The event of a thread is made up of many crossings of the near at hand and the far away: it is a body crossing space, is a writer’s hand crossing a sheet of paper, is a voice crossing a room in a paper bag… – Ann Hamilton
The exhibit at the Armory on Park Avenue and 66th is hard to explain.
There are pigeons, swings, talking paper bags, a writer, a reader, a listener, more…
The kids did not want to go but were glad they went.
It must be experienced. Laying on your back watching the billowing silk above. Hypnotizing.
I had one insight which is this: it is not work that makes the world go (the curtain lift), it is play.
Play is the engine.
H. discovered that our swing was not pulling the curtain alone. He spotted this when we were looking down from above. Our swing was inextricably, almost invisibly, connected to someone else’s swing who was also making the curtain dance.
Through play.
I found out about this exhibit while scanning my Facebook feed. Thanks, Yris Bilia! You made it look so fun. And it was.
Yesterday I saw Les Misérables. This is my guilty pleasure. I love the musical. I have always loved it. Loved Anne Hathaway and Hugh Jackman and their vulnerability. I loved that they let themselves look like (or be covered in) shit. That’s an actor!
Today’s prompt is:
Tell us about a guilty pleasure that you hate to love.
I hate to love the movies, but they are my therapy.
They take me away. In the last month, I have seen a couple of awesome French films, Amour and Rust and Bone. And now Les Mis, which is set in Paris. The city is moody and dark, yet it is the city of light. This year we need a lot of light.
I’ve wanted to go to Paris for years. I have friends there and a place to stay, but I feel it’s too far or too expensive. With Chris’s illness, I feel I should only travel close to home and only for a few days.
When I go to the movies, I go to Paris and am still home in time to greet the kids as they walk in the door after school.
One of the darlings went to the premiere and met the celebs. Here she is with amazing Amanda Seyfried.
The life lessons in Les Mis are brilliant:
To love another person is to see the face of God
Show faith in and forgive people cast off by society just as the priest forgave the thief Valjean, played by Jackman
Let your children love and let them go. This song, “Bring Him Home,” by Jackman was a real tear-jerker
Care for all children, as if they were your own
Show kindness, always
Have passion for your cause
Know that change will come
Workplace squabbles can lead to prostitution
Maybe that last one is not a good life lesson, but you get the idea.
Believe in the power of passionate individuals to change the world. I know there are many more life lessons in Les Mis to explore, but I am heading to Middle-earth today.
Yes, I am going to see The Hobbit at noon.
And so I leave you with the words of Valjean.
And from a writing teacher’s point of view, I must point out these lyrics are so brilliant because they are so simple. Almost all of the words are one syllable, but they pack in so much emotion, just like the musical.
“Bring Him Home”
Bring him peace
Bring him joy
He is young
He is only a boy
You can take
You can give
Let him be
Let him live
If I die, let me die
Let him live
Bring him home
Writing about anything but yesterday’s tragedy in Newton, Conn, feels insensitive. But to cope with horrors, ordinary or extraordinary, I need to write. Through any endeavor, creative and artistic, we find out who we are, what we think, and how we feel. And we figure out how to go on.
This morning I dropped off one of my daughters at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I feel calm looking at art and making art. Thanks, Andy Warhol.
I’m a teacher, a mother, and a writer. I’ve been thinking about conflicts.
I know in families and schools and all our relationships, conflict is inevitable. But how we deal with our internal and external conflicts is optional. I believe our society preys upon our conflicts. Our media exploits our differences — red state vs. blue state; stay at home mom vs. working mom.
Honestly, we have more that unites us than divides us.
As citizens of the United States of America, we have to find a way to seek common ground and lift one another up, not put each other down. We cannot whip out automatic rifles when we cannot get along — with ourselves or with our mothers.
We have to find and share our public spaces like our schools and our museums. Our public places and institutions are sacred.
I teach my writing students that conflict is the essence of drama. We mustn’t avoid conflict. But we cannot rest in a place of constant conflict. We must learn to use conflict to further the plot of our lives, to reach out, to state our needs, and to work on how to find a common humanity. Even when we want to find a common enemy.
Every child and every adult should lean how to resolve conflicts in a healthy way. Those of us who live in cities and ride the subways or share public spaces know we must coexist. And when we cannot live peaceably with ourselves, our families or our neighbors, we must get help.
And as every one is saying on social media, getting help should be a whole lot easier than getting a gun. There is no shame in experiencing conflict or in getting help with whatever arise in our lives. The tragedy arises when we cannot resolve our conflicts without hurting someone else.
To manage our inner and outer conflicts, we can:
make art
write in a journal
talk to a friend
work out
seek professional help
listen to music
walk in nature
attend a worship service
read a book
I don’t know. There are probably a million ways to handle conflict healthily. But we must be taught them; they don’ t just come naturally.
