Keeping Calm When Change Is All Around

"Possibility" - Mixed Media:
-acrylic paint, magazine scraps and jell pen.

It's been one week since I received some life changing news - due to budget cuts and seniority issues my teaching position for next year is no longer mine.  Now what I am asking myself? I have a job until June, but what comes next? Do I want to stay in public education? Do I want to go in an entirely new direction?

One thing is for certain, I have turned to reading for solace and finding it in Bernadette Murphy's Zen and the Art of Knitting: Exploring the links between knitting, spirituality, and creativity. I began reading Murphy's book even before the bad news came as I was drawn to the title because of my own fondness for knitting. Like Murphy herself and the knitters she interviewed, I find peace when knitting. She writes about the calm that comes over one when she's knitting that is like the experience others have when engaging in focusing on the breath or a mantra while meditating.

So how does this tie in with the loss of my job? I found the some words of wisdom on page 126, spoken by a former film producer turned professional artist who stated that when she finally decided to pursue the creative life there were no rules to follow so she had to forge her own path. "I just did what I had to do. And you know what? .... The world will let you do it."

There you go - words to live by. I don't know what the path ahead of me will be, but I can take comfort in knowing that I will be following in the footsteps of others who have gone bravely into that uncharted territory, and I too will learn to follow my own passions in order to fashion the next phase of my life.

Reawaken, repair, and renew - Rise and Shine Benedict Stone

Awakening Stones - art journal page
collage

Sometimes we find ourselves weighted down by the burdens of life, or even the secrets that we hold within our hearts. Our hearts themselves may feel like they have been turned to stone. Benedict Stone, the title character of Phaedra Patrick's newest novel, is such a man. Benedict is a man who is currently separated from his wife, scarcely eking out a living with his small jewelry shop having lost his creative spark years ago, when the sixteen year old daughter of his estranged brother shows up on his doorstep. 

Gemma has secrets and burdens of her own. Like all teenagers, she is struggling to finding her own place and passion within the world. She has traveled to England from the US in search of answers. Her hope is to learn more about the bag of gemstones her father received from his dead parents, and why he hasn't invited her uncle to be a part of their lives. 

It's Gemma that spurs Benedict to face his past, beginning with opening the trunk in the attic containing his parents' gemstone journal, tools, designs, and some of his own early work. Together they read the journal passages, written by Gemma's grandfather, about gemstone properties, "Peridot - A rich green stone, sometimes called chrysolite, peridot is widely known as the birthstone for August. It can be found in volcanic landscapes. It was used in ancient times to ward off evil spirits. It can assist us to recognize negative patterns in our lives, override unwanted thought patterns, help let go of the past and ease fear and anxiety. It can lessen stress, anger, and jealousy in relationships, and also help us to find what is lost.." (p.76-77) Before long they are dispensing gemstones to the members of the village based on their needs. Benedict finds himself inspired to work on new designs which renews his creativity and even gives him the confidence to fight for his marriage. But those hidden secrets come back to bite them in the butt. I'll let you read the outcome. 

Family secrets are painful and soul destroying. What we hide from our spouses, our children, our parents, or our siblings breeds distrust and fear and nothing good can come of it. There are even our failed attempts to hide our own secrets from ourselves allowing our souls to slowly wither, ruining our relationships, stymying our creativity, and preventing us from living our lives fully. 

I chose the peridot quote above since it is my birthstone, but also because of the properties that Patrick ascribed to it (see her author's note). Right now in my life I am working to overcome the old negative thought patterns, based on old family issues, that I have allowed to hold me back. We can find ourselves trapped in negative or fearful thought patterns and it seems we can't out run them. I now know that there is a way out. It takes courage and hard work to make changes that bring you to a new place in life. After ten years at a very stressful job, I prayed for a solution and it came in the form of a new job. Now I'm battling the anxiety that comes with starting all over, but it's been a good thing and I am so grateful to be able to renew my life, find ways to express my own creativity, and to repair the damage to my soul. This whole summer has been about finding my voice and using it. 

Using "Big Magic" to get beyond the fear

Most of us know our character flaws. Some are hidden well and take years to find, acknowledge and finally address. Mine is fear. There! San't be too afraid if I announce it to the entire world, but still I haven't come to grips with it. It doesn't drive my life like it used to, thankfully. When fear was in charge nothing happened. I was paralyzed. I kept doing, but I did what I thought everyone else wanted me to do. That's what fear did to me - it blinded me.

I just finished Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear and found it inspiring. Now as a famous writer, she admits to getting lots of fans who tell her how wonderful Eat Pray Love was, and many people have criticized it; I couldn't get through myself (can't tell you why, but there it is) so I can't give an honest opinion but by what she wrote in this book she's perfectly okay with that. That to me is a great lesson; not everyone is going to like everything I do or write, and that shouldn't keep me from doing and writing. The fear of people not liking me or my work kept me from even starting and that allowed fear to stay right where it wanted to be - in charge.

