HARK, THE HERALD ANGELS SING

I have been in a gloomy mood today. It's hard to be down on Friday when the air is cool and the sun is shining. But sometimes a cloud just seems to linger right overhead. Then this morning one of my students came in early for some help with an assignment. She said she was feeling blue, too. So, I decided the perfect thing would be to listen to some Christmas music. We did. We listened for about an hour and we felt better.

Think about it. The music is familiar and it is always either upbeat or uplifting. All perky and happy, or spiritual and elevated. So we didn't stop after just an hour. I've been playing it all day. It has been funny to watch the reactions of my students. Some of them asked me why Christmas music, and when I explained briefly that I just needed a boost, they questioned no further. Most of them were taking a test online, and I kept seeing them tapping their feet, nodding their heads, softly smiling--all while taking a test over The Scarlet Letter!

Right now I am "Walking in a Winter Wonderland" with Louis Armstrong, and the sun is starting to shine inside me again.

I have set a goal for myself--I am going to try to focus on those small things that surround me which remind me how beautiful life is. Don't get me wrong. I am not a sad person. Not really. But I do tend to migrate toward what I often think of as a beautiful melancholy. And it is a small slide downhill from there to a darker kind of sorrow. Johnny Mathis can keep me from that tipping point with "Silent Night." And Christmas with "The Rat Pack" practically makes me giddy.

This morning while I was having myself a merry little Christmas, I was reading excerpts from a book titled The Overly Sensitive Person, and I realized that I identified quite strongly with a lot of the characteristics mentioned there. Teaching high school can be trying for a sensitive person. Teenagers have so many problems--problems ranging from mildly dramatic to life threateningly serious. Just walking down the hall with a couple of hundred students is bound to put you face to face with at least one seriously disturbed individual in a matter of minutes. It is an almost physical sensation to be buffeted by their angst. I realize that one of the ways I deal with that is to distance myself from everyone. Over the years my students have even teased me about it. They say things about my need to be contained. They tell me I am aloof. They comment on my desire not to have my personal space infringed upon. And they know that I am not really a person who hugs a lot.

I have been this way since I was a small child. It probably springs from not liking anyone to control my environment in any way. I think that's why I like to write--I can literally control everything that happens. And it's also why I like to make art. The act of creation is the ultimate in control. Recognizing these things about myself is liberating. Afterall, how can you get what you want if you don't even know what you want?

Today I wanted "giddyup Jingle Horse, pick up yer feet," and "Silver Bells," and the Trans-Siberian Orchestra. I wanted to remember the joy that bubbled inside me when I was in second grade and we sang "I Saw Momma Kissing Santa Clause" for the first time, and the way my cheeks turned pink just to imagine that scenario!

So, I hope my photography class is in the mood for some Christmas cheer while we critique their week's work. And I hope they know how much I care about them here in my little Christmas bubble.

IT IS LIKE A MIRACLE!

I had surgery a week ago and have been taking it easy at home, recovering.  I am astounded by the healing abilities of the body.  Immediately after the operation and in the three days following, I was convinced that I would not survive.  But then I turned the corner and the pain began to lessen.  And all of this happened while I sat and watched.  I did nothing to facilitate the process.  We are simply and miraculously programmed to rebuild.  Until we are not.

During the fourth of fifth night of curling myself protectively over my own abdomen in my chair in front of the TV, I answered the phone and was informed that I was a semi-finalist in a $50,000 home makeover contest.  Normally, I would have simply said I was not interested and hung up the phone.  But perhaps due to boredom, or due to the drugs languishing in my blood, I began to question the voice on the other end of the line. 

We had already established that I was indeed Cheryl (pronounced chair-rail) Hicks, but I had to explain two times to the voice that I had not entered a contest before he found the place in his script where he assured me that sometimes one’s name simply becomes available for such contests on the internet.  “It is like a miracle.”

Perhaps that is what made me continue to question the voice.

“Where did you get my name and phone number?  Who do you work for?”

“Yes, well, the identity of the principal of the organization at the immediate top of the corporation is… “  (and here I lost track of my ability to listen.  I am still unsure whether this was due to the painkillers or the abundance of prepositional phrases, but I do recall that the entity itself had something to do with Yahoo.)

