all balled up

All balled up - that is what my piano teacher, Mrs. Carson, used to say whenever I was in that place of intense emotional response to a piece of music and my technical skill set was lagging behind.  All knots and desperate attempts to unravel and spool myself out being  hampered and I am left hopeless confused.

I haven't thought about Mrs. Carson in a long while.  I took piano lessons for the four years of high school and always felt behind because my image of kids studying piano involved 7 and 8 year olds playing Brahms Lullaby with their teenage selves far beyond simple chords and notes.  During my senior year my teacher somehow talked me into participating in this formal evaluation; it wasn't a recital per say, but I had to perform before some judges who would rate me.  I'm not even sure I understood what it was all for - my mother only recently explained to me the evaluation could have been used to apply to music school.  All I remember is my teacher wanted me to do it and I went along albeit quite fearfully.


I think I played something by Schubert.  I can't really play anything on the piano anymore but my hands almost almost remember the movements of the piece I performed.  I can recall the movement of the music in my fingers, in my body and in my soul.  I can hum a few notes and I still sway, 33 years later, when I think of it.  I loved that piece and I performed it with all of the emotion I dared to leak out which is to say, a fair amount for me but probably restrained by more musical standards.  I don't remember flubbing up and I am still here so I survived.  But I never believed I could be a pianist and so it didn't occur to me to ask about my scores afterwards.  I mean, if Mrs. Carson didn't tell me then theyI must have been embarrassingly low and she was sparing me by not bring the matter up.


After that year I left for college and briefly considering resuming my piano studies but decided against it because, well, it would be a waste of time, right?  In my mind the time had passed for me.  I was too old, too late in my ripe age of 17 to amount to much.


It never occurred to me to consider that I really enjoyed playing the piano and that I might continue my studies purely for my own pleasure.  


A year or so ago the whole topic came up with my mother and husband.  My mother expressed her regret that I hadn't continued playing, that she and my father held onto the piano for years hoping I might start up again and that reluctantly they sold it when it became evident I would not play again.  I confessed that the evaluation process was the final proof that I was wasting my time at something I would never be very good at.  My mother sat stunned.  "You scored very high ... in the 90s ... Mrs. Carson wanted you to apply for a scholarship ... she thought you should study music but you seemed to have decided upon art and we didn't want to push you."  


In the months since my mother relayed this bit of information to me, I have reexamined the string of decisions made afterwards over and over in my mind.  It pains me to realize the number of times I abandoned something - myself really - because I compared myself to others and felt I was lacking and should quit.  Piano. Photography. Writing. Foreign Languages. Teaching.  All things I enjoyed but never pushed myself to pursue too seriously because, well because ...

 


And now I've returned from The Makerie Retreat and two full days of painting and I want to immerse myself in it.  My first day back at work someone asked me how I was and I broke into tears sobbing "I don't want to be here, I want to be painting!"  


I want to be able to devote more time and attention to what I love; to what opens me up to passion and engagement and presence; to feel utterly alive and awake in this life.  I want to dare to say "This matters to me and that is reason enough to pursue it."  


What holds me back - the nets that block my leap from the cliff and into the colorful abyss - are notions of responsibility, selfishness and good old-fashioned guilt.

listening to crow who has been insistent he has messages I need to hear ... and heed

So here I sit, all balled up.  I know which ideas I can dismantle but others are harder to evaluate honestly.  And while all of this has been on my mind this week, today is my day to paint and play  and to let all these thoughts drain away.  Right now I can commit this chunk of time to following my bliss and my curiosity.  That may be the best I can do for awhile which isn't to say I am abandoning myself again but rather committing to this moment and what is possible.  And that's a good place to start.  


Stay tuned.  

she always helps me to find clarity and purpose albeit often with a healthy dollop of chaos and distraction

Monday Inspiration Celebration: hello old friend ...

My body has not always been my friend. Or more accurately, I have not been the best of friends to my body.

As a child I had pretty rotten eating habits. I was a picky eater and dinner was often a bowl of cold cereal. Sugar cereal that is. I ate from one of four food groups: carbs, fats, fruits and sugar. And while I rode my bike and ran around the neighborhood, exercise was a foreign concept.

In high school I developed an eating disorder. I did start eating healthier foods - I discovered vegetables, chose salads over carbs, cut out sugar - I just didn't allow myself enough food. I also became a runner and fitness nut.

While I believed I was finally tending to my body, I was really atoning for the crime of having a body. It wasn't something to befriend as much as something to control, tame or subdue.

