Weaving The Dream

So here I am with my husband at our oldest son’s, Stephen, home in northern Virginia.  He and our daughter-in-law, Mindy, just moved into this house last month and the living room is filled with unpacked boxes.

Yesterday, Bob helped Stephen install three new water-efficient toilets.  Over the years, Bob has shown his sons how to fix, mend, repair and replace what can’t be repaired.  Bob learned much of that from his father.

While Bob and Stephen took care of the toilets, I put on garden gloves, grabbed a rake and a pair of pruners and went outside to make an initial dent in the thick carpet of leaves that lay on all their flower beds and to trim back some of the shrubs.

Glad to be outside in the balmy (40 degree) weather in relative quiet, stretching and working my muscles, I piled up leaves and clipped back magnolia bushes and other shrubs.  As I worked, I was strongly aware not only of the passing of seasons but of the passing down of traditions and skills.

When Stephen was only five, Bob and I moved him and his two brothers to our 1840’s Greek Revival farmhouse in the foothills of the Catskills. Over the next few years, every time my mom and dad came to visit, Dad came prepared to help with the yard work—digging, weeding, planting, mulching.  Many times he brought divisions of his carefully grown daylilies for us to plant. 

Being my father’s daughter, I did for Stephen and Mindy, as my dad has done for Bob and I, raking leaves and pruning back deadwood.

Yesterday, I made sweet rolls for Thanksgiving breakfast, having taken up the tradition from my mother.  This morning, my son and I worked together at the sink to first clean and then prepare the turkey for roasting.  And I remember my mother standing in the kitchen of my childhood home, cleaning the turkey and suddenly lifting it by its wings to pretending this naked turkey was talking and squawking. My siblings and I laughed at her silliness.

While today’s turkey roasted, Mindy and I stood together preparing pies and I showed her how to crimp the crust the way my mother showed me.

Yesterday and today, I am overwhelmed by such a strong sense of the passing of seasons and the ongoing cycle of the generations.

Not everyone gets a chance to experience this.  Not everyone wants to. 

But I do.  So Bob and I are especially grateful this Thanksgiving for the opportunity to do for our son and daughter-in-law what our parents have done for my husband and I—pass on life skills and family traditions, and work to create a sense of home and an appreciation for the legacies and lineage that are our roots.

Even as I clipped the deadwood from an old magnolia at the corner of their house, I also noted the buds of new growth just waiting for Spring’s warmth to blossom forth.

And someday, as they fill this home with the new growth of the next generation, Stephen and Mindy will do for their child what Bob and I now do for them—and give thanks in the doing.

Autumn…makes a double demand.  It asks that we prepare for the future—that we be wise in the ways of garnering and keeping.  But it also asks we learn to let go…” Bonaro W. Overstreet in Meditations for Women.

Living in the northeastern part of our county, I’ve always loved autumn because of the intensity and clarity of color that the season brings.  The air is crisper, less humid, so the sky is a metal-bright bowl of blue arching over me.  Sugar maples are show-offs in their bright shifts of orange and red, especially next to the deeper, quieter black-greens of the pines.  Wild asters and grapes compete to define purple.

While reveling in the elixir of color that autumn brings, I can’t help but hear the footsteps of winter approaching, reminding me that all this piercing bright beauty will not last.

Just as the sugar maples and oaks let go of their leaves to make ready for their deep sleep beneath winter’s blanket, I am challenged to let go as well—of the weeding I didn’t complete, the plants I never planted, the vacation I didn’t take, the creative projects I didn’t finish, some I haven’t even started.

Autumn has also been a time of letting go of those I love.  My mother died 24 years ago this past September.  My paternal grandfather died six weeks after her.

And early yesterday morning, as the day was just being born, as leaves dropped silently and unseen in the night, I lost a sister of my heart—author, writer, and teacher, Liz Aleshire.  Liz was (and how hard to use past tense in this sentence) a woman of great courage and determination, of bright intelligence and wit, of fierce loyalty and friendship.  We’ve only been close friends for about seven years, but we traveled many creative and spiritual roads together.  It is hard to say goodbye.  To release our clasped hands.  To know she is no longer just a phone call away.  That she will never again sit on my patio looking out over our yard, smoking a cigarette while our dog, Duncan, keeps her company.

This is the challenge of autumn.  In the other seasons there is a looking forward to new growth, to warmth, to harvest.  In autumn, we look back, not forward, with the desire to spin out time, to slow the relentless fall of leaves, to push back the dark that arrives earlier and earlier each day.