The voice assured me that I was immediately eligible for some $200 worth of gift cards and all I had to do was… (again, this requirement of action, even in the abstract, caused my brain to shut down momentarily).

I asked a couple more questions and each one was followed by, “Yes, well…” (sound of shuffling script pages)… and a surprisingly forthcoming answer.  I began to suspect that solicitors were not allowed to lie.

Suddenly the game was no longer challenging for either of us, and the voice asked, most politely, to speak to Mr. David Hicks.  Even as I assured him that Mr. David was also not interested in his generous offer, I was thinking about the identity attached to the voice and about the nature of commerce that bubbles just under the crust of our information driven society often undetected, at least by those like me who live fairly sheltered lives.

Somewhere, probably on the other side of the planet, a human being spent several hours each day/night dealing with people like me and people unlike me.  Some would be rude.  Some would be delighted by their luck.  Some would realize that this might be the best job available to the voice right now and that it was important for his job security for him to conclude each call as efficiently as possible.

I wondered if the voice got any credit for keeping me on the line a few extra seconds or if he was penalized somehow when these seconds did not lead to a successful conclusion.  I wondered what I would do if the only job I could get was talking to strangers on the phone for hours at a time about things most of them did not want to talk about. 

I said, “Thank you , but I am not interested,”  and hung up the phone. 

I repositioned myself physically and wondered about the organism that is our planet, the combined cultures, economies, policies, oil spills, earthquakes, personalities, frailties, talents, technologies, vices , visions and voices that make up the world community.  And I wondered if there was any hope that she still had the ability to heal herself.

SELF PORTRAIT UPDATED

HOW YA LIKE ME NOW?

 

I have started a new self-portrait.  I try to make myself do one annually, but some years I avoid the whole self-reflective process.  Today I was thinking of some of the most famous self-portraits I have seen.  Frida Kahlo, Vincent VanGogh, Chuck Close… It is no coincidence that these three artists have greatly influenced my portraits.

The thing about a self-portrait is that it makes you look at yourself if a different way.  I may put on make-up every day (okay, maybe not every day in the summer), and it makes me realize that looking in a mirror is different from looking at a photograph.  It is sort of the same thing as hearing your voice in person as compared as to hearing a recording of your voice.  It can be almost unrecognizable!  For example, one day I called my house to talk to my husband and when he was not there, I left a generic message on the answering machine.  Something along the lines of,  “Hi.  It’s me.  I’ll call back later.”  Now, I am a little embarrassed to admit that later that day when I came home and played the message on the machine, for a brief moment I did not recognize my own voice and thought for just a moment that my daughter had called.  This can be attributed to the fact that I am a little goofy, that my voice sounds a whole lot like my daughter’s voice, and that the voice one hears in a recording is just different from the voice that resonates out of one’s own head.  And the whole thing reminds me of how many ways I am out of touch with my true self.

I don’t know why artists tend to recreate themselves. I do know that I have never painted a self-portrait with the intention of selling it.  And yet, with the exception of one self-portrait that my husband wanted to keep, I have sold all of the ones I have painted. Perhaps artists paint themselves because the subject is readily available.  Perhaps it is due to vanity.  Perhaps it is a form of soul searching.   My instincts lean toward the latter.

My face has changed a lot in the ten years that I have been painting.  I jokingly told my daughters one day recently that my face is collapsing.  But really, it was no joke.  The plump parts that once made my cheeks perky and my face heart shaped have begun to slump.  I can only imagine them going a bit further south each day, moving steadily and irretrievably toward the land of Jowldom. 

As an artist I always appreciated a beautiful face.  As a fifty-year-old woman, I am learning to appreciate the marks life leaves on one’s countenance.  When I look at my face these days, I see a strong resemblance to my mother.  My relationship with Mamma was not always ideal.   As a writer I have tapped into this vein repeatedly.  As an artist I am just beginning to do the same thing.   When I notice that my mouth is shaped somewhat like hers, I remind myself not to say hurtful things to people.  When I realize that my eyes are large like hers, I realize that in many ways I am still an innocent.  And as I have learned to be a little gentler with myself, I have learned also to cut my mother a little slack.

