myself, Photography | 1 Comment »

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July 20, 2010

Playing Catch Up

Below is my rough draft of a poem for yesterday’s Mindfulness Month prompt on My Hands. It is as yet untitled, which is okay.

I’ve been a little behind for the past few days, because my work life and social life got the best of me. I found, quite suddenly, that I was six days behind on exercises with very little time to create on the horizon. This is not to say that I haven’t been working creatively: I met with my writer’s group, I’ve posted a habit picture, and I’ve been doing some revision on my chapbook manuscript.  But, I haven’t been creating new work nor following these exercises as diligently as I would have liked.

Luckily, I found a little stretch of time this morning. I knew that I had an extra hour before work and I forced myself to get up early and create.  On any other day, I might have slept in but today, I dug deep and found a little discipline. It also helps that I am giving myself permission to post rough, untitled drafts, knowing that I can always revisit and revise later.

***

I regret my hands for all the things
they will and will not do: all

the books that I have touched
(and have not read), all the food

I carried home, only to spoil
in the fridge. What is the matter

with these hands who want
and want, but never abstain?

I wonder who has raised them, slapped
their backs when they strayed,

rubbed them together in the cold.
They are out of control. I beg them

to clean their rings, clip
their nails and fold themselves

together quietly. They refuse.
They dig in the dirt, scratch

at my skin. They never stop
for rest.  I am stuck with them,

these restless  pests
and all they carry for me.

Posted in Knowing Myself, Poetry | 3 Comments »

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June 15, 2010

Mindfulness (Mindlessness)

He says that if you live each moment anticipating the next, then you are not truly living.  (I am not living from moment to moment to moment.)

***

Right now, I am writing and watching television and breathing. (There is a ceiling fan on, circling above me.)

***

Earlier today, I made quilts in pieces. Together, we cut and ironed. Cut and ironed. (I loved the peacefulness of ironing seams straight, until I noticed my calm.)

***

At almost every moment, my mind is grinding along, chewing through thoughts: song lyrics, memories, worries, hopes for the future. (Even when I sleep, I can feel the hum.)

***

Before the event, I am awaiting its start, imagining how it will feel. After the event, I am remembering. (I don’t know what I’m doing during.)

***

Two weeks ago today, I was five feet away from a musician performing his song. His whole body rocketed through the rhythm, even when his eyes were closed. (While I watched, I wondered what he was thinking.)

***

I want to be the ceiling fan, the iron, the notes in a song, my breath. (I want the comfort of a repeating system, the calm of a quiet mind.)

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February 7, 2010

Lately

I haven’t had the time or energy for full length blog posts. But I have been thinking about them, as I go throughout my days. Here is what I’ve been thinking.

***

I’ve been swimming in books, but I haven’t had time to organize them. I had piles stacked on top of desk, my nightstand, the counters in the kitchen. I started to organize them yesterday and I condensed a 3-foot high pile of books down to a 1-foot pile.  The 1-foot pile is the one I’m committed to reading, either through school, recent purchases, or my poetryX12 commitment (yes, I’m behind).

***

I’ve been working too much. My husband has been driving me to work and in order for him to get to his job on time, I’ve been arriving at 7:15.  Even when I leave around 5 or 5:30, this just seems like too long of a day, since I’m not truly a morning person.  I also had to work 2 weekends in a row, so I had to work a long string of  days.  I love my job, but I’ve been feeling like all that I do is work-sleep-work.  I start busing again tomorrow, so I’ll be back to my normal schedule.

***

I’m bringing my body back to a state of normal. I am now 7 weeks out of surgery, as of last Friday, and I’m allowed to walk without my brace, except if I’m outside (snowy sidewalks and streets) or in otherwise “compromised environments” (slippery floors, large crowds, or other hazards).  The funny thing about this is that in order to feel normal, I have to act normal. If I want to walk normally, I have to concentrate on what it’s like to walk without a limp or a hitch. And then I have to not concentrate on it, so that my body does it naturally. If I feel a twinge, I have to walk through the twinge, until it goes away.  Luckily, it’s working and I am enjoying the freedom of walking without a leg brace for the first time in 7 months.  By next week, I should be brace-free entirely.