When I was in graduate school I had an accident and I broke my neck. I had to spend three months in a halo brace and then months in various cervical collars. While I recognized this "accident" was a call for me to stop living mindlessly - to really wake up to what I wanted to be doing with my life - at some level I believed my body had betrayed me.

Soon afterward this upheaval (I dropped out of school one semester before my qualifying exams, moving to our present location for a new job) I discovered yoga. I began a dedicated practice in which I began to heal my relationship with my body. Or so I thought.

While I tended to my body's needs, cultivating deep listening to its wisdom, I believed I was entering into a new relationship defined by respect and trust. Then my body disappointed me yet again.

The dark secret of miscarriage is the shame one assumes; my body's inability to do what it seeming was designed to do left me feeling deficient or defective and angry with its lack of cooperation.









All these stories came tumbling out of me this past weekend as I worked on my art journal spread for Earth, the first topic covered in The Elements of Art Journaling course with Effy Wild. The prompt was to consider the associations I had with the word earth and from there to look at what words or ideas expressed my experience or sense of my body. The phrase I was to consider being "My body is ..."

phase one of my journal spread ... lots of layers, paint and potato stamp

I actually cheated. While I had lots of images/thoughts about earth, I didn't think too much about my body and its connection to earth. As my page evolved it came time to take a photograph of myself to use in the spread. I had just taught my Sunday morning yoga class, so I naturally assumed a favorite pose.

After 17 years of practice, my poses have changed significantly. My body has changed and my relationship with it has softened. Where once I had been strict and disciplined, I am now more gentle and accepting. I am not interested in pushing my body as much as listening to it. As I photographed myself in Warrior I pose it struck me, my body is a map of my journey. It is my compass guiding and directing me. It has never let me down; rather, I was not listening to the wisdom it was trying to impart: open, relax, soften, trust, find contentment within this skin, within this moment, this life.

My Body is the compass for my journey ... it is my guide, my teacher, my friend ... it connects me to all Life

My body has been my best friend on this journey, putting up with a lot of my crap and abuse and still she serves me with patience and tolerance. My body is my friend; she connects me to earth, to life, to my animal nature and is the portal to deeper truths and a wisdom accessible only through living through loss and gain, pleasure and pain, birth, death and rebirth.

writing fun (how i describe me)

Excuse me ... you'll have to speak up, I have trouble hearing over all the voices in my head ... Have we met before? Because you look familiar and I am terrible with names ... but somehow I became the collective memory of my family, the keeper of all secrets, the street sweeper puttering along at the end of the parade, tidying up the messes ...












I am Alice's White Rabbit perpetually late and leaving a trail of breadcrumbs in my wake ... I am a snake obsessively shedding my skin - devotion or compulsive behavior? I don't know which ... I am prairie fields vast and still, infinite in subtle tones of gold and brown; I am prairie fields whipped wide [i meant to write wild, but there it is] by the sudden storms that inevitably pop up when conditions become extreme ...








I am dangerous when threatened and the one who often threatens myself is me ... I thrash and I crash ... I've been broken but I believe ... my knees are bloodied by prayer ... I cry when I laugh ... I slobber when I cry ...











I journey in deep, touch my vulnerable self and try my best to love her ... I am curiosity and the cat, but hopefully I have 8 lives to go ... I am love all sloppy and extreme, a puppy that cannot help itself ... I am whomever I choose to be in this moment and funny, I still choose me.

So, tell me something about you ...

(This was an exercise for the amazing course I am currently in - The Stories You'll Tell. I have been repeatedly shocked by the words and images tumbling out from my imagination. Each exercise I wonder how will I dredge up something original but the prompts, the guidance, and the feedback from Natasha have unleashed a torrent of ideas. And I am enjoying the simplicity of a writing practice: just me, a cup of tea, my favorite medium point blue ball point pen - una penna italiana molto bella - and the page.)

wednesday ... stranded by life

I had one of those days when i thought my head was going to explode ...

nothing for it but to breathe, try to find my center, look for my center yet again ...

and then play ...










I guess if I was stranded on a desert island, Photo Shop would keep me amused for quite some time ...






(Where is the gray hair correction brush on the tool bar menu?)

never to be forgotten ...

(a little end of winter madness ...)




dear lis - i wonder where you are? i sit waiting, eager for your touch, your gaze ... i long to purr and hum sweet nothings into your ear and show you my magic moves ... i miss our walks together, our afternoons spent seeking sunshine and shadows, our playful games of viewfinder hide and seek ... could it be you have replaced me? tired of me? please tell me the love has not faded but is merely awaiting a new bloom ... i await your return - faithful always, your coco






Mia cara Coco -

Oh my darling! It pains me to think you would ever doubt my love, my affections! The lack is not with you, but within me and my weak spirit and dulled imagination. The eternal parade of gray and cold days has damped my enthusiasm to take pictures, to seek out splendors in a world that has seemed unspectacular lately. This is my fault, my laziness. But absence has made my heart not only grow fonder, but has strengthen my commitment to you. I ache for new adventures and I promise you today we will be together. I could no more abandon you than I could cut my eyes and my heart out and still live. Your sensitivity and attention to detail complete me like no other.