A few years ago I started a series of poems titled Conversations with the Virgin.  Of course, it goes without saying that these poems are a spiritual exploration, but they are also an attempt to reconcile my negative feelings for my mother with the need to embrace my own femininity.  The two poems below are from this series:

 

 

FULL PARDON

 

Lady of Luminous Laughter,

I know you look down on me

and wonder at my stupidity,

that you must marvel at my inability

to appreciate the wonder that saturates my life.

 

Prone to melancholy, sometimes

I pretend that my tears are born of glee

and that the sudden lurching snap

that jerks me toward the earth’s hot core

is natural, even desirable.

 

Sometimes I confuse you

with the young Cambodian woman

who runs the cash register at the liquor store,

so determined to pull from me

some detail of my day, yet always willing

to pay me for my reluctance

with patience

with her boundless exuberance,

with her predictable reassurance,

with these four simple words, “You are so beautiful!”

 

Sometimes you remind me of my friend Kat,

(You know, the one with the tumor?)

and the way she looked at me that day

and how with a smile that lifted only

the left side of her face, she said simply,

“You have a beautiful life.”

 

Sometimes my face turns hot

and my shame grows unchecked,

blossoming uninhibited in my chest

until almost no oxygen remains and

all I can think is that I should have

visited Mamma before she died.

 

Then, I imagine you there, in that otherworldly place,

with your arms crossed gently over your breast,

holding your veil, soft against your face

and floating toward the ceiling

where, with only the occasional silent smile,

you rain peace and understanding from the rafters.

 

 

AND BY THE FACT ITSELF

 

Lady, my thoughts of you are as thin

as the skin on the back of my hands. 

The star in my lucid dreams you are

and it seems that I can’t even take a phone message

without automatically adding a reference to you.

Holy Mother, I once read

that those wishing to control dreams

should spend their last minutes of life

each night studying the backs of their hands.  You see,

 

and I know you do, that our hands are the things

we see more than others,

more than other objects,

more than other expressions, digressions…

more than thoughts throughout our waking sessions.

 

Ip

so

fact

o

 

when we see them in our sleep,

our deep subconscious minds design scenarios

in which they’re able to function.  And so

sound dreamers function in their sleep.

 

But Lady, my eyes weep tears of blood

as slumber goes

the way of wonder,

the way of distant thunder born of memory,

the way that gender

only begins to explain

the differences between our legs, and so we run

and run and run like dogs asleep,

and never still, we keep

the sacred pacts of childhood.  

 

Today I look at my face

and I see your smile.

 

 

ANATOMICAL POETRY

I am starting a new painting tomorrow and plan to do some studying tonight on the anatomy of the facial musculature.

The painting below is not the one I set out to paint (as previously discussed in my blog a few days ago).  But sometimes I just can't plan what is going to happen on a canvas.  The face is composed (pun intended) of the poetry of Ackerman.  It is as yet untitled.  Perhaps I will just scan the text and choose a line that seems meaningful.  I am always fascinated by the interesting and surprising juxtapositions that result from joining text pieces together with this collage technique.

WHAT HAPPENS TO POETRY?

I spent a lot of time with Diane Ackerman today.  Okay, not actually with her, but with her poetry.  I can honestly say that over the course of the last two weeks I examined each line of each poem in her book Jaguar of Sweet Laughter. This is because I have been cutting the book, line by line of poetry, into strips, which I will use in my next art project.  Ackerman says, “A poem records emotions and moods that lie beyond normal language, that can only be patched together and hinted at metaphorically.”  I wondered today what she would think of me dismantling her book this way.  Would she understand that my deconstruction, the tearing apart of her patchwork of words, is a sort of ekphrasis? 

I am fascinated by the idea of the ways in which a painting may resemble a sculpture, or how a poem may portray a painting.  I have written at least two poems related to the paintings of Van Gogh, and I am currently working on a mixed media piece inspired by a statue of Cupid and Psyche that I photographed in Paris.

But would Ackerman appreciate my dissection of her work?  Perhaps she would.  She is, after all, the author of a book titled Deep Play, which according to her website, “considers play, creativity and our need for transcendence.”  So maybe she would understand why I feel the need to play with her words. 