Today’s daily prompt, What’s your ideal Saturday morning? Are you doing those things this morning? Why not?
Ideally, I may do any of the above conflict resolution items.
I write in my journal. I read the paper. I drink coffee. I go for a run. I make a nice brunch for my family with bagels and lox. My kids clean up the brunch without being asked. Then I go to a nearby spa for a massage. The kids get themselves to wherever they may need to go — basketball, Bat Mitzvah. I feel at peace. I make art.
While the first few things I listed do happen, reading, writing, drinking coffee — the last few things don’t. I cannot control other people. (I am concocting a plan to make the kids more self-reliant and supportive of one another and of me and my husband.) I also do not get lox or a massage on a Saturday morning because I worry about the expense. I feel guilty spending money on myself during the holiday season. My budget is already pretty tight with kids’ presents and holiday travel. I guess that would be an ideal too, not feeling guilty.
Just for today, I teach my kids to resolve conflicts in a healthy way. I love them well and hold my dear ones close. Just for today, that is my ideal.
2012 is drawing to a close (3 weeks left!). What would you put in this year’s time capsule?
collage for UMCOR
I would put:
My collage art to promote UMCOR (United Methodist Committee on Relief). Am so proud! This was an early version.
My bike. Oh, my bike. I love my bike. Biking in NYC makes me happy.
seen in a bike shop window in Portland
My first (ever!) unemployment direct deposit check. Definitely mixed feelings, but overall grateful.
My new business cards.
Masks that the girls made at Art Students League. We all play roles, wear masks, make art.
Chris’s SAG movie pass. Going to the movies together has been a great way to connect. Due to Chris’s illness and our busy-ness, I feel we are ships passing in the night. But we’ve sat together at such amazing movies this year! Yesterday we saw Amour. Formidable! (my favorite French word!) Today we are going to see The Guilt Trip.
A handful of sand from Siesta Key beach. The kids and I had such a restorative time hanging out at the prettiest beach in the world last spring. Great times, too, with my bro, Nicole, dad, and Marty.
A mosquito from the kids and my ill-fated camping trip to Fire Island.
Yoga mat. Because my mom still practices yoga and stands on her head.
Shake Shack fries. After teaching a semester of middle school creative writing, I take my kids to Shake Shack to celebrate.
School Swimming Pool and Van Cortlandt Park. I watch my kids play basketball, soccer, and baseball, but I spend most of my spectator time on the sidelines of the long benches of the pool or on the edges of the Van Corltandt Park track.
all the cousins
All of the cousins. Being with my four siblings and their kids for Thanksgiving was definitely the highlight of 2012.
President Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Just in case anyone, in the future, has any questions. The man is an American, all right already. Forward.
The boys were fishing and my creative writing students were supposed to be writing. It was a surprisingly gorgeous December Day, balmy.
We were discussing plot. This is tough to teach, especially for me. I like to meander in my writing. For guidance I consulted my trusty NaNoWriMo young writers’ curriculum guide. There, the teacher offered a suggestion to start the discussion of plot with a viewing of the final few minutes of an episode of SpongeBob Square Pants. Apparently, SpongeBob does plot well.
But instead of watching the cartoon, we went for our neighborhood walk to our secret spot in Central Park, a most beautiful little cul de sac where rock meets pond meets beauty.
This is where we met our young fisherman.
They waited.
They waited.
They hooked a big fish.
My eight Middle School writers stood in a circle around the two little fishers. They reeled a fish in. It was a mighty big carp.
I would not have known the kind of fish, but one of the boy’s babysitters told me.
“How old are the boys?”
“Eleven,” she said.
We watched the boys pose for camera phone photo shots with the fish. The fish seemed to be tiring.
One of my writers yelled, “Throw it back!”
“We will,” the boy said.
And he wrestled with the hook in the gaping mouth.
“I’ve never seen anyone fish before,” another of my writers said.
“Hurry! Throw it back!” the girl said.
“We will!” The boy was getting angry. The hook was not coming out of the downcast mouth.
Up to this point, students, you are witnessing, in literary parlance, “Rising Action.”
Now, we have reached the moment of “Climax.”
My creative writing kids yelled, “Throw it back!” I offered to help remove the hook. Thank God, the boys ignored me. But the boys could not ignore the yelling. And one boy, attempting to remove the hook from the carp’s mouth, looked up and spit out a load of curse words at my students, including a line about how my kids were making his life “a living hell.”
Then he went back to work, finally freeing the fish from the hook.
He set it free. The fish wagged itself back into the murky Central Park lake or pond.
The boy asked the nanny for a napkin to clean his dirty hands. She had none. I handed him a tissue from my pocket.
