What I Claimed I Couldn’t Do

Me in Budapest Imagining the Can-dos

I posted this on Facebook a month ago:

“Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist when we grow up.” ~ Pablo Picasso.  “Oh, I’m not an artist.” My husband and I get this response from adults a lot when we explain what we do. I write and he sculpts. It’s frustrating to hear people give up on themselves without even trying. How will you embrace the creative life in 2012?

A few weeks ago I heard myself say, “Oh, I can’t sing.”

So, I participated in a community centered singing group last night, going confidently in the direction of my resistance, my lie.

There was a nametag waiting for me at the check-in table as though someone had tipped off my muse, the creative source I had recently denied.  In all, 20-25 people showed up.  I imagined them all to be accomplished singers with melodious tones that taunt the angels.  I sang anyhow.

I threw myself into the folk songs, sang harmony and something called soprano.  My body and voice danced and mingled with others in the room.  By the end of the night, I was hoarse and nobody had arrested me for the sounds that made their way through my chapped lips.  You see, I can sing, I’m just not very good at it.  My melodious tones taunt the laughing hyenas, but I make the noise anyhow.

Don’t speak the creative lie of I can’t, I’m not – defy it.  Your soul wants release through whatever creative means you least want to express.  How will you embrace the creative life in 2012?

Woolen Argyle Woes

 

 

 

Under the bedroom chair

a single woolen argyle sock

looks back at me

 

wondering where

its black, white and grey

partner has gone.

 

Sometimes partners leave

for a while, get lost,

go on vacation or

work where work can be found,

 

so you can find

new perspective,

the latent dream

written within you.

 

Sometimes it takes

their void

to learn that

 

we can keep

feet fashionably warm

and dance

without them too.

 

Sometimes the

loose threads,

pilling and thinning

in the toe and heel

 

of your aloneness

make way for a new

possibility, fitted over

the nine iron.

 

You are not alone

when the wedge shows

up in the bag beside you

wearing your long lost partner.

What I Need to Know in Life

The Now-Abandoned Art's Orchard

My paternal grandfather was a man with great passions for the earth.  With a seemingly fearless, entrepreneurial spirit he began an apple orchard.  He sought out the perfect, south-facing hill for his vision and purchased it.  He planted trees, nurtured them, learned about them, much how I imagined him as a father with a young and growing family at that time.  A very introverted, thoughtful man, he learned how to graft trees, press apples into cider and how to market his products through relationships.

What he needed to know about life, he learned from an apple orchard.

I remember listening to his stories and how they always seemed to come back to the land, his orchard, his family.  I reflect on his memory, his words, his ability to make meaning with what he knew best.  A thought was a seed.  An idea was a sprout.  The fruits of his labor were apples and children.  He understood the world around him better when he could compare it to growing apples.

I find myself doing the same with what I know intimately.  A lifetime with horses as mirrors and teachers has led me to making meaning from what they have taught me:  work as a unit, always fight for your life in the presence of danger, never take things personally, be congruent in body, mind and spirit.  Understanding their nature has given me tools for processing life.

What I need to know about life, I learned from horses.

Disclaimer:  While there are as many ways to process life as there are people on the planet, it is interesting to apply the lessons we learn from our dog, cat, plant, career, spiritual practices, etc.  An orchard was a significant metaphor for how my grandfather lived his life, but I’m sure there were others.  Horses are the most significant metaphor for my life, but also not the only one.

How can your area of expertise help you make meaning?  Where is the metaphor, the mirror, in what you know most intimately?

I Follow You, But Cannot Find You

Result of My Ferocious Journaling

I follow you but am yet ignorant of how to find you sometimes.

This wordy sentence was a comment I made on another person’s blog.  I really like her photography and poetic voice so I clicked the “Follow” button on her homepage thinking that I would get an email every time she posted something new.  Not the case.  When you follow someone, you have to find them.  Somewhere in my blogosphere account is her address.  Having much to learn yet about WordPress.com, I dove in with the conviction that I had found her once, surely I could find her again.

By her pointing out this awkward sentence as having many meanings, I couldn’t help but notice the gem in it too.   Taking it out of context and playing with rearranging the words, and versions of the words, and other words that wanted in, the following is a list of word playtime:

I follow you but am yet ignorant of how to find you sometimes.

I follow you but am ignorant of how to find you.

Sometimes I follow you but cannot find you.

Yet I am ignorant of you.

I am ignorant sometimes yet I find you.

I am ignorant yet sometimes I find you.

I find you ignorant.

I find you sometimes.

Follow your ignorance.

Follow sometimes in order to find it.

I follow you into fallow fields and flounder frequently.

I follow ignorance.

Imagine if we played around with punctuations too!  Commas change everything!  What other combinations can you come up with?  I find wordplay highly entertaining so please share your creations in the comments.  And being the meaning maker of your own life, what meaning is screaming for your attention in these word combinations?