How Do We Create a Life That Works for Us?

There's a question that haunts me, that sits on my shoulder and chirps in my ear daily. I'm a self-relective kind of gal. It's not everyone's bag. But for me, I often stop and I ask myself this:

“How do I create a life that works for me? A life that is meaningful, balanced and peaceful? How do any of us do that?”

I thought I was answering that question, in the cracks of time between my job. I run a hectic resource classroom in a ridiculously underprivileged area of the city. My students are beautiful, funny, disobedient and sometimes ... deeply troubled.

So like anyone else, I attempt to control that chaos in my working life. I struggle to make time, in between the emotional triage, to remember myself as a human being with the right to be still, to be quiet, to breathe. I write. I swim. I play mermaids with my little girl. I water the crimson verbena on my deck. I tenderly patch together a relationship that I had thought damaged beyond repair. And I hope ... I hope against hope.

Despite all of this I recently had a second Lyme relapse. Again I stumble, temporarily lost in fear and uncertainty. Chronic illness often makes one ask “What did I do wrong?” along with more existential and terrifying questions about one’s own aging and mortality. Again I find the strength to keep moving forward. DETERMINED. There’s that Scottish streak. Some call it bloody-minded.One foot in front of the other. What else can any of us do? We all have our trials, the crosses to bear. There are so many who are so much more courageous than I could ever be.

We must patch our lives together carefully each day to create a life that works for us. We must make it through, somehow. With wildflower posies that our daughters pick for us; with stolen kisses and Band-Aids on our scarred hearts. We hold each other up. We celebrate our survival with each new day. We mourn those we have lost, the same way the wild geese keen over their beloved companions.

The only answer I know for sure is that there is always something to live for. There is community. There is connection. There is kindness. There are lovers and wine and song. There is storytelling. We sit quietly around the campfire with our closest friends, the soft light flickering, illuminating our faces briefly. We listen. We share.

There is soooo much love. So. Much Love.

We raise our faces to the sun when the sky is bluest blue. We breathe that cool air and feel how good it is to be alive. How good it is to be human. What a precious privilege. We put one foot in front of the other. There is fear and uncertainty for sure. But there’s also beauty and hope.

There is the crimson verbena on my porch. 

There is joy.

Namaste. The Light in me embraces the Light in you.

After The Rain

The rain came late morning
it whispered “shhh”
on the roof of my house

until the sound
grew harsh and drowned
the chatter in my head

the rain sluiced
down the walls of my heart
an ancient ocean
washed the streets

I laughed until I felt it
streaming down my cheeks
I cried until I felt
clean

the rain came late morning
reminding me of
home, of who I
am

after the rain
everything smelled
fresh,
looked green

I knew it was time
to wake up from this
watercolor
dream

Memoirs of a Reluctant Yogini

"What hurts us most is our silence; the things that we cannot say, the experiences we cannot share with others." ~Author Unknown

I first became sick with Lyme disease in 2006. I was lonely and well ... terrified really. I began blogging on MySpace as a kind of therapy. I was bed-ridden, so I even had time to learn some html coding to make my blog pretty.

As a young woman, I’d always wanted to “be a writer”, and I always thought that if I wrote about what was personal to me, the things closest to my heart, that it might reach others who were struggling with secrets of their own. Blogging became a means of self-expression, and a way for me to “come out” as a writer and creative person.

I wanted to communicate my experience with Lyme disease and make connections with others who also suffered. I tried to do that, bravely as possible. But the truth was that there were areas of my own life where I lacked the courage to fully “break the silence”.

I couldn’t bring myself to talk explicitly about how my brother’s death in 1994 and my arrival in America from Scotland immediately after college had led me to seek the security and comfort of a spiritual organization. This group taught techniques for meditation and "energy healing".

I worked in a paid position for a Vietnamese teacher and his family.  For ten years I devoted almost every waking minute to the care of the “business” of the group and to the needs of the Teacher’s family. For at least half of that time I felt trapped, watching the world “outside” pass me by. I longed to stretch my wings, to make greater use of my gifts and talents and honestly, to enjoy my life.

Apocalyptic messages of future global catastrophe, and the dire warnings of what terrible things might happen to me if I left kept me stuck much longer than my passion for “spiritual enlightenment”.