“Thank you,” he said, “And I’m sorry I called your kids so many names. I apologize.”
“It’s okay,” I said. (And I later told my kids that he’d apologized.)
Now, students, this part of my story is, “Falling Action.”
The boy set to baiting another hook.
“He’s very polite,” I told the nanny.
“Yes, he has some anger issues, adopted from Russia and all, but he’s a good kid.”
“Yes,” I said. And I was thinking, he’s a good teacher too. He has taught me and the kids about rising action, climax, and falling action.
And he did it far better than even SpongeBob could.
Just in time for the holidays, there are two awesome new films about mental illness.
I just saw Silver Linings Playbook and The Master. Both of these films show the journey from destructive madness to precarious sanity. The films show the impossible internal tide as Pat, Bradley Cooper, and Freddy, Joaquin Phoenix, descend (ascend) into their altered states and try to get back to life again.
The movies made me wonder about something I read a long time from Carl Jung. I am paraphrasing, but the idea from Jung, is that: Maybe it’s not these individuals who are mad, but their societies are insane.
Maybe madness is the only sane response to an insane society. Coping is hard enough in life, without the stigma and consequences of mental illness, brought on by intense stress or some biological deficiency.
Both lead actors in these films chew up the scenery. Oddly, during a few intense moments in Silver Linings, the director cuts away from the Bradley Cooper character, a manic-depressive, to get the reaction shots of Jennifer Lawrence (from The Hunger Games).
The title of Silver Linings refers to the benefits of positive thinking to overcome difficulties. I am fan of optimism. Here are my other take-aways from Silver Linings.
Dancing and running help heal obsessive minds
Beat craziness with more craziness
Two messed-up people can make a sane thing
Find the silver lining in every crazy moment
Mental illness runs in families
The Master
Joaquin Phoenix, Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Amy Adams are incredible in The Master. There is never a cutting away from their faces during intense scenes. If anything, the close-ups just get closer. Tormented minds reveal themselves through dialogue and action. Actions have consequences.
Here are my take-aways from The Master
Every one serves someone (the master?). (Did Bob Dylan say this too?)
Post-traumatic stress disorder is real, especially for wartime survivors
Communal living is healing (and destructive)
We may be better than we think we are
Don’t give up on love
Talk therapy works (hypnotherapy too?)
Overcoming mental illness is no joke, although, turns out, these two films depict the efforts to overcome mental illness as entertaining and compelling.
Joaquin Phoenix in The Master
After the characters of Freddy and Pat slide into their dysfunctional moments, they seem always at war with themselves, trying to reign in their destructive sides and crawl back to lives with family or community. They look for a state of grace. Or at least, they seek connection with others and a state of normalcy. Balance eludes them.
Just in time for Christmas and New Year’s, you can see these movies and contemplate having more compassion for your family members who may have diseases or mental illnesses.
Even though I loved these films, I hope to see a mainstream movie about a woman with a mental illness, preferably depression, which is far more common in women than men.
In the newly-released Lincoln, Mary Todd Lincoln denies her depression. Her mental illness is only viewed as an impediment to her emotional closeness to her family. For women in films, like Mary played by Sally Field, relationships matter most. For men, it is the journey to wholeness. But surely, Mary’s depression could be a fascinating feature-length film, not just a subplot in Lincoln’s life.
Maybe I’ll write more about Lincoln later. I just saw it yesterday and am still reeling from those performances and the immersion in a time of history when men and women fought to knit the country together rather than to pull it apart. To unite us.
My friend Jolain told me that when she started her clothing line years ago, her goal was simply to make beautiful clothes. She said that wasn’t enough.
“A business has to solve a problem,” Jolain said.
When Kelly and I launched our new biz, we figured offering first-class writing workshops at non-luxury prices would answer a writer’s problem.
A writer’s challenge includes the need to:
be a part of a community
get published
find a sanctuary for dangerous writing
make time for writing
nurture creativity and beauty in a society that overlooks the arts.
Our biz does all that.
We use Field Notes to keep score when we play cards.
This morning I listened to a podcast about traveling salesmen (at Field Notes Brand, a company my brother co-founded). Ron Solberg praises the tenacity and brilliance of the early traveling salespeople who often sold books. And the customers appreciated how the salesmen delivered news, as well as products. They liked the free samples.
“The trick really was volume, the number of stops you make,” Solberg said.
And more winning advice: “Take advantage of the moment.”
In a sense, when I started the biz, I wanted to make and nurture beautiful writing the same way Jolain wanted to make beautiful clothing. But I am learning to sell as well as to create.
As a small business owner, I need to sustain my biz, so I must do both sales and art. And for both, I need to value beauty, tenacity, hard work, and being in the moment.