But we can’t do it.  We can’t stop the trees from letting go of their leaves, we can’t slow the earth in its path around the sun.  We can’t stop Death in her tracks.

So we put mulch in the flowerbeds and stack wood for the woodstove, raising our heads to the sound of honking Canada geese as they wing their way to warmer climes. 

I whisper goodbye to Liz as she heads for her own Summerland of sunlight and flowers, where Nathan, her son, waits to greet her with both arms spread wide, laughter in his eyes and voice.

And my tears fall with the leaves.

A friend of mine, recently fascinated by the Greek goddess, Artemis (also known as the Roman goddess, Diana), made me realize that Artemis the Huntress is a good role model for creatives—for artists and musicians and writers and such.

Why?  Because she is the goddess of the forest–all that is wild and untamed and unknown.  With her bow and arrows, she both protects the chaos of the forest and captures whatever she hunts.

Like Artemis, I, too, am the goddess of a wild, untamed and unknown forest.  No, not my backyard.  My creativity.

I don’t know about you but I have myriad interests and abilities that sometimes make it hard for me to decide what to focus on first—a case of not being able to see the tree for the forest!

I easily lose track of priorities.  I often fail to act first on projects that will produce the most results.  And, because I work at home, I can spend days on details, reading email, doing research, and reading the latest professional journals (and baking cookies), before I realize that I’ve spent no time writing, weaving, or lining up work—a case of not seeing the forest for the trees!

I take the bow and arrow of my energy and, in essence, shoot at anything that moves, like a branch waving in the breeze, or a shadow moving beneath the leaves.  Not only am I apt to miss, I end up with a lot of wasted arrows I have to hunt for and nothing that can sustain me.  This makes me—and Artemis—unhappy.

Shooting hither and thither might sharpen my eye and build my muscles (have you ever tried pulling back on a bow?) and that is a good thing, but ultimately, if I am going to develop more than muscle—if I want to write a book, snag a speaking engagement, and bring home food for the table—I need to first, choose my target, and then take careful aim.

Today I am aiming at editing a manuscript and finishing the weaving of a shawl.

What are you aiming at?
 

It is daylily season.  

I’ve mentioned in previous posts that I have inherited close to fifty   different daylilies from my father as a result of the sale of my childhood home last fall.  He divided all his lilies so I had one of each kind, including and especially the ones he bred himself.

Daylilies are not really lilies.  They are hemerocallis from the Greek hemera (day) and kalos (beautiful).  Now, in mid-July, most of them are in bloom.  And my husband is entertained by my daily walks among these generous blossoms since I talk to them as I walk, complimenting each type on its beauty while I also remove the previous day’s dead blossoms. 

Even though many of the types put out numerous buds so that it seems they are in bloom for weeks, in fact each bloom only lasts one day.  All that effort, all that energy, poured into each bud, only for it to have one glorious day of bloom and color.  One glorious day to attract hummingbird and butterfly and bee for pollination and propagation. 

Last week, my husband, Bob, and I were in Austin, Texas for the wedding of his brother, Ted.  While out with his brother and siblings at a local nursery to buy a palm tree for the bridal couple’s wedding gift, Bob’s brother asked about an agave plant that had died in his front yard.   The nursery man in his sunglasses and cowboy hat nodded and asked, “Did it bloom?”  When the answer was yes, the nursery man told us that agave plants grow slowly, some for 15 years or more, gathering the nutrients they need to put forth blooms.  Then, once they bloom, usually with one blossom, and set seed, they die. Years of growth all to produce one tall bloom.

These plants remind me of the sand paintings done by the Navajo that are painstakingly created for ceremonial purposes and then destroyed at the end of the ceremony.  According to one source, the Navajo word for these sandpaintings means “the place where the gods come and go.”

Where the gods come and go.  Like the daylilies and the agave, the sandpaintings remind us that the Divine often resides in the act of creation as much, if not more so, than in the creation itself.  It is in the secret growth beneath the dark of soil and winter, in the determined reaching for the spring sun, and then the sudden glorious burst into summer bloom, that the mystery and celebration of Life, of creation is found.  The end result – the painting, the bloom, the plant are only temporary and make room for further creation.

We can get so focused on the end result – on the book, the play, the art exhibit, or the performance, that we often forget to give mindfulness, commitment, and value to the act of creating.  And in doing so, we can shut ourselves off from the transcendence of creation, from the experience of the Divine.

So when your published book seems light years away, when your stage performance is over before you know it, when the perfection of your creation is fleeting and then gone – remember the daylily and the agave. Give yourself to the moment of creation, where the gods come and go.

