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. 

Creative Bootcamp: Day Eleven - Hush

The word hush does not feel quiet to me.  Instead it feels like a silent scream, stifled after being told to be quiet over and over again, always needing to hold something in because if it were set free it would be destructive and only cause trouble.  It is an incredibly powerful nuisance, always growing inside and aching. 

But then there is something calm about hush, a humming presence, holding a strong silent vigil.  It takes work to hold that voice at bay, to always keep it under control, to protect others.  And maybe there is a bit of fear:  if the voice were to be set free, perhaps no one would listen.  Perhaps it holds no real power and is tiny and insignificant.

Creative Bootcamp: A hiatus

Hopefully you remember the Buzzkills, my own personal band of merry creativity destroyers.  Turns out I had put them off too long, and they were all clamoring for my attention.  All at once, we had to redo our budget, figure out some major finances, have some serious conversations about our house search.  Our car needed work, and then more work (to fix what got messed up), we had a mini-relationship crisis, and our cleanliness situation had crossed into critical.  I had to put the bootcamp on hold, get out of my own way and pay attention to what was going on around me.  All is well again, and we are moving forward, plan renegotiated and energies reinvested.  And I can't wait to fire our real estate agent.  

I've been thinking about the next prompt:  hush, but can't seem to visualize what I would like to create.  It brings up strong feelings in me, and I don't know quite how to portray them.   My commitment for this week is to finish up the bootcamp by Thursday, and maybe do a Week in the Life.  My birthday is Friday, so we're getting cupcakes, going to the beach and being chill.  I just want to rent bikes, go swimming, and have picnics.  We need it.

Creative Bootcamp: Day Ten - Full-Bodied

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I did terribly at the journal prompt today.  I was only dimly aware that it was stunningly beautiful outside, felt an ache to run away to the ocean, and then returned to my pile of paperwork.

I've started doing a mindfulness journaling exercise with my clients to become more aware of the senses.  I pulled it from the Crafter's Devotional.  On a routine basis, jot down the following:
I see...watercolors, a cup of water with a paintbrush still in it, my camera and this laptop, my feet on the table and the TV on
I hear...my new CD, A Fine Frenzy, a soft female voice "I built myself a castle on the beach, Watching as it slid into the sea, The world carries on without you, But nothing remains the same"
I taste...lime seltzer
I smell...that smell that is only one's own home
I feel...my sweatshirt, big and too warm but I needed something snuggly
I intuit...that something is changing
I wonder...if we will stop fighting

Creative Bootcamp: Day Eight - Ornament

More an experiment in wet on wet.  I just like seeing how the colors swirl around and sometimes stay where they are supposed to.  This is meant to be a witches ball, used to enchant and entrap evil.  I just think they are positively beautiful.

Creative Bootcamp: Day Nine - Drizzle

I'm skipping ahead a bit, posting nine before I even do eight.  I was so inspired today, I had to get this one out.  I intend on finding watercolor paper to redo this one:  I need it to be framed and where I can see it.  Sorry for my terrible photos, wish you could all see my book in person. 

Creative Bootcamp: Day Seven - Fly

Between hand clenching, breath holding, anxiety driven take off and landings, I am buoyed in the cerulean blue of the white noise of space.  I am acutely aware of the precariousness of my position, and my mortality.  I feel intensely, immeasurably small.  I often forget where I am:  I can't remember the city I left or the one I am headed towards, who is waiting for me or who I just said goodbye to.  I am free. 

I see nothing but a tray table up, a tray table down, and I wait patiently for food, my complimentary beverage.  I read with a focus unparalleled, and peer down at the earth like a demi-god who has conquered the power of flight to observe my world.  I am consistently breath taken and awed.  I feel bigger than my small humdrum life, a person who goes and sees and is not trapped.  I am free. 