In 2008 I was finally able to leave and begin building my life on the “outside”. I had a boyfriend. I found a real job as a teaching assistant. I rented my own  apartment. I even went back to college. I didn't want people to think I was weird. I didn't want them to know that I’d made what seemed like some ill-advised life decisions; choices made when I was still inexperienced in life and very trusting; a time when I was the most vulnerable.

If I used the word “cult” it would bring up awful images of Hare Krishna devotees, or even worse ... Jim Jones. It would reduce a complex experience, the very fabric of my life to a banal stereotype. I felt it would deny the rich experiences and relationships I'd had during those years.

It would also mean losing acceptance from the community I’d been a part of for ten years. I would possibly lose the benevolent shelter of those in charge, along with my beloved friends. In this group I had felt that I was safely tucked under God’s wing, as though nothing “bad” would ever happen to me again. Without it, I was in free-fall.

So there I was, sharing intimate glimpses of my life on-line in my blog, and yet completely unable to speak the truth about who I was even to the people closest to me in real life. Perhaps enough time has passed, perhaps I’m just tired of trying to write around the edges of my life. Every time I’ve sat down to write a blog in the last five years, the words have echoed in my mind, "What hurts us most is our silence; the things we cannot say, the experiences we cannot share with others."

What I need, what I believe most of us need, is the freedom to be authentically, genuinely ourselves. So for that reason I am saying the things that have remained unsaid, sharing this experience with others, finally breaking my silence.

Paranoid Fiction ~ Maybe You Should Feel Uncomfortable!

Last month I attended Fabrizio Passanisi’s art show“Paranoid Fiction” at Longview Farmhouse in Clayton. “Paranoid Fiction” is a surrealistic literary and film genre that includes works such as "Bladerunner” by Philip K. Dick or “Fight Club” by Chuck Palahniuk.

Artist Fabrizio Passanisi once told me that the atmosphere he wanted to evoke in his paintings was that of a “rainy day”. Being from Scotland, I could relate completely. I write best, or I should say, I find myself most in the mood to write when it's raining.

The night that I attended his art show “Paranoid Fiction” however, the sun was setting spectacularly on my drive to the Longview Farmhouse in Clayton:



Fabriz had also told me that he liked to take photographs from the car and create paintings from them. So the view itself reminded me of some of Fabriz’ moody, evocative landscapes:

Covert Mantra
24"X48" Polymer on Hardboard

This one was in the new show:
Suspension-Anonymity
24"X48" Polymer on Hardboard

Fabriz has told me that people generally respond best to his landscapes. They are beautifully haunting like a rainy day, just as he said and yet still familiar and accessible.

As I've written on my bio on this blog, words are my first love. It has taken me some time to “get comfortable” with going to look at art in public, especially at art shows. I often wondered if I was supposed to know if a piece of art was “good” or “bad”. I wondered if other people “understood” art better than me, and perhaps if they would judge me if I could not discern the difference.

Recently, especially through the course of many conversations with Fabriz, and attending his shows, I’ve learned that for me, what’s more important is how I feel about a piece of art. What emotions does it evoke within me, and why. This is one of my absolute favorite pieces of his:

            Let Go My Love
            35"X35" Oil on Hardboard

Fabrizio is a first generation immigrant, like myself. His family are from Sicily in Italy. When I first saw his art, what I thought I saw was the struggle of an immigrant, searching for a sense of belonging and meaning in a new country. Of course, as anyone would know from reading my blog, I was seeing my own story reflected back at me.

I also saw stories from history in the dreamlike, fragmented scenes. I saw images that made me think of Bosnia, Vietnam and even World War II. I saw a world torn apart and not yet stitched back together. There were fleeting glimpses of America’s consumer culture; endless televisions screens, a psychiatrist treating a woman on a couch. There were scenes made poignant when placed side by side; a ship going down, a happy couple in a restaurant, comfortably oblivious to the chaos in the world around them:

              While the World Burns
              35"X35" Oil on Hardboard

If you feel uncomfortable when you look at his art, maybe it’s because that’s what he intended, and because that’s what art is supposed to do from time to time. It is often purposefully meant to unsettle us, to make us question ourselves, the assumptions we've made about the world, even our most basic values.

