Let go let go

Last night I ripped my fortune cookie fortune in half, which, I'm pretty sure, is like drawing a rune upside-down, or a pseudo-Confucian not-joke: "It is a good time to start new projects and hobbies." Not. 

I've got finishing on my mind. Finishing, stopping, and even quitting. I'm not sure why calling something done gives me anxiety; I just want to work it and work it forever. I think I need rituals (like seeing my articles in print is a great completion ritual) to let myself know a project's done. Although I heard that as Z.Z. Packer was reading from her story "Brownies" a couple years ago at Litquake, she pulled out a pencil and made an edit in her (acclaimed, published) book. 

Unfinished projects are the baby birds of the psyche. They gape and gulp with their naked blue-tinged heads and demand you fly back and back to their nests. 

And quitting: I think it's an art. It's not something to do when you're facing a new challenge and are challenged, or are mid-commitment, but more like when the horse is dead. Or the goldfish. I once was about to put fish medicine into my tank when I decided to poke the sick fish and discovered that its whole belly was cavernous and gone. Which is why it was looking lethargic and milky-colored. Not long after that, I quit trying to keep fish. I dumped them into a pond where they soon bred themselves into a giant school of goldfish and lived much more happily without me. 

I wish I could talk to my would-have-been neighbors and ask them about their decision to quit this project:

The Amazing Jellyfish from the Year 12,000

Jellyfishmobile Before Dark from Jared Gallardo on Vimeo.


I think the thing about creative projects is that once something is created, it's hard to imagine that it ever didn't exist. In a couple of weeks Discovery Canada is coming to shoot footage of the Jellyfish, and then they'll shoot follow-up footage in August at Burning Man. A year and a half ago Jared didn't really even identify as an artist.

My role in the project was to say yes. I was kind of like the old Inuit man in Never Cry Wolf who says "good idea;" when Jared would wake up and say, "I just had an idea!" I would look at his sketch and say, "good idea." Or, I would get excited with him and say, "or what about like this!?" and draw another picture. That was my job: keeper of enthusiasm, late night brainstormer, sayer of yes.

no one knows about it

Jared and I went back to the desert last weekend, together this time. And with our fuzzy beasts. The amazing thing about Utah is that it has five national parks, myriad state parks, and then places like this, that are what I imagine the Grand Canyon looks like, that are just BLM land, and you can crawl all over it with your dogs, and camp right on the edge of the canyon and no one is there, because no one knows about it.


There was something Mary said in an email yesterday, “We took the trolley tour in Savannah, we went to the beach with the dog, we went bowling. It was a trip we couldn't afford, but aren't those always the best ones?” that made me think about something.

I’ve been on a creative binge lately. I wake up and start writing. I write in my journal, then I work on a story, or this video I’m working on that I’m creating a kind of prose sestina for, then I think of a story that would be good to look at, so I read for an hour, and by two I’m still in my pajamas. And then I turn on the phone and listen to my messages and make vows to myself to call people back later, and then answer a couple emails, and vow to answer the others later, and then take a shower, and then get to work, late. And it’s the slow season at work, so I’m not making enough money to cover my expenses this month, so there’s this financial urgency hanging over my head. But I think, maybe, I’m turning the financial urgency into creative urgency. It feels hard to admit it, because if I say it out loud, or write it, I feel like I’ll have to stop. But it feels like grace. Like I’m sneaking grace.

the end of the earth

On Island in the Sky in Canyonlands, you just keep following the road until you get to the end of the earth. It's marked by a cairn, and then there's a cliff that drops a thousand feet or so, and below you are the canyons and rivers that are part of some other place, the place below earth, and it spreads out before you forever.


It's what I'd always expected, from the time I was little, and we'd be driving down the 99 and I'd ask my mom where the road ended. Somehow, I always knew this was where.


This is a path that runs along the edge of the earth.


I think sleeping in my car satisfies some deep desire in me to be a turtle, or a snail. The back of my car is really not long enough for me to sleep in, so I was diagonal and curled all night, but I was so happy. I camped in my car, by myself. The first night I read a book of creation myths by candlelight, and when I finally blew out the candle and looked out the window, there seemed to be as much starmatter in the sky as there was dark space between stars. Each thing in the desert feels distinct, the plants, the jackrabbit I met while picking sage, the stars, but especially the sounds. It's quiet. A crow flew overhead while I was sitting in my camp and it's wings made a sound that was somewhere in-between newspaper and heartbeat. A swallow swooped past me while I was overlooking a canyon, and it made a sound like wind ripping along a high-tension cable. When I woke up the first morning there I wrote in my journal: "I am delighted with the red dirt here, and the trees-- the piñons and junipers feel like friends, like species that I have relationships with, I know them like I know oaks and dogs. Even though I admire the trees in the mountains, I don't feel that instant friendliness, or maybe the feeling of family, almost, that this desert has for me."