It's that perfectionism streak that does me in, and here's Elizabeth's advice on that: "You must learn how to become a deeply disciplined half-ass. It starts by forgetting about perfect. We don't have time for perfect. In any event, perfection is unachievable" (166). I love that. Someone has given me permission to be a half-ass, which is better than being a no-ass, which is what I was if I allowed perfectionism to prevent me from getting started. Being a half-ass is progress in my book.

Gilbert has peppered her work with many anecdotes and here is one of my favorites. A 70 year old woman told her, "We all spend our twenties and thirties trying so hard to be perfect, because we're so worried about what people will think of us. Then we get into our forties and fifties, and we finally start to be free, because we decide that we don't give a damn what anyone thinks of us" (174). That's where I stand now on the cusp of 50 and I've finally figured out that I just need to be me whether or not anyone else likes that. I've spent way too much time trying to be someone I thought I should be.

Her book is an eloquent pep talk for all those who strive to live a creative life. Creativity comes in so many forms and whether or not I ever achieve fame and fortune, I've learned that I need to live this way. Hiding my creative side was not helping me to be a happy person.  I'm happier and calmer when I'm following a creative pursuit like writing, or drawing, or decorating the house, or working in my garden, or knitting, or... or... or...  There are so many ways that I enjoy being creative and the challenge is that I only get 24 hours a day, which means I better get to work.

Gilbert, Elizabeth. Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. New York: Riverhead Books, 2015.

Where have I seen this before? #2

Constable on the wall of the
Boston MFA

In my first in the series "Where have I seen this before?" I wrote about mystery plots that had similar plots, that of murder within a group of tourists. Earlier this week I was visiting the Boston MFA, and while walking through the European Art gallery (2nd floor) I spied John Constable on the wall and thought instantly of Ngaio Marsh's Clutch of Constables that I had written about. Pondering the painting more I thought of all the novels I've read that have focused on art as their subject matter, and realized I could compose several blog posts for this series, but I'll start today with just one topic to focus on - smart, talented, young girl used by older guy.

The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro tells the story of Claire Roth a fine arts graduate student who has fallen in love with her married painting professor and engages in a sexual relationship with him. Isaac Cullion is a modern abstract painter with a case of undiagnosed mental illness (bi-polar?) who has lost his groove, flow, muse, inspiration - you choose what to call it. Claire makes the mistake of trying to egg him on to create a piece of art for an exhibition by telling him they will do it together. She starts the canvas, he directs by instructing her how to use his techniques. A work of art is produced and Cullion signs his name. The critics come to view and are astounded. The MOMA acquires the painting and proudly displays it. Cullion says nothing, accepts the accolades, and then returns to his wife. Claire decides to speak up for her work, but only manages to turn the art world against her - she's the spurned mistress trying to get hers back on her lover.

Several years later, Aiden Markel, owner of a prestigious Boston art gallery comes looking for Claire.  Claire has been making a living working for a firm that specializes in making reproductions of famous paintings, let's be clear they are not being sold as the real thing. Claire it turns out is very good at her job. Markel brings her one of the stolen art works from the infamous Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery for her to forge. His plan is to sell the forgery to a buyer and get the real thing back onto the museum wall. I'll let you imagine how well this will work out for Claire. Sorry no spoilers today.

Amy Gail Hansen chooses a different art form that of writing for her novel The Butterfly Sister. Ruby Rousseau a senior at a fictitious all girls college on the banks of one of the Great Lakes, makes the mistake of starting a romantic relationship with her married professor, the one who will be grading her senior essay. The first sign that things aren't going well is that her notes mysteriously disappear around the time that Ruby's lover admits to sharing some of her ideas in a talk he'd given at a conference (the one he didn't or wouldn't let her attend with him). Must keep our relationship a secret is his excuse. As the semester goes on, the professor starts to grow cool while Ruby works long hours on her thesis. The big day comes - he gives her a D on the paper, she finds him in bed with another woman, and driven to the brink she attempts suicide.

Ruby has withdrawn from school and is working on putting her life back together when she receives the suitcase of a missing fellow student. Looking through its contents she spies a clue that she holds onto before turning the suitcase over to the police who are looking for the missing girl. Ruby begins piecing together the facts that her beloved professor, for she's still stuck on him, is in fact a serial user of students both sexually and for their work. That's right, the man has stolen her brilliant senior thesis and published it as his own work. And she's not the first he has done this to. Read on for I will give no spoiler here today.

Point is both these novels deal with young women who trust the wrong man when it comes their creativity. The men use their work for their own gains whether it be for money, prestige, or job security. Both women never saw it coming that the men that they loved would steal their creations and pass them off as their own. Plagiarism is a huge crime on the intellectual level, but these men also committed the crime of psychological and emotional abuse by using a sexual relationship to get what they wanted. Both women were immature when it comes to relationships and they gave themselves whole-heartedly to these men. Their hearts were abused, as well as, their minds leaving them with the task of learning to trust again and hopefully to love again. But more importantly having the confidence to create again.

Hansen, Amy Gail. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2013. Print
Shapiro, B.A. Chapel Hill, NC: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2012. Print.