You see, I don’t just shred her work and glue it to a panel.  I cut it apart one line at a time and put it in a box.  But not before reading it.  And because of the way I cut the stanzas and then the lines apart, I don’t usually read the poetry in the order the poet intended it to be read.  Instead, I perceive it bit by bit as I trim the now unnecessary white space away from phrases such as “to where he loves being a hermit,” “of night blooming orchids,” and “with a salmon’s purpose.”  I almost never glimpse entire clauses, so when I do, they become as memorable as these bits: “he sees the world through a small tube,”  “the new biography makes me a fortuneteller,” “he will be less than an inkling,” and, “we live in the outback of our art.” Sometimes my favorite bits are mere subtle images, such as, “the vicarious agony,” “an orient of light,” and “hypnotic tantrums of the surf.”

I love the absorption and shift that occurs repeatedly as I cut the poem to pieces, as I consider the variety of line lengths I encounter and the way the before unnoticed ascenders and descenders of the alphabet attempt in their tiny ways to impede my progress in the creation of what will become the equivalent of brush strokes in my new piece.  (This is not the first time I have played with text.  The photo at the top of this blog is a bit of background from a previous piece.)

But for this to be a true attempt at ekphrasis, my work must contain some consideration of the sentiment of the artist, or in this case, poet, when she created her work.  What then will be the subject of my art piece?  Perhaps part tribute.  Not overtly stated, but implied.  I admire the bits of Ackerman’s poems, but also the cohesive creation of each poem and the way they come together to create a volume.

Perhaps part imitation.  But only in the sense that I admire her powers of observation and the way she tints her words with a naturalistic view of the world.  When I started this project, I had planned to create a portrait of a pair of lovers.  I have not turned away from that idea, but more and more images of trees, snakes, oceans and clouds have crept into the background as though threatening to overtake the couple. 

I am feeling some sense of urgency.  This is always a good thing for me as an artist when I put brush to canvas, or in this case, when I apply gel medium and paper to panel.  It means that my thoughts and observations have begun to swirl into a vision that will be shared at some point in the near future.   This sharing, whether through word or image, is for me what gives my life order and meaning.   I agree wholeheartedly with Ackerman when she says, “I don’t want to get to the end of my life and find that I lived just the length of it.  I want to have lived the width of it as well.”  And so the shape of the collage is decided--a perfect square.

 

 

CONTEMPLATING THE EIGHT BALL’S NAVEL

Sometimes when I have nothing more productive to do, I ponder the seemingly incomprehensible complexity of the universe.  It is mindboggling how everything is tied together--everything from the lifecycle of the tiniest organism to the endless space that surrounds us as it stretches into infinity.   It is certain that there are those who worship at the altar of that which is random, and their beliefs are most likely based on observations that appear valid to them.  Without a doubt they maneuver through the day without applying the idea of cause and effect to their surroundings.

I personally thrive on small discoveries, those serendipitous links that knit together the fabric of society in unexpected ways. It is decidedly so.  For example, the subject of the Magic Eight Ball recently popped up during a discussion in one of my AP English classes, so I posted a link to a virtual Eight Ball.  Most of my students admitted that they could not totally place their faith in the random predictions of the sphere.  At least, they acknowledged that they didn’t believe the answers when they were negative.  They all said that when they asked the orb questions for which they hoped to glean a positive response, if they got a negative answer, such as “very doubtful” or “don’t count on it,” they would concentrate and try again.  On the other hand, if the icosahedral die popped up in the murky blue liquid to reveal a positive answer such as “you may rely on it,” or “outlook good,” they felt a certain small relief and a twinge of optimism that at least for the moment, all was right in their tiny universe.  In other words, my students admitted feeling an emotional response to a system in which they had no real belief.  Sometimes it just takes diligence to get to the answer you seek. Sometimes you just have to ask again later.  You see, it takes an average of 72 questions being posed to the Magic Eight Ball for all 20 of its answers to appear at least once.  Of course, the outlook is not so good for the future of those who have so much time on their hands to be able to sit around shaking an Eight Ball indefinitely, or writing a blog that includes all of the possible responses in italics….  As I see it, yes, it is somewhat reassuring to know that of the twenty possible responses, ten are affirmative, five are negative and five are neutral. 

