Finals

The boys have fled to the mountains for the weekend, leaving me alone with all my work for finals. While they are at the hot springs or playing with grandma I will be here working on finals. Not exactly how I imagined spending my Mother’s Day, but I guess it really is a gift of another sort. The house needs love and there is a tempting pile of laundry I could put away but I have been given strict instructions not too. Instead I’ll avoid my work briefly here and share a few views of home today, in the eerie quietness that pervades when they first leave.

The living room has been everyone’s favorite space to hangout in lately.

Alder has started to decorate his room himself, he’s got a thing for the Eiffel Tower and Paris.

The new curtains are drawn to hide the insanely beautiful day outside.

I try to keep my view from my table pleasant, even if they are ancient ’80s metal shelving.

There is something a little cozy about my work space.

What I’m working on.

What I’ve finished.

I hope you all enjoy your weekend!

This is What I Do

This is What I Do

Sitting here, poaching small pieces of the past,
turning them into textures,
putting them into rooms that have never been,
letting a sun that does not shine in though windows.

At night I walk through these rooms
as I sleep,
at night they are as real as the house I live in.
It is always the day before we open,
the last remnants of new paint in the air.

Waking in the night I reach over to touch skin and cotton,
to inhabit the ghost world of the in between.
These hours are no more real than the model on my computer.

Finals Week

I really never thought I would ever have to write that again in my life. But here I am in the thick of it. Here are some old posts from years ago to sustain you.

All Without a Yard

We’ve reconfigured a little since this was written but spring planting is going strong.

Cabin Life 

Thinking a lot about family, especially my Dad lately.

This is For My Son  

With all that has been going on in the world, with Boston and Newtown I feel this even stronger today.

I hope that all of you are dancing the dance of Spring and new growth, and are taking every moment to be in the sun.

Visitors

We had some visitors this weekend from New York, so we tried to show them a good time.

What didn’t make the photos was the frisbee throwing in the park in tee shirts the next day, or the trip to a favorite bookstore.

Making Yourself Clear

It is all in the timing, you know this. Passing by your favorite building just at the right moment may pepper us with rainbows. You know that somewhere up high there are giant pieces of glass, shaped just right to catch the sun as it passes by. But it is hard to know the timing one month to the next, as it slips from solstice to equinox.

You have always known exactly what works and doesn’t work for you. When you say you want to paint you don’t just stare at the shelf but already have decided which paint to use. At home you make your needs clear, and often your wants. But out away from here it takes you longer. You care so much for how others feel that you wait until you have a strong connection, then when you are comfortable you speak. (Perhaps that is my hopefulness and not the fact that you feel ignored). So it has been a long year of you sharing little with us about your time out in the big world, and sharing less with the people you spend everyday with what it is that you need. And, of course because you care so much for how the people around you feel it has taken you until now to share your feelings, but what was only partially clear a few weeks ago now is brilliantly clear.

Now it is up to us to help you, to bring you back like the spinach, beets, arugula, and carrots you planted. What was only a vague protest in the winter has become a clear statement as the ground warms and the days lengthen. You inspire me with more conviction that I have always known your soul and how to feed it. We have shed so many tears, each of us saying things we never thought we would. It has brought us to now which is a different sort of beginning.

Now

I can smell the graphite on my fingers,
the curls of wood flake and drop
I deal in lines, angles and ratio.

You fight it everyday,
leaving tears staining your face
like an old tattoo,
or scar.

Our old patterns are no longer habit,
we shed our tears and laugh
we define our space as small
finding only little pieces to hold onto.

The graphite smudges,
the sun comes in
I wonder when next we’ll see
your sculpture
the spot on the river where we swim
the old couches in the alley.

We hold onto our promises
I keep the photo of you with me
whenever I falter I see you
and remember.

What it Means

I suppose it would have been inevitable that school would take over my life, but I wasn’t expecting our business to start getting busy at the same time. This all means that I spend my life between the studio at home and the studio at school. Well that’s not completely true since Alder and I have managed to make our way through the first three and a half Harry Potters over the last five months.

We still have time for occasional adventures; cross country skiing, days by the river, museums, and of course our Sunday ritual of coffee with friends.

Cross Country Skiing in Rock Mountain National Park (Kevin and Alder skiing tandem)

After Skiing Bouldering

Lemons for Cake

Forming Lunch At Home Habits

Maple Bacon Doughnuts, not to mention Apple Chutney and S’more.

Go Fish, Drink Coffee, Eat Doughnut

When Soon Became Now

I’ve been in school for two weeks now and the rhythm of our weeks are only starting shape. I am having to remember what it means to study and do homework, the whole act of slowing down and focusing. As I walked home in the cold on Friday evening I realized how good it feels to be stretching my mind in a new direction, one where I am actually learning completely new things. To sit down with a compass and a straight edge feels like a privileged not a chore.