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(image painted from a photo taken on a flight over Hawaii)

Creative Bootcamp: Day Six - Fluid

I struggled with the prompt for day six.  As posted previously, some stuff was being stirred up and I needed some time to think and process.  Plus, much of what was on my mind was the antithesis of "Fluid."  Every day feels like a struggle, a fight, and for many good reasons - its all worth fighting for.  Those moments of fluidity feel far and few between.  For a brief moment today, I got close to that feeling of being in sync with myself and the environment.   And for, my alternate form of art, I chose poetry.  So here goes:

my lungs scream in pain
I breathe fire
and then cough
bringing forth the tar
from ten years ago
and wheeze nightmares of
cancer


I try again
concentrating on my breath
in through my nose
and out through my mouth
my body hurtles forward
cautiously finding and losing
rhythm


for brief moments
i am music
in; out, out
my feet crunching
a treble bass
while the mist cools my body
and breath


whole minutes
I am carried
by the sound of me
believing

Creative Bootcamp: Day Five - Grow

Tonight I went through those songs that I used to listen to over and over again:  Ani DiFranco, Tori Amos, Grateful Dead, Pearl Jam, STP, Violent Femmes, Faith No More.  In those days, I didn't realize there was much of a future beyond getting up tomorrow.  I didn't think I'd go to college (they encouraged me to go the community college interview and we couldn't afford it).  I didn't think I'd have a long term-boyfriend much less a husband.  I remember drawing hippie flowers and hanging them up in my room, reading books on astrology and staying up late to watch Arsenio Hall and sneak out to smoke cigarettes.  I would stay up many late nights, playing the same CDs straight off my Columbia House catalog, daydreaming that I was someone different.

I have a boot camp confession to make:  For me, art making stirs stuff up.  I think I'm stirring stuff up.  I could feel it sorta growing in the background, and going through old music made me become incredibly aware of it.  Actually, the credit goes to a co-worker who pointed out that my neck pain may be related to feelings.  That's the problem with working in a mental health clinic:  we all call each other out on our feelings.  Boo. 

I put creativity last.  It lives in the secret dark place where I work hard to stuff my feelings into, shoved way in the back.  To dig in and get to creativity, some of those feelings are coming out too.  Wacky ones, like anger and hurt and some bittersweet memories that I am not sure I mourned properly.  I kept moving forward and moving forward, and stuffing and stuffing, and hoping it won't catch up to me.  When I was a teenager, I was so buried in feelings that I couldn't breathe, I had to do something with them just to move forward.  But here I am, and I guess its time to start sorting through them.  Oh crap, and feeling them. 

I couldn't help but wonder if others were having the same experience?

When I was a kid, my favorite book was the Secret Garden.  I simply loved when Mary shows Dickon the secret garden and he clears away dirt from the tiny buds shooting through the earth and proclaims, "they're wick!"   Maybe a little of what is happening here is a clearing away of dirt to learn that things are still alive and growing.  Maybe I'm at a place where I can grow my feelings safely without be choked.   

Creative Bootcamp: Day Four - Heavy Metal

I consider myself a drive by photographer.  I love taking photos with my teeny tiny camera while I'm driving.  Yep, driving.  Don't tell my husband (aka Knedz Attention), he would freak out. 
I typically take pictures of anything reflective (especially me reflected in the side mirror), the sky, and lots and lots of signs.  Oh I love signs.  One I totally wish I captured this morning:  Caution Cracks Being Filled.

A fellow bootcamper invited me on a picture taking mission, but our adventure was thwarted by rain.  I pouted about it all the way home, until I realized, duh rain is awesome.  (But I also reserve the right to do more of this picture taking.)

I've spent the day thinking about the concept of heavy metal, instantly thinking that I wanted to borrow the color palette of black and silver.  I felt the subject matter didn't need to be related.  I kept thinking about mercury, like in the old school thermometers, and wanted it dripping down.  I was inspired by the photo above and wanted to make droplets, beading, thick pooling of liquid.

I started to do this and was not happy with the results.  I was, however, thrilled with the image emerging out of negative space.  It has a very rich effect in person.  New technique learned:  Prep a page in black acrylic and draw in silver sharpie, see what emerges. 

For me, it started as a door opening and then became loosely my husband (he has a lovely profile that I didn't do justice to).  The truth is, he is my inspiration.  He is my sounding board, he is my never ending source of support.  Just don't tell him I take pictures while I'm driving.  Its his fault, he gave me the little camera just for stuff like this.