Creative Bootcamp: Day Twelve - Smooth

This weekend I celebrated my thirty-third birthday by going to Cape Cod for two days.  I think birthdays are incredibly important, and should be celebrated with cupcakes, sunshine and lots of introspection.

I'll admit, I still like to read my horoscope and the big buzz is that there was some sort of major lunar eclipse on Saturday.  The eclipse was supposed to bring the opportunity for big massive change.  Advice was to spend the day living like you want to live.   And apparently things are looking big for my career.  Ha. 



While sitting on the beach, I remembered a series of books I read when I was a teenager (I can't remember the title) where the main character, a teenager who discovers her witchy powers after moving to New England, has to fight a baddie named Black Peter and his crystal skull.   Being the main character that she is, she deduces that the beach (all the little particles of sand) is one large crystal, and calls on the powers of nature to defeat the warlock.  Still brings me chills.

Instead of thinking about how tired I am of everything I love (yes, I love those books) being in storage in my mother's basement (I have a tiny apartment in Boston, don't hate), I focused on the millions of tiny rocks and the fact that the book could have taken place right here, and how my teenage self would have thought that was so cool, but would have never expected to be sitting here at thirty-three. 

Wandering down the beach, I kept remarking at how smooth the rocks were, gently worn down over years and years of tides.  But they never wear away, only become smaller and smaller grains of sand, never losing their essence, just returning to the earth to become stone again.  The ocean is a clear representation of my spirituality; I feel we return and return and return.  We are connected by air and have a responsibility to each other.

My husband and I spent the ride down to the Cape talking about the environment and the terribleness and out-of-controlness of everything.  He, my trusty philosopher (following is my translation of his much wiser words), mentioned the environmental philosophy of Slavoj Žižek, who believes we should embrace our dependence on the environment - including living in our trash and waste - because right now, we separate ourselves from the environment and ship off our everything so we don't have to deal with it or the impact of what we do.  Zizek calls it a psychosis.  My husband stated that our recycled batteries end up in Africa,  and I think about the island of plastic in the ocean, and the contaminants in my makeup I can't get away from.  I don't know how to change it, the enormity of it.

I've been reading pregnancy and pre-pregnancy books, books on having a so-called green baby.  I'm too old and think too much, I can't just dive into the unexpected thrill of getting pregnant (can I?).  I work with a population of children that have a diagnosable mental illness, and imagine the very worse that can happen.  I worry about that, and the impact it could have on my marriage, and the heartbreaking effort it can take, and I think "can I do anything to prepare?"  The truth is, a tiny person will hopefully come this way soon and once they are here, it will be what it is.  I am both petrified and growing impatient.  Time feels agonizingly short.

I have been thinking of how I want my next year to look like, and am running into frustration.  I can see what I want but have no clue how to get there.  I know I want a house, a baby, a change in my job (seriously an office where I could actually DO art therapy would be bomb).  I keep returning to my desire for a PhD, to do research and read more theory; to do an MFA and develop a body of art work; to work somewhere where I get to be immersed in ideas and paint, not paperwork and regulation.  I started a book about listening to and following callings.  Maybe I will figure out the hows if I could just get out of my own way. 

This weekend, my husband called me athletic.  Athletic!  I felt shocked and pleased:  all these words we use to define ourselves, and here is a word I've never heard attached to me.  I made this word happen.  A sad fact:  this weekend I wore a dress and a bathing suit (not at the same time) for the first time in a long time.  It was awesome.  I did it on purpose because I'm tired of hiding in a self-imposed uniform or avoiding places where preadolescent waifs parade around in teeny bikins.  I ate my cupcakes for my birthday, damn it, but today was the last one for awhile.  Tomorrow, I will get up and run. 

And back to the creative bootcamp:  what small steps can I take to move towards my dreams?  I'll admit, I'm struggling on exactly where I am going to end up but I know I am always setting something in motion.  I get an itch when things aren't right, and let it build to discomfort.  I'm there.  If only I could hear the callings enough to know what direction to head into.