To celebrate beginnings, and sunshine, we went for a hike yesterday up in Eldorado Canyon. Hikes like this are made for looking at the world around us and making plans for the future. Of course we are more cautious now than we used to be with the plans. That is okay though, our plans are ones that we can actually reach, which is in the end so much better rather than watching grand plans vanish.

This Week

They’re kinda cute together.

To Do This Week

Return Library Books
Hair Cut
Illustrations for Activities 1-9
Wednesday Morning Little Red Canoe Meeting
Review Prehistoric Era for Architectural History
Pick Up Lock for Campus Fitness Center (and start going)
Deal with Unusually Large Stack of Important Papers
Do taxes

What is on your list this week?

Battles With the Monkey Mind

I spoke recently of giving myself permission to work, to start rather than stay in the planning stage. Planning is comforting, nothing has gone wrong yet, no obstacles have slowed your work. Not only that but when you plan you have a version of the outcome of your project neatly in your mind. It can be a safe place to stay, one where nothing goes wrong. But it isn’t a real place and eventually all those beautiful plans begin to sour because a plan is just an idea, a hope, but it isn’t a concrete project or adventure. Slowly as time passes even the most carefully crafted plan fades in the sunshine of everyday life if it doesn’t get used.

But taking that first step outside of the plan is so easily derided by doubts, no matter what excuse you give (too much to do, not enough money, wrong tools) they really are there as masks for the reality of fear. When we actually commit to working on a project we are also offering ourselves up to the possibility of failure, and that is scary. We are carrying with us the voices of everyone who has ever said no to us, or assigned us a value (good or bad). Most people don’t step outside the parameters of their lives and create work without some sort of external motivation. Being a hard worker is an excellent trait but it shouldn’t get confused with being able to work independently towards a goal, especially when the goal is one you have created for yourself. It is in beginning that we really should feel like we have had our first success.

Except it doesn’t work that way. As soon as we start working those voices start whispering. These voices are part of our monkey mind, that scattered little monkey within us all who wants to sidetrack us, to derail us. No matter how confident you are the monkey will begin to chant its insults, remind us of doubts, and worst of all it sounds like us, not a monkey. Often the monkey mind is described as scattered offering up many other things to distract you from your task at hand. But I have always seen it as something more derisive, it isn’t there just to scatter you but to stop you from big things. The same way we call children monkeys this monkey is also child like, it wants to stay in the safe and familiar. So while it may be difficult to overcome, and may be disruptive to your work, it doesn’t mean you harm. In fact, you might say that your monkey mind is trying to protect you.

So how do you do battle with the monkey mind and what tools do you need? Every person is different in the details but I would say that you need three basic areas focusing, encouragement, and comfort.

For me I find that I need tangible representations of focus. My work space is mobile at the moment, hopefully our studio will have internet soon, so my focus has to be able to slip into my backpack without weighing me down. While I have a planner which includes everything I need to do over the week before I sit down I make a detailed list of everything I need to do. Because my current project involves a lot of small written pieces I list what each one is,. I love being able to check things off the list quickly. If I can see that I am being productive, meeting my bench marks then I am able to hush the monkey mind by showing it how I am having little successes. Another thing that I am using right now is a photo of my son, it is there to remind me that everything that I am doing is so that I can create the life that I want us to have as a family (he is also my biggest cheer leader).

Encouragement, don’t be stoic, your battle with your monkey mind maybe yours alone but sharing your excitement for your project is really important. I have a core group of people who know about my project who I can count on to ask me how its going. I try not to bore them or focus primarily on what I am doing when I talk with them, but comes up and often they have suggestions. Even if all they do is ask you how it is going it legitimizes it for me. Another passive form of encouragement for me is to be in an environment that is filled with other people working on independent projects. Like the coffee shop I am sitting in right now, most of the people who frequent it are either students or people working for themselves, either way they are focused on something and it rubs off on me.

For me to focus I need to have certain things together before I start working, otherwise the time I spend getting up and down lets in the monkey mind. Let’s face it being comfortable is really important for getting anything done.

My Personal Comfort List
1. My glasses case (I don’t always use my glasses but my ear buds are in there)
2. Music, either with no words or if it is singing it needs to be in a language I don’t speak.
3. A hair band or clip, if my hair is down I play with it.
4. My notebook (and a pen), even when I am using the computer I like to have my notebook there to write other ideas down o they don’t distract me.
5. The TO DO LIST, see above.
6. My charger, I have been known to run a few blocks home because I forgot it.
7. Something to drink.

I think of those as my armor, if I have them all together I am more able to win and work rather than struggle with my monkey mind. Of course so much of this depends on the day, the stars, the barometer, and eighty-five other things. In other words I may know how to battle the monkey but that doesn’t mean I am always successful. Everyday there seems to be new struggles that show themselves.