Fabriz listened with interest and curiosity, not judgment to what I saw (and what many others saw) in his art. He named his show at Longview Farmhouse, “Paranoid Fiction”  in part because he believes that reality is subjective, and so is our response to his paintings. His work combines the ordinary with the surrealistic in a way that makes us look again because we notice something that we hadn't seen before, or that we now interpret in a different way because something has changed in our lives, because we feel different on the inside.

That’s the way good art can function … we transform the art by our gaze and are in turn transformed by what we see. You can see more of his work at fabriziopassanisi.wix.com/art. I personally can’t wait to see what Fabrizio will create next.

I’m a big believer that St. Louis has a secretly vibrant art and literary life and love to support St. Louis artists and writers on my blog. If you know of an artist or writer (or if you are one yourself) who should be featured I would love to know and help share their work.

I Cooked a Steak and I Liked It! - It's Easier Than the Guys Ever Say!

When I was a young woman in college, just like the Katy Perry song, I thought that kissing a girl sounded like quite the act of liberation. Now that I’m in my forties, I've learned that there are some practical things that offer far greater independence; like knowing how to hang a picture or check the oil in the car. Like not having to wait for anyone else to give you what you need or want.

One day last week, I was standing in front of the meat counter at Schnucks in a state of doubtful hesitation. I had a dilemma. New York strip steak was on sale. It was a great deal, and sitting right in front of me was an inch thick slice of prime beef, silently begging to go home with me. It was bright jewel-red color, beautifully marbled and the perfect size for one person.

The problem was that I had no idea how to cook it. For the last seven years at least, I’d always had a man to do it for me. I don’t even remember what I did before that. My common sense side told me to avoid it. It told me to pick up ground lean beef as I always do, to go home and make tacos or spaghetti Bolognese, two of my old standards.

But there’s another side to me. A secret side that quite frankly, likes luxury and the finer things in life. The beef called out to me again, reminding me that I might not see a deal this good in a while, and this time I could not resist. Into the cart it went, and consequences be damned.

Seven years ago we didn't have the internet and Google, to gently guide us through life’s big and small moments, to tell us what to look for in the perfect life partner, or how to braid our hair seven different ways, but now we do. So when I went onto About.com and read the instructions there, I was shocked. Surely it couldn't be this simple?

http://bbq.about.com/od/steaks/ss/aa101606a_3.htm

Like any true steak lover, I eat my steak medium rare and flinch at the prospect of overcooked meat, so I had to do it right.  Make sure the grill is super-hot? I could do that. Two to three minutes on either side? I could do that. It didn't say anything about seasoning, but I added salt and pepper anyway. I made a salad first and then set to grilling. It’s the resting that’s the important part of cooking steak. If you cut it too soon, all the juices will spill out, leaving you with an unhappy, dry hunk of beef. Nobody wants that. So I let mine rest for a full ten minutes.

I separated from my husband over three months ago. I've learned a lot in a very short time, such as exactly how much is in my bank account, that the lawn doesn't mow itself, and that sometimes, despite all your best intentions you cannot always live up to society’s expectations of how you should conduct your life. Sometimes you can’t meet your own. Sometimes, even though the last thing you want to do is hurt others, you cannot withstand the damage caused to yourself by not staying true to your own heart. 

When I finally sat down to eat, I cut my New York strip open in trepidation, to find that was exactly the color it was supposed to be, still nicely pink on the inside and completely tender. How did men manage (astonishingly!) to maintain the myth that cooking steak is difficult or complicated? I cooked a steak and I liked it. The meat melted in my mouth. It was delicious and I savored it like my freedom.

Sacred Sculptures

I've been wanting to do a photo-blog about South Grand since early May. I got the idea while I was writing at Hartford Coffee Company one evening.

I had driven into the city listening to Alex Parks singing "Mad World" (not a song to be trifled with if you are feeling emotionally fragile!) and marveling how things have both changed and stayed the same over the years in South City. There are strange, new pylon-looking structures that now mark the metro station, and the religious school on the left that used to have a mural of Jesus' praying hands surrounded by a circle of adoring children has changed to the professional-looking "South City Preparatory School", a great improvement in my mind. Across from Tower Grove Park, the trendy hair boutique "Salon St. Louis" and gift shop "Botanicals on the Park" (which have both been there for years) don't look so lonely with a swanky new "Massage Luxe" right beside them.