I am true to you, dearest. I promise I will not neglect you so ever again.

xo Lis


What I never want to take for granted - gray afternoons filled with games (Jungle Jive - a game where you have to perform various actions holding a balance sensitive egg that is "sleeping" unless tilted)















And always, the go-to activity for any Joy Warrior, painting play












Lately it seems all my abstractions turn into variations of a Madonna and Child ...








whereas Cowgirls paintings revolve around cars, trains, planes or in this case, a sail boat








Admittedly, I am biased, but I always prefer the freedom of her work to mine!








Dearest Coco -

I hope you now know that I can never be far from you ...









Is there a passion you would like to rekindle today? As a Joy Warrior, you cannot deny your duty to reignite it.

Belly Love and belly insights

My stomach has been bothering me lately. Which is annoying because I have been eating well and cannot for the life of me figure out what is wrong. It is a mild upset that will not go away.

So this morning was my official start day for working with The Artist's Way. I think I am the only person who hasn't read it or really known much about it. There is a reading group taking place over on the Goddess Circle and I decided to join in as I do better when I am holding myself accountable to a group. The major tool of The Artist's Way is Morning Pages. Each day I am to write 3 pages or 750 words, stream of consciousness style to get all the junky junk out of the way. I'm not to be writing anything inspirational, just writing. Gremlins and angels, crap'ola and magic, inspiration and nonsense. And apparently in my case, a spicy dash of profanities.

I grabbed an old spiral bound notebook and I wrote. And wrote. I wrote so fast my hand cramped up and the words blended together on the page in some crazy french liaison-like mush. I was acutely aware of feeling like the day was lost to me. It was 9:15 and I was behind because I did not get up when my alarm went off. And then I spewed forth a long list of all the things I wanted to do and all the things I needed to be doing. Right now. No, an hour ago.

Writing until my claw of a hand could go no further, I realized it is no wonder my stomach is bothering me. The amount of efforting, the volume of I-ness that covered the page would cripple the hardiest of beings, never mind stomachs. Staring at my pages heaped full with desiring, pushing, striving, reaching, grasping and grabbing, I could feel the knot being pulled tighter in my stomach. The navel center and stomach is the chakra associated with fire, will, achievement and individual power, action and expression. It is the chakra that gets things done. And mine is collapsing under all the strain.

This awareness came after another a-ha moment earlier in the morning. I was late getting up because I could not rouse myself from my dream. I have intense dreams and periods when they leave me exhausted and spent. Throughout my life, I have had cycles when specific themes appear over and over again in my dreams. Some just cease and others end when I take action in my dream. For years I had the classic "back to school" dream where I was contacted by my high school that they had made a mistake and I needed to come back and take one more math class in order to graduate. This went on and on until one night, in my dream, I said "I have my college and master's degrees - I don't need your high school diploma!" I never had that dream again.

My present dream theme - one which has been going on for years - is where I am attempting to travel somewhere, usually by plane, and obstacles keep arising that prevent me from either getting to the airport or, if I do travel, I get lost or diverted on route to wherever it is I am trying to go. These dreams leave we feeling frustrated and tired from all the effort spent trying to move through the obstacles. All my attention and energy is focused upon getting to my destination and that never happens.

Wanting to break this cycle, I have tried to figure out where is it I am meant to be going? And what is holding me back? Of course, this is a huge metaphor for my life: what am I supposed to be doing? How can I get there?

This morning it occurred to me to turn things around a bit. What if the dream is not an omen telling I need to figure out what to be doing with my life; what if the dream is about me pushing, striving, straining to get somewhere when where I am meant to be is right under my feet? What if the frustration is from my refusal to surrender to the life I have been given? What if I accept there is nowhere else to go, no one else to be but me as I am in this moment? Because beneath all that straining and efforting is a belief that once I get there, somehow I will magically be transformed or transported out of this existence. Poof! I will explode into a million pieces of light and be free of birth, death, pain, and well, life.