Summertime, like Sundays, used to be a time of rest and relaxation. Of renewal and restoration. Of recharging batteries drained by the demands of the year.

Not anymore.  We don’t know what it means to relax anymore.  We have to take classes on relaxation so we can learn how to stop our endless, and sometimes meaningless, motion.  So we can learn how to breath deeply from our bellies instead of only the upper third of our lungs.  So we can learn how to unclench our muscles and our stomachs and our jaws.

Our advanced technologies bring us so many advantages, but they also sabotage every effort to unwind, to get away, to get quiet.  They sabotage us because we let them.  We feel compelled to stay tuned in, turned on and accessible—afraid we will miss something important, earth-shattering, life-changing.

It is that accessibility that is life-changing, however.  When we fail to give ourselves time away or alone without distraction or interruption, without any intent or purpose other than to have none, we fail to nurture our souls.  And we definitely fail to nurture our creativity.

One of the hardest things for artists, writers, and other creatives is the ability to get away from our creativity.  So many of us work in studios in our homes where our work constantly calls to us.  Others have such limited time for creativity because of demands of work and family that each free moment becomes a challenge to fill it with our creative work.

Yet empty moments and time out of the studio are necessary to refill the well of our creativity.  It is in the silence and stillness that our spiritual and creative batteries are recharged, that our creative well is refilled. 

Summer is a good time to slowly sip the sweet refreshment of silence and stillness.  To sit on your patio to watch the birds dip and weave their ways through tree and bush. To float on your back in the water and watch clouds drift by. To stare up at the moon while she bathes you in light.

Be still.  Be silent. Your body, mind and spirit will thank you.  And so will your creative muse.

How will you give your creativity a summer moment?

1. Honor the Dream!

Many people assume that sleep dreams are nothing more than a rehash of the day’s events.  I speak from personal experience when I tell you that they are so much more than that.  Most dreams, like a fine work of art, are multi-layered, and offer much in the way of inspiration, guidance and motivation if we give them the honor of paying attention to them instead of deleting them or tossing them into the recycle bins in our minds.

2. Keep a Dream Journal

One of the best ways to honor them and to mine them for their creative wealth is to keep a dream journal, recording our dreams on a regular (not necessarily daily) basis. Give your dream a title, record its date, and then write the dream down in present tense.  Why?  Something about the way the brain works—if you record it in present tense, you remember things you might otherwise forget.

Writers, from Dante to Poe to King, used dreams to feed their writing.  William Blake used dreams for both visual and verbal inspiration.

3. Use those Dreamscapes

If you are a painter, making use of the dreamscapes of your dreams can be a straightforward matter of painting the image.  If you are a writer, playwright, or choreographer, consider the dreamscapes as settings or backdrops for your story.

Examine the landscape for mood, colors, odd juxtapositions of images or visual puns, and for time period and place.  Record any scene that captures your imagination in as much detail as you can, either verbally or visually or both.

4. Who are those Very Important Dream People (V.I.D.P’s)?

Just as the people that cross our paths in waking reality are grist for our creative mills, so too are our dream characters.  And they will fade into the ether never to return if we don’t capture them in our dream journal.

First, record or give them their names.  If you have no name, then give the character a name according to her role in the dream, for example, “mother”, “scary old man”, “benevolent guide”.  Then, write a description of the character, including clothing.  Is there something about this person’s character that plays into your current project? Does he take center stage, or act in a supporting role?  What does she have to say to you if you dialogue with her?

5. Ask for a Dream

If you could ask your creative muse a question, what would it be?  Make the question as succinct as possible and then write it down and put the paper under your pillow. Yes, I know this seems a little out there but, for whatever reason, it helps.  Think of your question as you drift to sleep.

 You may find the answer floating to the surface of your hypnogogic (that time just before sleep) dreams, or it may come to you in a spontaneous dream.  Record your dream or whatever images, words, or feelings come to you.

Don’t discount anything even if it seems too far out in left field to be applicable.  Remember to look for puns and other verbal riddles within the dream.  And finally, be patient.  The answer to your question may not show up the first night, or the second.  Sometimes it takes a week or more.  You don’t have to ask every night, but at least do it several times a week, trust in the process and stay patient.

Whether you need to break through a creative block, figure out the next scene or step in your project, or want an idea for your next book or painting or song, dreams are an unending source of inspiration and one of the best tools for a meaningful creative life.
 

More than twenty years ago, I had the opportunity to spend three weeks in August at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts in Maine, while my mother and husband took care of our three sons, who were between the ages of eighteen months and six years.  It was a special time for me to explore my creativity after constant childcare since the birth of the first of our sons.