I lived in various places in South City from about 1998 until 2006. People used to tell me all the time that the South Grand strip was "an up and coming" area. I never truly believed that, because it stayed the same, year after year.

As I was driving during those last few trips however, I noticed that there were grass centerpieces on the meridians between the roads going north and south, with cheerful hanging baskets of red and yellow flowers. I also began to notice sculptures on those meridians; elongated, looping shapes in silver, red, green, purple and blue. Perhaps they'd been there a long time, and my habitual mind had lazily failed to register them, but now they seemed like colorful symbols of the long-awaited success of the South Grand neighborhood. 

I knew immediately that I wanted to photograph them. I grew up in a small town on the east coast of Scotland. It was a "new town", a carefully planned community that included a variety of weird and wacky sculptures, from totem poles to giant mushrooms. Other people may think it's tacky, but those sculptures fueled my childish imagination and have ever endeared me to the attempts of urban artists to create a sense of place through art.

So I went with a friend and we ventured bravely into the middle of the street. This is the first sculpture in the series that line the meridians on South Grand outside Cardinal Glennon medical building:

The street lamp is obviously not a sculpture (I do know the difference!) but I also liked the sense of place it evoked:

My friend and I got side-tracked taking pictures of the flora and fauna:

The creator of these pieces is an artist called Brother Melvin Meyer. As you can tell by the name, he's a member of the "Marianist" society. He's the author of the quote at the top of this blog post and has been a resident artist in St. Louis for thirty-five years. The Marianist Gallery in St. Louis showcases his work. You can learn more about his art here: http://www.melsmart.com/main.php

This guitar was one of the most whimsical pieces:



We completed our explorations outside Cardinal Glennon's Children's Hospital, and couldn't resist just a couple more photos:



The girl blowing a glass bubble was my favorite of the three figures:

I tried to find out who created these sculptures but unfortunately couldn't credit the artist here. 

I've made many posts on this blog about discovering myself as a woman and a writer and especially about finding a "sense of place" as an immigrant in the heart of the Midwest. Today I remembered a phrase that I read a long time ago in the "Conversations With God" books by Neale Donald Walsh:

“The deepest secret is that life is not a process of discovery, but a process of creation. You are not discovering yourself, but creating yourself anew. Seek therefore, not to find out Who You Are, but seek to determine Who You Want to Be.”  

There's art and there are artists who create everywhere, no matter where you live. If you open your eyes to see, if you open yourself to experience, you can truly be content in any place and at any time.

* * * * *

More local St. Louis art:

Photos of the St. Louis City Garden by Marcia K. Myers at: http://artistswaystl.weebly.com/1/post/2013/06/citygarden-by-marcia.html

Local artist Ryan Stanley takes photos of the Cherokee neighborhood at:
 http://found-oncherokee.tumblr.com/. You should check it out, the photos are great.

A Sense of Place

I joined a writing group a few weeks ago called “The St. Louis Artist’s Way”, which for the most part focuses on the work of Julia Cameron’s book of that name. This morning I woke up early to do morning pages and skim the exercises in Week Four, which is our assigned reading, looking for one that speaks to me.

The one that I hover over for an extra minute is asking me to describe my “ideal environment” in about one paragraph. “Town?” Julia asks, “Country? Swank? Cozy?” Ahhh! Now here’s something I can write about, because of course, I feel so conflicted about this nitty, gritty question of environment.

I moved from Scotland to America seventeen years ago. I can still remember coming off the plane and onto the sticky black tarmac at Chicago O’Hare (that’s how they de-planed in those days). The heat was thick and heavy as a blanket wrapped around my unwilling shoulders and the air smelled like stale french fries.

The roads I was used to in Scotland were narrow and twisty. They were made to accommodate nippy little cars, like Minis and Fiats. The towns always had a pedestrian path, usually lined with a bank of short grass at the side of each road. In college I walked everywhere, too impatient to wait for the bus when my strong legs could take me where I needed to go just as fast.