Earlier in the season, before the storm, the days were brighter and warmer, and the girls played soccer in Central Park. Look how much fun these soccer moms are having!
Just back from my girls’ freezing soccer game. Thank God basketball season is upon us because soccer season is tough on the spectators. I posted on Facebook, ‘this soccer mom needs a hot toddy.’
The term, ‘soccer mom,’ is used disparagingly, but I appreciate the soccer moms and dads who coach teams and bring snacks and stand there in the cold, cheering and chatting, without warm beverages.
I appreciate myself. I put air in the girls’ tires so we could ride bikes to the game. But I was overambitious. It was too cold. We were miserable, riding into the cold wind off of the Hudson River.
The girls would’ve rather taken a bus, a subway, a taxi, anything. Getting places in New York can be cushy or tough. Sometimes I make us tough it out. Perhaps needlessly. Sometimes I feel like I am an Outward Bound leader rather than a parent.
I want to be grateful that my kids are so athletic and like playing team sports.
I have so many good things on my horizon. I want to focus on positive things and my upcoming goals. I do not want to dwell on the argument the girls and I had when it was time to ride home from the game and the girls wanted to switch bikes.
I believe in pronoia, which is the sneaking suspicion that the universe is conspiring to help you. (Unlike paranoia, where the world is conspiring to get you.)
That’s my upcoming goal until New Year’s — to have faith in the power of pronoia.
Just about every day I have posted a photo on Facebook or on Instagram. A year later, I’m not sure whether I’m going to stay with my #photoaday habit.
But I have learned a lot. And I offer these guidelines, inspired from a workshop given years ago by my brilliant colleague, Paul Jeffrey. Check out Paul’s blog at Global Lens to see how a pro does it.
Get close.
Get far.
Get personal.
Get simple.
Get high.
Get low.
Get light.
Get dark.
I find nothing more beautiful than an extreme close up of a flower. However, eyes cannot feast on a stamen every single day. So I try to change my perspective.
The Jersey Shore. Give me any shot of water any day and I’ll be happy.
Here are some random examples from the last year.
After I cleaned my NYC kitchen, I posted a picture proudly. People are naturally voyeurs and like a peek into other people’s lives (and kitchens).What’s ordinary for some people is extraordinary for others. (When I shot this photo, my friend was mortified. she wanted me to be more discreet with my iphone!) Thus, the blur.Get far. Skylines always make me feel melancholy. (photo credz to my son. I was driving, so I told him, “Hey, take a picture.”)I find a close up of a flower with an interesting background relaxing.And when looking for a subject to shoot, I just have to turn around and there are my bored kids. (I shot this at the Easter Parade.)
Part of my problem with sorting socks is that my kids don’t mind wearing non-matching or nearly-matching socks. I wish wearing mismatched socks was a trend when I was a kid.
I know it’s Election Day. I woke up feeling confident that I would win. Er, I mean, my man Obama would win. So while I’d like to blog about the 2012 election, I thought I’d post about finding happiness a little closer to home.
Yesterday, I was super excited to declutter. Crazy, right? I sorted more than 50 pairs of socks and it took me hours! These socks had hung around the bottom of the laundry basket for several years, years when my kids’ sock sizes grew from child to adult-sized.
At the bottom of the basket, I found toddler socks. Yes, it’s been a while since I dug down that deep.
My kids are teenagers. So after a momentary fling with nostalgia over those cute little toddler-sized socks, I tossed them away.
I’ve never enjoyed sorting socks. People say, “Do it while sitting in front of the TV at night.” But I don’t watch TV.
I found inspiration for this boring activity from this blog post, 29 Ways to Declutter. It seems Deb Smouse is saying that there’s a spiritual side to decluttering. I like that. Her post begins with this quote:
Clutter is a physical manifestation of fear that cripples our ability to grow. – H.G. Chissell.
When I left my job six weeks ago, I thought, “Great, now I’ll have time to do all those things I’ve always wanted to do, like sort those damn socks in the bottom of the basket.”
Yup, I’m finding satisfaction in getting to the bottom of the barrel and finding my kids’ childhood.
Incidentally, I’m renaming this blog, To Pursue Happiness and I’ve rolled all my blogs home here.
With starting up Boot Camp For Writers and kick starting my freelance blogging career, I just don’t have the time or energy to post on all four of my blogs, so find me here! For the month of November, I’m posting every day.
The event of a thread is made up of many crossings of the near at hand and the far away: it is a body crossing space, is a writer’s hand crossing a sheet of paper, is a voice crossing a room in a paper bag… – Ann Hamilton
The exhibit at the Armory on Park Avenue and 66th is hard to explain.
It must be experienced. Laying on your back watching the billowing silk above. Hypnotizing.
play.
Through play.
100 Days of Poems and Pics 