One night, I entered the women’s bathroom and found a woman at least ten years older than me, standing over the sink and crying.  When I asked her what was wrong, she told me that that day would have been her son’s 20th birthday but he had died several years ago in a car accident.  I didn’t know what to say so I stood and listened to her tell the story.  And, of course, I felt the fear that every mother fears when she hears stories like this—what if?

I have a nephew who, with his wife, lost his child to a rare disease before she had a chance to reach her first birthday.  Attending the funeral, I watched the mother grieve and thought—why?

I have a friend who, as a single mom, lost her only child, a son, to cancer when he was in his teens.  Her journey through grief has been one of desperate courage in the midst of pain and depression.  And I wonder—how?

When we give birth to our children, we give birth to hopes and dreams and possibilities.  But we also give birth to our worst nightmares and to nights of constant worry.  To crossed fingers and endless prayers.  And to all the whys and hows and what ifs.

Once we give birth, become mothers, we are always mothers.  There is never an end.  It is who we are for the rest of our lives.  Even when those we mother are gone before us.

Today is Mother’s Day when, if we are lucky, our children send cards or call to wish us Happy Mother’s Day. 

But what do we say to those mothers whose children are gone?  Happy Mother’s Day seems wrong somehow.  And yet they remain mothers.  Mothers who need to be recognized and honored for the love they gave and for the love they still bear.  Mothers who need to be held and supported as they remember the sons and daughters they have lost to illness, violence, and war.

Being a mother—or a father—takes great courage in today’s world.  And great love.

Here’s to all the mothers on Mother’s Day.

For several years in the spring, an area of unidentified plants sprouted and grew in our back yard.  They didn’t seem to blossom so, having no idea what they were, my husband cut them down with the first mowing of the yard.

But then, a couple of years ago, my husband and I went out to dinner at our small local restaurant.  The menu noted that it was ramps season and then listed several specials for the week featuring ramps.  I decided to give one of the dishes a try.

After the waitress set the artfully prepared plate before me, I looked at the leaves and said, “Bob, look!  Aren’t these the same leaves that are growing in our yard?”

After consuming the dish with its pungent, yet earthy taste, we came home and hurried to the back yard.  Yes, ramps were running riotous in our backyard!  Hurray!

What are ramps?  Wild leeks that grow in places like Quebec and West Virginia and here in New York. Some places hold festivals to celebrate this plant with its unusual flavor combination of onion and garlic. Ramps may be short for rampions, which are native to England and other parts of Europe, (though somewhat different there) and play a central role in the story of Rapunzel.

Remember?  It’s the theft of those rampions from the witch’s garden that forces Rapunzel’s parents to give her up to the witch where she is then imprisoned in a tower with no door.  And even the witch has to use Rapunzel’s long hair to get into the tower. In fact, the name Rapunzel supposedly derives from the Latin name for rampion, Rapunculus.

To me, the ramps definitely have their own kind of magic, growing wild in the spring, sending up those leaves with their red stems for several weeks and then seeming to disappear.  Because they grow wild, you have to look carefully to find them.  And, if you aren’t paying attention, you can miss them altogether and miss an earthily delightful addition to your diet.

Just as we can sometimes miss the seasoning and magic of the wild things that sprout up in our writing or other creative project.  We can be so focused on our vision for that book, or painting—how we imagine it should look—that we enthusiastically weed out and mow down anything that doesn’t seem to belong or, perhaps worse, we fail to recognize the freely offered wild and tasty things that spring up along the way.

Yet, sometimes, it is precisely those magical wild things that can add a flavorful seasoning and significance to our writing or creative project.

True, we don’t want to harvest them all.  If we did that there would be none for the next time.  Nor do we want to add so much of that wild seasoning that we overpower our work.  But a careful selection, a willingness to expand our creative diet and to experiment could result in an expressive dish that is uniquely ours.

Last night, my husband and I had grilled salmon, sweet potato fries, and ramps sautéed in butter.  Yummmm!

Yes, it’s spring.  Are you harvesting your creative rampions?

Last weekend, my husband and I watched a movie my aunt recommended to me, “You Kill Me.”  Ben Kingsley stars as a Polish alcoholic hitman from Buffalo whose drinking inevitably ends up causing him problems “on the job.”  The mob sends him to San Francisco to dry out, with interesting consequences for everyone.

In the opening scene, it is winter in Buffalo (i.e. snow up to your …) and Kingsley’s character, Frank, is in his kitchen drinking from a bottle of vodka that he puts down long enough to put on a coat and hat.  He picks the bottle up, opens his front door, steps outside, takes a slug or two from the bottle, caps it, looks carefully, and then tosses the capped bottle down the steps into the snow. 