Okay, I should have provide you a map for the circuitous route of my thinking. To put all of this into a larger context, I should also mention the instruction we were given last week in Deep by Connie, our fearless leader. She asked us to consider things this way: that no matter how much we painted, we couldn't get any better than we already are but also, we couldn't get any worse. How would we paint? Wouldn't the only choice be to be ourselves and embrace being extraordinarily that? Because the other option would be mediocre and which is not an option in my book.

So I've been chewing this whole being extraordinarily me for the past week. It has been liberating to paint with a sense of just painting me. Nowhere to go, no striving to improve, just aiming for honesty, aiming for 100% Lisa. Pretty radical. And my painting practice is mirroring the other practices that define my life: yoga, meditation and parenting. In each there comes a point when I've read the books, I listened to the stories and experiences of others, taken classes, seeked advice and guidance and now all that is left is to practice. Roll up my sleeves and do the work. And here's the thing: the work is never finished. I may have an amazing meditation, a glorious painting session, an on-fire-alive asana practice and tomorrow the work continues. As the saying goes, after ecstasy, then the laundry. There is no there to be gotten to, no final launching point (where I will dissolve into that light.) Just the practice. And showing up for it again and again.






Because if there were an end point, that would mean exiting this life which is work, pleasure, pain, joy, agony and ecstasy. Yeah, maybe we become angels, but remember Wings of Desire? Isn't the joy of life so much sweeter because we also experience the bitterness of disappointment, the pain of loss, the full spectrum of emotions that give flavor to existence?

Have I lost you? Maybe I've lost myself. But this is what is welling up inside me. All my striving and pushing and forcing has lead me to this point of total surrender. And in letting go of grasping, I am finding myself opening to receiving the greatest things of all: my extraordinary life, my singular and unique self. That's all there is.






Well, that an a huge stack of dirty dishes and a pile of laundry patiently waiting for my attention.

And hopefully, a new and relaxing cycle of dreams.

(is this what is meant by navel gazing?)

The many faces (and feet and hands) of me

I am looking for clues ...

Who is this woman?




































I am whoever I choose to be in any given moment ...


(for an inspiring post for those of us wearing many hats - mommy, artist, housekeeper, cook - check out Pixie's words which rocked my week; then head over to Connie's pad and remember this truth - and be free!)

Monday Inspiration Celebration: antidote to the blahs

I love Winter, I really do. I love the sound of snow falling; the intense quiet after a storm; the sense of hidden spaciousness when the land is blanketed in snow. I love Cowgirl's excitement when the first flakes fall and she rushes outside to capture them on her tongue; how impervious to cold she becomes when sledding is involved; and how winter days require frequent hot cocoa breaks. And I love the quality of introspection that cold weather and white landscapes evoke.






But, I ask you: Is it my imagination or has winter become dirtier? As a kid, I don't remember all the grit and grime associated with snowfall. Okay, trips into New York City we would joke about gray snow (yellow snow - yes, we knew about that!) but now it seems like slushy, gritty, brown snow quickly arrives on the heels of a fresh snowfall. And I am weary of the grime which is everywhere: on cars, coats, bags, boots, garage floor and rolling around on my wood floors where bare feet are assaulted by the tiny but oh-so-sharp nuggets.

Even my winter boots - veterans of many years of snowy walks - have collapsed under the strain.

that's electrical tap holding the sole of my left boot on (meanwhile, i track the journey of my replacement boots from one snowy fed ex center to another)

Coupled with the exhaustion of lugging around the weight of extra clothing (remember my Moose-walking outfit? At least 2 layers of everything and I walk him 2 to 3 times a day) and I am ready to hang a white flag and surrender. But as Cowgirl reminds me "we never give up - do we mommy?" and so with the going tough, I got going.

When the winter blahs threaten, here's what I do:

Grab my camera and take pictures. Under the guise of being artful, I find the exercise of looking for interesting shots engages me at a time when I would normally lapse into moody reverie. It gets me moving, looking, thinking and present.










Experiment a bit. Which can mean interesting disasters.

this polaroid got stuck in the camera and I had to manually pull it out and then ...

i got the crazy idea that it was too cold inside for the film to proper process and not having a radiator, i thought I would pop the pictures into a warm oven. of course, i forgot about them being in the oven! hence the interesting blue effect (and a curdling you cannot see in the scans)

Paint paint paint. If gray is the landscape outside my house, well, I can find rainbows within.

my latest painting for DEEP; such a powerful experience, words fail me right now

Mix things up: indoor picnics, dance fests and ice cream cones when it is 5 below zero.






When all else fails, I surrender to the blahs and crawl into bed with a good book or my drawing pad.

contour drawings using my non dominant hand

Also helpful - putting my woes into perspective:





Things could always be worse!

What home remedies do you have for the winter blahs?