White Elephants

It snowed last night. A huge dumping of about two feet settled softly, cleaning up the landscape and commanding my attention. The amount feels almost overwhelming. I shovel a small area around the deck and hot-tub and I am exhausted. Stephen's truck has four wheel drive and he has gone to work at the mountain. I feel like an elephant is sitting on my chest. I want to shift my focus...change my locus...try a little hocus pocus. I decide I'm not going to be resigned to to being stuck. Stephen happily snowblows our whole driveway but it is a huge effort. Before he left today he jokingly said...How about if you snowblow today? It was an innocent ribbing because I don't know how to run the damn thing and I don't even want to know how. I have enough trouble trying to understand the clickers for the TV. So I decided to call a man to plow. Actually, I called two. Now I'm waiting...the one who said he'd be 30 minutes is still not here yet and the one who would have been two hours probably would have been here an hour ago. Guess it really doesn't matter. I'm not going anywhere so how can I be stuck? What matters is I called and instead of giving in to the caving in feeling of weakness in the face of adversity, I took action. It might sound like a little thing...calling a plow. I see it as one of lifes' little miracles.

I'm a person who has struggled mightily all her life with fear and negative thinking. Maybe it comes from my birth experience...coming into the air of earth with the cord wrapped around my neck..maybe I just lack confidence. I don't know. I do know that Stephen knows he can handle about anything and consequently, he can. I am inspired by his attitude and his widespread talents. I wish I could be more like him. But that is a waste of time because I'll only ever be me. I've become aware of a pattern that is deeply ingrained. I decide I'm going to accomplish something. I set out to acheive the goal I set for myself and I plod along, taking slow steps and the closer I get to what it is I want, the harder it becomes to move until I reach a point where I cave in and say...I'll never make it. And just about three steps away from accomplishing my goal, I fall into a heap and cry...experiencing the absolute certainty that no matter what I want to do...I don't have the energy, the hutzpa, the guts, the brains, the looks, the time, the money or whatever other obstacle I set between myself and success.

I do it in so many ways. Hiking Mt. Will last summer...we set out to do a short hike. It turned into about five miles and on the climb up I felt my will weaken and I wanted to turn around. It was probably just 100 yards from the peak and a gorgeous vista...it was where I became aware of the certainty of failure...the pattern of self sabotage. Stephen asked why do I do that to myself? At my age I should know...but it really doesn't matter why I do it. What matters is that I see I do it and I know I am talking myself out of what I want and I can choose to do otherwise. I go and call the plow man.

When I return to shoveling, there is a lightness in my shoulders. Suddenly I can see myself as able to clear my path. I am not at the mercy of a man or anyone really. I choose to take action. And the plow man coming is incedental. Even the snow is incedental. What really matters is that I have made a choice to see myself in a new light and I am lifted. I have become one with my white elephant...Be sure and look for the Flying Elephant link on my facebook page. It moves and inspires and highlights Magnificence.

Faces in the Windows

My friend April Frost, moved up here to my neighborhood in Maine. When I lived in Marblehead we often created art together and when I was in my painting pottery phase, I even worked with April when she gave children lessons. I admire her because she has made a lifestyle around her art. We were talking one day and she suggested we put our heads together and make a blog page for art inspiration. I shared with her that though I consider myself an artist, I don't feel like what I produce is really art. I'm not a product artist. I'm more of a process artist that creates for the energy it gives me...the flow i enter. I've never actually recognized my work as art because the results always seem to be so far from what I see in my mind. That's when April told me about a quote from Annie Dillard...something about how her art is a changeling...she thinks she knows what she is creating and every time she nears completion, her creation becomes something other. Changeling...it stuck in my mind and I think about the native women artists...weavers and sand painters . They left an opening in their work ...purposely they did not finish the art completely to allow for soul to enter. This whole concept has been a bone for my mind to chew on, inspiring me to go to Google and claim a blog space that I named Changelings Haven...because if the creator is creating me as a work of art, I was put into this awe inspiring landscape unfinished and like a Navaho rug, i am open for soul to enter.

That same week I had an intense dialogue with my sister Sue who struggles to create her art with the constant distractions of life- like motherhood, caring for friends and family, single parenting and full time work for a living. It was around commitment to your art...and the result of choices all along the way. The choice to care for loved ones can put the making of art on the back burner and there can be a developing sadness that comes from choosing to support others over the choice to focus on making art. She insisted her choices had favored human connection. I played the devils advocate around prodding her to make the same commitment to her art. I too struggle with the competition between intimate bonds and the need for personal space to create art. I too see the fruits of my labors as the seeds I've sewn by the choices I make along the way. I haven't written my book or any poems in ages. I continue to journal but all I write ends up in a closet on a shelf. It doesn't reach out and touch. There it sits unfullfilled.

CHANGELING'S HAVEN suggests a place that is safe for a work of creation to come into its own. It has sat untouched since it's inception in October '08 just like journals in the closet...until I opened up to Facebook and began connecting with people...faces in my windows. In my vast and sweeping landscape of woods, mountains and wide river I come to my computer. I look out the window and I am aware of so many faces...so many creative spirits that probably struggle with the same conflicts of creating space and bonding space. And here it all merges...a place to create and a social network all in the same spot...blogspot...spot on.