It was beautiful down there, sunny and warm, but cool enough to hike all day on Monday.


Here is another spot I hiked to. You approach this lovely little arch, and then the ground falls away on the other side.


I'm home now and it is snowstorming again today. I feel like I've used all my credits for incredulousness well over a month ago. I'm going to go to the desert as much as possible this spring.

pink parachute

Sitting in my living room and I've been just a little low-- with the snow, and the dusk, and then night comes and I've neglected the iTunes, and the library is playing some weird Moog stuff that only a producer could love. I apologize to the dogs for letting it go on so long. They wag their tails as I get off the couch to change the music.

But then I make some tea and put on some Madeline Peyroux, and it's perfect, just enough somberness to sweep me somewhere else-- and it's not just the Madeline Peyroux, but the parachutes that we hung all over the living room for Jared's birthday that are still up-- and something about the layers of fabric and light are fabulously exciting.


I start daydreaming about building a treehouse, and a garden with banana trees, pink climbing roses, water lilies, and Polish Frizzles roosting on stone Buddha heads. I must build a chicken pagoda. And then I start daydreaming about quilts with raspberry bandannas and fringe, big pillows and lemon yellow chaise lounges, lemon trees and thistles; thinking about road trips to the desert and drinking pine needle tea, buying cowboy boots, and renting an apartment in Paris. The parachutes seem to represent possibility, and I feel surprised that anyone could sit under them feeling dreary. This is a middle of the night Chico kind of night (not the weather, but the feeling of infinite possibility.)


It's an unscheduled night tonight, I was cut early from work and am home by myself now with my journal and books. These moments... I think they only happen when you completely let go of the to-do list: riding your beach cruiser home in the dark in a t-shirt at 2 am and it's warm and moony out, walking with a new friend to find the flowers that bloom at night, starting out on a road trip at dawn with a mug of coffee and then the sunrise and the empty streets, writing at 4 am with the breeze coming in through the screens, just a little too brisk. This is why a person becomes nocturnal. I think this is one of my best selves: it's like the inner four-year-old comes waltzing out with her crayons and blanket forts and starts saying, "and then we could do this, and then this, and then this...!" And the world gets bigger. It's a different place of creation than the kind of creation where you're two hours into the story, and the pattern is rolling out in front of you and all you have to do is follow... there is structure in that kind of creativity. This creative place is totally unstructured and jumps around all over the place. Story ideas live here, quilts live here, gardens live here and shoes and trips.



I've been so good lately, so disciplined, and structuring my days so tightly. But it's not really all that good, actually. I think I've been spoiled forever by the night walks and maybe now the parachutes, too. Why is it better or more moral to spend my days sending timely email responses than dreaming up my next story or throw-pillow? I wonder what the ideal amount of time is for a person to hang out in this creative generation place is-- the only downside I see is that there are so many ideas and creative dreams floating around in this place that it requires more culling. But maybe that is just inspiration natural selection. The dreams you actually commit to will rise to the top. Looking back through my journals--where I tend to draw pictures of the creative daydreams--some have happened already, some I don't want anymore, and some are still creative dreams. Some are recurring creative dreams, which makes me think they are integrated into who I am-- like, for ten years I've been wanting cowboy boots. In the Second Life of my late night imagination, I take road trips all the time and sleep in my cowboy boots in the back of my pickup truck. Other things: paintings, quilts, recipes, stories, living in Los Angeles, living in San Francisco, going to CCA, camping in Moab by myself, having shows and classes at the Women's Art Center-- these are dreams that started as dreams but have happened already. Some dreams started out feeling outrageous or impossible-- going to Greece by myself when I was 23, losing 80 pounds and having clothes I love-- and now they are just part of who I am.

It is a kind of subtle self-violence, I'm thinking now, on those days while you're in email-checking mode, to look back at all the ideas that haven't happened and feel ashamed because you never make anything happen, you tell yourself, and suddenly the fact that you haven't published a novel yet or been to Bali yet seems like proof that you never will, and you'll probably never do anything, so get used to spending your days checking your email, sister, this is real life.

But really it's all a matter of choice. A healthy creative dream to creative reality differential is always going to have way more dreams than realities. And I don't think the dreams are wasted-- they help define and hone real life. The dreams that slide by are like the boulders under the water that give the river its shape. The dreams to give a hard look to are the ones you pine for but that feel too outrageous, impossible, or the ones that linger for years unexpressed. Like cowboy boots.

sandboats

I was dreaming about sailboats that skim along the beach—the beach was windy and desolate feeling, almost like another planet, like the sky was a different color, orange with dark purple-grey storm clouds, and maybe there were creatures that could have lived on that planet that don’t live on this one— there were sails like boats in Thailand or Egypt that you raised with a rope, and as soon as I raised my sail, the wind snapped it out and I was zipping just over the sand, right along the waves. There were other people with me, a sandboat in front of me, and one behind me, we were yelling instructions to each other, it was important, not fun because of this feeling of gravity and desolation, but it was exhilarating.