In St. Louis, the roads were massively wide, with majestic Chevys and Fords moving like stately behemoths through constantly flowing intersections that seemed impervious to the vulnerability of the frail, unarmored beings who dared to cross them. At the time I felt the message was that in America, cars were more important than humans. There often wasn't a pavement (sidewalk) in sight for miles. It was a strange new world in which the strip-mall stores looked eerily similar, mile after mile and where nothing, not even a corner shop was in comfortable walking distance.

But I've been here many years now, and I chose for various reasons, to remain. There are places in St. Louis that time has made familiar and memories have made fond. Sitting in the Hartford Coffee Company on Friday night, waiting for the members of my writing group, I wrote in my teal blue journal with my favorite pen and looked outside, past the company logo emblazoned in white on the window and beyond to the huge tree across the street, a damp, brilliant splash of green. A young hipster couple sat behind me, endearingly awkward together, perhaps on their first date. Musicians began to filter in with damp hair disheveled from the rain, carrying guitars and amps. 

Questions of environment and the complexity of what it means to live in a place that does not belong to me by birth or by choice, but (for lack of a better word) by destiny, are things that I think about often. At school last week I was having my students cut images out of magazines that represented things that made them feel calm or happy. I came across a photograph of a group of women who were making preserves in a barn, rows of glass jars lined up on a bench, dust motes floating on the rays of morning light between the wood slats in the walls. I found myself tugging the page out to keep. Is that the kind of environment that I want? I remember my horror when my husband and I went to visit family in Sabetha, Kansas and he suggested we could live there. “What would you want me to do all day,” I demanded churlishly, “dance in the corn-fields?” Did I come all the way from a small town in Scotland to live in a small town in Kansas? I think not!

When we visited Colorado, I loved the mountains, but there was so much open space ... miles upon miles of highway ending in vast suburbs organized into neat grids. “See,” my husband said proudly, “at least the roads here make sense!” I loved Boulder, but wasn't so sure about “family-friendly” Fort Collins.

I’m still not sure what environment makes sense for me. Perhaps somewhere in the Pacific Northwest where I can hear the steady heartbeat rhythm of the rain that was part of my childhood, and is now part the essence of who I am. The rain reminds me of summer days in a far-away land, and opens the doorway to reflection, and to my creative life in a way that nothing else can. I need somewhere that I can feel the peace and tranquility of the country, but still have access to the diversity, the culture, and the vibrant life that city living brings.

I look up from my writing to find that it’s raining still. All the environment I need is here this morning.  I have written, right here in this place and I know that wherever I am, I hold the key to heaven in my very own hands.

Hartford Coffee Company, South St. Louis City

A Slice of My Writing Life

I’m sitting in my kitchen on this rainy Saturday feeling somewhat of a sense of accomplishment. The bed is made, the house picked up and the dishwasher and the dryer are both running. My daughter, who is three years old, is singing parts of Taylor Swift’s song “Trouble” repeatedly as though she’s one of those big old LP’s where the needle gets stuck in the same spot, “Trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble, trouble ...” ad infinitum.  At least she’s not torturing us with endless repetitions of PSY’s “Gangnam Style” video.  This is all “women’s stuff”, and it really belongs in my morning pages (which I haven’t written today) rather than a blog. This stuff is part of the daily landscape (for me) of being a woman and a creative person. I do housework at breakneck speed and I even joined a semi cult-like group called “FlyLady” a few years ago in my efforts to become domestically super-efficient so that I would have more time to write. More time to write, dear God let me write something half-way decent before I die! My daughter watches me sitting at my computer a lot. Lesson planning. A little writing. More lesson planning. A little more writing, maybe.

Children emulate what we do of course, so Sophie has learned to navigate the iPad like a ten year old.  She started with “Angry Birds” and moved into YouTube videos of people teaching her to play Angry Birds, or demonstrating Angry Bird toys. Then she started finding videos of people baking various novelties, such as “Angry Birds” cupcakes and “Hallo Kitty” cakes. “Mommy,” she asks me in that deeply serious tone that three year-olds sometimes use, “do we have a cake leveler?”
“Um, no honey” I say distractedly, searching for just the right  phrase in my latest mini-epic. “How about fondant?” she says  hopefully. We sit together snuggled on the couch while I type letters and write blog posts. Do I feel guilty about how much time I let her play with technology? Of course! Guilt is a language many women and especially mothers understand very well. Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe other mummies take time to sweep under the couch on a Saturday morning before they set to work baking with their cake levelers and colored fondant.