Frank shovels down the steps until he gets to the bottle, picks it up, uncaps it and takes a few more slugs, caps the bottle, and then tosses it farther along the walk.  He shovels more snow until he once again arrives at the bottle and then repeats the process all over again.

Isn’t that a great image or metaphor for the power of motivation?

Frank knew himself well enough to realize that if he was going to get all that snow shoveled, he needed motivation.  Granted the motivation was an addiction, but because he wanted that vodka badly enough, he shoveled quickly and efficiently to get to it, several times over.

Motivation is important for creativity.  How badly do I want to get my books written?  If I want to write—and sell—a book, then I have to be willing to shovel the snow, to do the work to make it happen.  Then I can drink in (don’t moan, it’s a good pun) the feeling of achievement and success.

Whether it means doing research, planning story structure, or ultimately, sitting down and putting one word after another, I have to do the work.  I have to be willing to dig in and pick up shovelful after shovelful of words.  A writing friend of mine recently commented to me on how much fun it is to come up with the idea and storyline for a novel, but how much work, how even painful it is to sit down and actually write the story.  Yes, it can be backbreaking, painful, exhausting work.

But how badly do I want it?  How badly do you?  If you want to see that story in print, hear that composition performed by an orchestra, see that landscape hanging on the wall, you have to want it enough, desire it enough with your whole self to do the work.

The scene also reminds us that it is a good idea to reward ourselves along the path of our hard work.  The creative project can require weeks, months, or even years of our creative time and energy before its completion, so treating ourselves along the way to some of the things that nourish our creativity can keep us going.  You know—like dark chocolate, a hot bath, reading a good book, watching a darkly humorous movie like “You Kill Me,” going for a walk—little rewards, little sips here and there, to keep us going.

So plan some rewards along the way, remind yourself how badly you want to see that completed project, and start shoveling.  And tell me, what keeps you motivated?

And while you are doing that, I am going to go see if I can get my husband to massage my back!

I was talking on the phone the other evening with a writer friend of mine.  She and I along with three other writers check in with each other by email on Sunday nights to share our weekly writing accomplishments, to state goals for the coming week, and to occasionally whine or commiserate when the writing—and our lives—don’t go as planned.

After reading everyone’s check-in for the week, my friend was feeling impressed by the accomplishments of several of the writers but, by comparison, that she just wasn’t doing enough.

“Hmmm,” I said.  “Let’s see.  You have a full-time demanding job and you…” I listed several other activities she was involved in during the week and on weekends, including family commitments.

“AND you are working on a book…Yep, you are definitely sitting around doing nothing!” I finished.

Laughing, she thanked me for reminding her of all that she does.  Then we brainstormed ideas for her book.

What is it about creatives, especially creative women, that we constantly feel the need to compare ourselves to others?  Why do we succumb to doing that especially when the usual result is a feeling of not being enough, not doing enough, not succeeding enough?

Feelings of “not enough” often translate into feelings of incompetence and lack of self-confidence.  It is hard to be creative in that space.  It is hard to believe in the value of our work and from there it gets hard to make our creativity a priority in our time and space. In fact, we are apt to waste time beating ourselves up about our shortcomings instead of writing or painting or composing.  We end up creatively blocked.

When I get into that place of feeling like I don’t produce enough, that I’m not earning my keep, so to speak, I start making lists of everything I have accomplished for the day no matter how small.  In addition to helping me see all I do, it also nudges me into my creative work because somewhere on the list, by the end of the day, I want to see my writing or weaving included.  I don’t want to see that I spent all my time taking care of everything and everyone else while neglecting my creative work.

If you want to avoid odious comparisons, try this journal technique.  For five to seven days (depending on how you work), make a journal entry for that day that lists everything you do between the time your feet hit the floor until you fall sighing back into bed.  You can include everything from brushing your teeth to writing a chapter, to paying bills, or you can list only what you deem are the important activities (but be careful how you define that), or you can list only those activities related to your creative work.  At the end of that list, write one creative task you want to do the next day.  Then challenge yourself to make sure that task makes it on the next day’s list of accomplishments.

At the end of the five or seven days, look at all you’ve accomplished over that time and compare yourself to yourself!  Did you do more than you thought (which is what often happens), or was this an easy week and you’d like to accomplish more next week?  Don’t berate yourself for not doing more because that takes you back to the place of “not enough.” Instead, consider the easier week one of gathering your energy for the week to come.

Adopt the practice of self-acknowledgement.  Save the odious comparisons for car shopping.