Van Gogh's Work Ethic

Some of my journal shots from March 2002:



There were a few years of my life, when I first moved to San Francisco when I was 24, and continuing until I started grad school, where I took my journal with me everywhere. I took it to work, I took it on the bus, I took it to bars and parties. I remember sunny spring weekend days in the outer Richmond when suddenly the world would burst into color after weeks of foggy monochrome when I would sit out on the sidewalk in front of the cafe down the street from my apartment drinking chai and sharing a burrito and carrot cake with Jared, writing in my journal with blissed gusto. The point was usually to open the world up just a bit more, and the best days had writing that surprised me and gave me new insights, like the best days of fiction writing do. Sometimes the writing was just about putting myself back together, a kind of psychic cataloging, more reorganizing myself than opening the world. Drawing was important, too, all play, but I thought of it as my work. I thought of it all as my work, filling journals with thoughts and drawings. There wasn't effort in it, I wanted it like I wanted dinner parties with my roommates and walks on the beach.

For the most part I stopped writing in my journal when I was at CCA, and I think that's a good thing. Writing fiction used a new kind of discipline, and didn't have the effortlessness or craving for me that journal writing did. The satisfaction that I got from writing fiction was more intense than journal writing, though, and it was a new challenge. Drawing changed, too. It was different sitting down with an objective for a drawing and a bunch of new skills and media to incorporate, rather than just the quick intuitive pen and ink sketches I usually did in my journals. Most days my drawing classes would feel like a struggle, and each new drawing would have a fresh new pain and resistance when I would sit down with my giant white sheet of paper. But then some days, something would click into place, everything would start working, and time would stop while I drew. It had the same feeling of effortless creation as the great journal writing days.

This was one of the first drawings I did in grad school that had a clicking-in feeling for me (after about a month of struggle):


I think that feeling of effortlessness is the result of having integrated skills that you can then draw upon without thinking about them, they're just right there. I get the strongest sense of that effortlessness when I look at the drawings of Richard Diebenkorn. They are not at all precious, and in fact feel kind of dashed off, but with a deep well of technique and experience that he's mastered and incorporated.

Richard Diebenkorn
Untitled, RD 170
not dated

I'm so uncomfortable with times of new learning; before the skills are in place, the times of practicing when everything comes out slowly and painfully (and bad, ugly, and wrong.) Writing this, though, I'm remembering that slow, painful time is totally necessary, and that the times of getting to new levels of mastery where everything comes out effortless and it's working, those times are times of grace, but if you're growing as an artist are times that will pass, and you'll head back into the painful discovery period again. Maybe the key is not to think of the discovery period as painful, but instead learn to enjoy them as exciting periods of inquisition. It's kind of embarrassing to write that, actually, because: practice, duh. But I think it's something that I need to remind myself over and over.

I started this in response to a passage I read in Rilke's Letters on Cezanne, which I'll put down here. (So funny that Rilke thought he was writing this letter to his wife, but actually he was writing it to me):

...one is still so far away from being able to work at all times. Van Gogh could perhaps lose his composure, but behind it was always his work, he could no longer lose that. And Rodin, when he's not feeling well, is very close to his work, writes beautiful things on countless pieces of paper, reads Plato and follows him in his thought. But I have a feeling that this is not the result of discipline or compulsion (otherwise it would be tiring, the way I've been tired from working in recent weeks); it is all joy; it is natural well-being in the one thing that surpasses everything else. Perhaps one has to have a clearer insight into the nature of one's "task," get a more tangible hold on it, recognize it in a hundred details. I believe I do feel what van Gogh must have felt at a certain juncture, and it is a strong and great feeling: that everything is yet to be done: everything. But this devotion to what is nearest, this is something I can't do as yet, or only in my best moments, while it is at one's worst moments that one really needs it. Van Gogh could paint an Interieur d'hopital, and in his most anxious days he painted the most disquieting objects. How else could he have survived. This is what needs to be attained, and I have a feeling it can't be forced. It must come out of insight, from pleasure, from no longer being able to postpone the work in view of all the many things that have to be done. Ah, if only one did not have the comforting memories of times spent without working.

Letters On Cezanne
October 4, 1907 (Friday)

The image in my journal next to the map of Amsterdam, with the vermilion border and the made-up kanji, is a postcard of one of van Gogh's paintings that he did based after Japanese woodcuts: Flowering plum tree (after Hiroshige) summer 1887. I like it because it is not like anything of his I've seen, because it's cool to see some of his roots, and because it's kind of awkward-- he was trying something but he hadn't nailed it quite yet. We associate him with the periods of genius grace, but then there's this, too:

Vincent van Gogh
Flowering plum tree (after Hiroshige)
summer 1887

then, something clicks, and this:

Vincent van Gogh
Almond Blossom
1890