This morning I did something I never do. I asked my husband to clean the bathroom so that I could have more time to write. And he did. “Hey mommy,” Sophie asks me, “can I paint now, please can I?”
“We have to go out soon honey” I say, “but we can do some modelling clay for a few minutes if you like.” 
“Ooh yay, let’s make some Angry Birds!” she claps excitedly and I smile. She's creative, just like me. 

The Artist's Way

“The Artist’s Way” wasn't my original point of entry into the world of writing teacher/guru Julia Cameron. The first book of hers that I read in its entirety was “The Right to Write”. I even make reference to it in an image on the right hand side of this blog. I loved that book, and the way that Cameron explains so lucidly (and lyrically) that writing for its own sake is a wholly acceptable natural, human impulse, not reserved only for the super-talented, for the Stephen Kings and the John Le Carré’s of this world. “We write” she says, “because it is human nature to write. Writing claims our world. It makes it directly and specifically our own.” 

At that time it made me think of the Paleolithic paintings in the caves in Lascaux, France, and the way that even stone-age people felt the need to record the events of their lives, the sights and scents of the hunt or whatever religious rituals that marked their days. If their experience was valid, why not mine? The book taught me how to write from the present moment, to dig deeper into my own experience and to keep developing my own authentic voice. She also taught me to write what I liked writing about, rather than what I should be writing: “Guilty pleasure is what writing is all about. It is about attractions, words you can’t resist using to describe things too interesting to pass up” she said. And above all, there was this phrase, “forget lofty motives”. How freeing! There was no need for me to write the great American novel, after all. The only need was to satisfy my impulse to write. 

Did I do all the exercises in “The Right to Write”? Honestly no, but even a few sentences of Cameron’s beautifully inspiring writing would often be enough to make me set pen to paper. (It's the same for me with "The Artist's Way".) She refused to allow me the feeble excuse that there was no time to write, and for a while I committed conscientiously to her practice of doing my “morning pages” each day, and even taking myself out on an “artist’s date” now and again. 

Of course, every approach has its limitations. I don’t believe that Julia Cameron does a great job of teaching you how to be a commercially successful artist. She doesn't explain how to structure a short story, or write a novel like “Twilight” that appeals to the masses. I heard that Stephen King’s classic book “On Writing” is much better for that, and much more pragmatic about the “business” of writing but for various reasons, I haven’t brought myself to read it yet.

I did buy Eric Meisel’s “The Creativity Book” but didn't get too far with it. I found a book called “One Year to a Writing Life” by Susan M. Tiberghien to have some useful thoughts and exercises. I have a copy of Cameron’s “Vein of Gold” which I bought because it was on sale and I haven’t really looked at much. My inspiration and reading pleasure these days often comes from softly reflective memoir writing, such as Phyllis Theroux’s “The Journal Keeper” or May Sarton’s “Journal of a Solitude”. 

Our writer's group had an on-going discussion over the last few weeks about  the limitations of Cameron’s approach; it's pretty dated and it's based on the 12-step recovery model. This gives it a quasi-mystical tone and the venerable author has the similar, unquestionable status afforded to cult gurus around the world. My own blog from last week raised questions for some members about the concept of the "artist's date", and the idea that our "inner artist" is in some way separate from who we are. We wondered whether Cameron's work encourages a "splitting" of the self, and whether in some way it causes us to infantilize ourselves as continually "recovering" artists, rather than to claim ourselves as bona-fide artists in our own right. On the other hand and in her defense, there’s nobody like Julia Cameron for giving aspiring writers permission to write and doing it so evocatively, so irresistibly:

“Left to its own devices, writing is like weather. It has a drama, a form, a force to it that shapes the day. Just as a good rain clears the air, a good writing day clears the psyche. There is something very right about simply letting yourself write. And the way to do that it to begin, to begin where you are.”

It's pretty hard to argue with that ...
Anna