Some people believe that devices such as this black orb are merely an outlet for the answers that reside within each of us.  If they shake the ball knowing the answer is yes, then theoretically, the ball will stop on one of the positive messages such as, yes, definitely.   

But not even the Eight Ball can always respond with confidence.  It must be ultimately disappointing for those seeking truth to end up with one of the noncommital answers such as reply hazy, try again, or cannot predict now.  And really, even though it is in the category with the “maybe” answers, how much more ominous could an answer be than better not tell you now!?!?

Some people need to believe that there is nothing random in the universe. I ask them: is nothing truly left to chance?   My reply is no.  But maybe if I shake that ball one more time…

If you feel the need to shake the Eight Ball and don’t happen to have one handy, just go to the official web site and shake it virtually: http://www.mattelgamefinder.com/demos.asp?demo=mb

 

What this all comes down to is my hunger for seemingly useless information.  Just knowing that the Eight Ball was invented in 1946 by Albert Carter, and that Carter was the son of a clairvoyant gives me a modicum of pleasure.  As does knowing that modicum, in this sense, is synonymous with atom, and that atom comes from the Greek atomos, meaning uncut or indivisible.  Can a universe in which even the language is so interconnected be random?  My sources say no!

The whole idea of things being random has recently been gnawing at me.  This year in our high school yearbook, we attempted to provide each senior with a portion of a page on which to represent themselves for posterity.  They were asked to list four words that described them.  At least half of them responded with “random.”  What does that even mean?  Are they just attempting to appear mysterious and cool?  At a time in their lives when they should be focused on their future, do they realize that they are proceeding, according to their own self-evaluation, without definite aim, reason or pattern? 

This notion reminded me of something I stumbled upon recently—the idea of a mathematical trajectory that consists of taking successive random steps.  It is called a Random Walk.  Now those who have read my blog consistently know that I often walk to my studio and that I almost never walk the same path twice.  I like to shake things up and take note of the unexpected.  So, I came up with the idea that I could possibly take a truly random walk.  In mathematics, a one-dimensional random walk moves as follows:  You flip a coin and if it lands on tails, you move left.  If it lands on heads, you move right.   Suppose then that I start at the end of my driveway and flip a coin to decide in which direction I will start my walk today.  And then every time I come to a corner, I flip and turn accordingly.  Where would I end up?  In theory—it could be anywhere!  So then I started thinking that a random walk would be a very interesting way to raise money for the Image Warehouse nonprofit and simultaneously map the city of Athens.  We could have a Random Walk-a-Thon!  Participants could pair up or get together in small groups.  Everyone could leave from the Image Warehouse at the same time, flipping and turning and walking, until they had executed a certain number of flips.  It would be crazy interesting to see where the walkers ended up and what they saw along the way.  Just an idea…

Today I am going to my studio, not exactly random because strangely enough if I turn right, left, right, left, right, left…that’s where I end up.  Sometimes I wonder if there isn’t an underlying plan that made me chose that location as my workspace.  As the Eight Ball says, signs point to yes…

 

 

 

 

Just Rambling

Okay, so it has been well over a month since I have blogged.  Why?  I am not sure.  My husband likes to fall back on his military training and say that when asked a non-generative question, there are only a few appropriate responses: Yes, sir!  No, sir!  No excuse, sir!  So let’s just go with response number three.

It is funny the things that get caught in one’s brain.  Just now as I typed the word “just,” I was reminded of a former professor who once did a study on women praying aloud in Southern churches.  Basically her study consisted of her counting the number of times these ladies inserted the word “just” into their prayers.  Such a strange, self-effacing habit, repeatedly prefacing one’s petitions to a higher power with this mere recursive monosyllabic diminutive hint of doubt…

A couple of years ago I was sprawled on the sofa on a summer day, almost mindlessly watching a cooking show, “Semi-Homemade” starring Sandra Lee, and I noticed that she used the word “just” in just about every third sentence.  When something like that catches your attention, it becomes hard to rid yourself of it.  It is like putting on a black velvet shirt and finding it covered with fuzz because you accidently tossed it in the dryer with the white towels you used to mop up spilled Tequila...  (But that is a story best left for another blog.)  So anyway, Sandra used the word “just” 36 times in an episode lasting just under 30 minutes.  My daughter pointed out to me that this would just not be good as the basis for a drinking game (you know, where you would down your drink every time you hear the word “just”) because the players would be incapacitated within minutes, and possibly exhausted from jumping up to go get another drink… Now, the last thing I need in my life is something else on which to fixate… And so I will diverge here with some degree of deliberation.  (Note the alliteration.  And see what I mean about fixating?)