***

In another effort to get my body back to normal, I had my very first reiki session ever. (A friend of mine is training to be a reiki practitioner and she is at the stage where she needs to practice on people.) I didn’t know what to expect. What was interesting is that she could tell the places in my body that were the most out of whack, based on the heat that they gave off. I could feel the heat too, radiating off of me.

***

I want to plunge myself back into my body. I’ve been avoiding being present in my body, because of all the knee problems and physical discomfort. But now that I’m slowly reaching normal, I want to remember what it’s like to give awareness to my body.  So, I’m getting a massage on my day off next week. It’s one step, among many.

***

I haven’t been writing a lot of poems. I had a good couple of writing weeks and then I screeched to a halt.  But that doesn’t mean that I’m not creating.  I’ve started a couple of art journals this week.  One is a general inspiration journal and the other three are smaller, themed journals.  I’m hoping that they spurn regular creating.

***

Everyone around me has been sick of winter. We’re at that point when the constant gray, black, and white is depressing. With every new cold snap, we get a little angrier, a little more impatient. It’s difficult when you know that March is only a month away. I keep reminding myself that March is the snowiest month in Minnesota.  I don’t want to get my hopes up for spring yet. (I’ve clearly become a Minnesotan.)

***

I’ve been obsessed with creating a daily creative practice. Since I’ve been tracking my time usage, I keep thinking that I can build on my discipline.  I know that April is just around the corner, which means a month of writing poetry every day.  I wonder if I’m up for it this year, what with my job and school and life.  I think I may want to try it.

***

I think the theme of all of these thoughts is finding equilibrium. Equilibrium in my creative practice, my reading habits, my body, my work, and even the weather. I seem to be reaching towards my center, trying to root myself in consistency.  I’ll let you know when I get there.

Posted in Filling My Well, Knowing Myself | Comments Off

January 15, 2010

What Type of Artist Am I?

There’s something that has always been a struggle for me – reconciling the kind of artist I want to be with the kind of artist I am.

In my dream-life, I am the type of artist that can launch an independent career. Not a career that’s beholden to the publishing industry or the cycle of acceptance and rejection, but the type of career where I create my own opportunities for publishing.  In my dream-life, I can manage creating, promoting, publishing, and selling my work in some form or another.

In reality, I struggle to make a regular space for my creative life. I squeeze creative activities into the smallest crevices. If I had to answer to customers and marketing plans and all the other myriad tasks that come with being a successful creative entrepreneur, I would implode. I work very hard in my day job and work very little in my creative job.  In reality, my creative life is a release for me, a way that I can express myself and lower stress.  I often wonder if I turned my creative life into a career and pursued it with the kind of zeal necessary to be successful, if it would still fill that relaxing space for me.

I’m lucky in that I love my day job and my career. I am happy and fulfilled through my work in higher education. I don’t want an artistic career that supplants my education career. In my optimistic-winter-break-brain, I want an artistic career in addition to my education career.

Honestly, that’s part of the reason that I chose “resources” as my word of the year. I want to see if there is space in my life for regular creative practice. I want to create a “clock-in-clock-0ut” mentality for my artistic work. Then, I can build on that regular practice and find the next step.

As I begin this tracking practice, I can see that it’s difficult to add this time to my life. It’s difficult because I have grown different habits over the past months, patterns of behavior that I find comforting.  But I also see a tiny sliver of the possibility that I could add more.  It’s this little slice of optimism that makes me pause. There’s part of me that wants to try for a larger creative life and then another part of me that wants to be satisfied with what I already have.

Tonight, I just want to mark that I am waffling between these extremes (again).  I’m chaffing at adding more to my creative life, just as I begin the process of regulating my practice. I can’t (and won’t) make any decisions that will commit me to more work than I can handle.  I’ll just note my optimism and ambition and bottle it for later.

Posted in Finding Purpose, Knowing Myself, Work-Life Balance | Comments Off

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