Needing a break this afternoon, David and I decided to go to Jalapeno Tree for nachos and drinks (between that last paragraph and this one.)  While eating and drinking, I noticed a familiar song in the mix of background noise, music and conversation.  “Good Morning Starshine, the earth says hello…”  And I was reminded that when I was in sixth grade, I sang a solo during a choral production of this number.  I have always said that the one thing I would change about myself is that I would be a singer, but alas, I am too timid.  I will, however, never forget the lyrics of that song.  “All the way from “Gliddy glup gloopy” to “tooby ooby walla nooby abba naba,” those nonsense syllables have remained firmly fixed in my mind for over three decades.  I don’t have a bad voice, but I have always known that the only reason I was chosen to sing that solo was because I was the only one in the class who could remember the words; and I use the word “words” loosely here.

Sometimes I fixate on the origins of language, on the whole driving force of words.  So strong was the human’s need to communicate, we developed language so we could connect to each other on a level somewhat elevated above the physical.  Just think about it!  How did that one grunt become the first understood and repeated word?  What series of misinterpretations must surely have followed closely behind.  How much are these memes that jump from mind to mouth a function of our consciousness and how fast must they pass across synapses that I can translate them from my thoughts to this page, which does not even exist as real paper, at a rate exceeding 90 words per minute free of errors where they will be read at a rate far exceeding that by who knows how much by who knows how many…

And I am reminded of how I learned to speed read.  When I was in sixth grade (yes, this was the same year I made my solo singing debut) it was discovered by a savvy reading instructor that I was having difficulty making my way from the end of one line of text to the start of the next.  So, it was arranged that I would be hooked to a computer that would trace with a virtual highlighter each word as I visually made my way across the line, and then it would guide my eye from the end of the line at the right to the start of the next line back at the far left.  And since this was a progressive school and they had an abundance of unused electrodes, they hooked a few up to my head and a few to my chest just to see what my reaction to these electronic nudges would be.

Because my eyes naturally followed the yellow cursor, I was soon cured of my tendency to get lost on the way back to home base.   Of course, it only made sense to speed up the cursor at that point, to see just how fast it could drag my eye across the page.  What we discovered is that I could follow as fast as the yellow light pulsed.  I don’t know if I finally hit some kind of reading wall or if the teacher was afraid my mind would eventually explode, but they unplugged me at some point.  And somewhere along the way, my reading eyes learned to gracefully make U turns and to skate with controlled abandon across the page between the turns.  Even now when I read, I sometimes imagine the blinking yellow highlight and I deliberately read faster and faster and faster, bouncing relentlessly from margin to margin to margin, just to see how long I can sustain the pace before the race from whitespace to whitespace blurs the logic in the middle…

My daughter visited this weekend.  She had told me that she has a job reading books into a recording device for a woman who is blind.  She told me that the woman then speeds up the tapes when she listens to them.  What she didn’t tell me, however, is that she reads the books at a sprint to begin with.  I don’t think I would have really understood until I heard her reading.  Speed reading orally.  And I was reminded that we seldom push our minds to accomplish even a fraction of what we might be capable of doing.

So all afternoon, I have been pondering speed reading, speed listening, speed typing, speed thinking… allowing myself to just change the pace of my Sunday afternoon, slowing it down to make it last longer.  I am reminded that time itself is a manmade construct.  And it is just like the words to the song, “Just,” by Radiohead, “You do it to yourself, yourself, yourself…”

 

 

 

 

The Art of Connecting

Several years ago I read about a woman who solved her writer’s block by directing all of her journal entries to Vincent Van Gogh.  This strategy worked so well for her that she eventually published a book based on the journal and titled it Dear Vincent.    About that same time I also read Dear Theo: The Autobiography of Vincent Van Gogh, and Lust for Life by Irving Stone, each in their own way an insightful biography of Van Gogh.  I have always been drawn to the work of this particular artist, perhaps because of the depth of his mental suffering and the way it was evident in his work.  For example, when the Barnes Exhibit was at the Kimball Museum a decade or so ago, I went to view this amazing collection of paintings with the primary purpose of seeing the Van Goghs.  It was the last day of the exhibit and the crowd was lined up around the building and up the sidewalk all the way to the street, hours before the doors opened.  When my daughter and I finally made our way inside, it was shoulder to shoulder and we pretty much just had to go where the other art viewers carried us.  About an hour into the tour, I found myself directly in front of Van Gogh’s Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin and I refused to be budged from the spot. 

I was drawn to this painting in a way I had never been drawn to a work of art before or since.  It was as though the painterly strokes of the portrait had come not from the hands of the tormented artist, but from his soul.  I know, this sounds corny.  But I will never forget standing there, a little more than arm’s distance from the small portrait with tears streaming down my face.  This had nothing to do with fanaticism.  It was simply my reaction to the gut wrenching emotion that came from the art.  And the best part is that I looked over at my daughter beside me only to find her in the same state of rapt appreciation. I am reminded every time I think of the experience that it is the connection between artist and audience that allows a work to live forever.

I guess it is because I am a writer and an artist that I am drawn repeatedly to the similarities between the two crafts.  Today I have been thinking about the art of blogging.  It is a strange thing, electronically putting one’s thoughts out there for the world to read, never knowing who is in the audience.  A few people follow, but you don’t know if they are really readers or have merely agreed to post their support because you have threatened to write about them if they don’t…

Unlike a poem, a story, or an essay, which may go through substantial revision before being published, a blog, while not entirely without focus, is usually not edited much before it is posted.  This seems to be the way with our society now.  Because permanence is not a priority, there seems to be a certain lack of regard for audience and therefore for the historical impact, no matter how small or how fleeting one’s contribution may be.

Maybe I am uptight, but I prefer to think of the material that emanates from writers and artists as having a lasting impact.  For example, when I was trying to find the name of the author of the "Dear Vincent" book, I came across this website: http://www.vangoghsblog.com/  Initiated by the Van Gogh Museum, this blog is a celebration of the completion of the Van Gogh Letters Project.   As one of the accompanying comments said, “Even the dead can blog!”

Of course, I would definitely hesitate to compare myself to Van Gogh as either an artist, a writer, or a blogger, except in one way, and that is the compulsion that drives me to connect with others by way of words and images.  I once wrote a poem about my Van Gogh viewing experience (my one attempt at ekphrasis), and I would post it here, but I couldn’t find it.  It isn’t like me to lose poems, and I think I didn’t bother to keep up with this one because it was a failed attempt to relate my reaction to that particular artist’s work.  I guess that is why I sometimes turn to art instead of writing.  As Van Gogh said, “One can speak poetry just by arranging colours well.”

Perhaps today’s attempt at blogging is a failure, too.  But it doesn’t really matter, because I have learned to appreciate and nurture that thing inside me that drives me to share myself with others. 

Check out the website of the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.  http://www.vangoghmuseum.nl/vgm/index.jsp?page=98&lang=nl&section=sectie_vincent  There are several slideshows featuring the work of this amazing artist.  Admittedly it is not as satisfying as standing a few feet from the real thing, but you won’t have to wait in line for hours.  The descriptions are all in Dutch, but words are not necessary as the paintings speak for themselves.  And you probably won’t bust out in tears, but whether the recipient/viewer/reader of a work of art or writing experiences it electronically or in close physical proximity, I like to think he or she experiences it personally, and that there remains at the core of the process that spark of creativity that when successfully executed, can live forever.

 

 

Okay! So I'm a Control Freak and I Will Gladly Tell You Where to Go!

I can’t stop thinking today about how many forms of control impact our lives every second of every day.  Bladder control, mind control, weight control, impulsivity control… just think about it; even when we are asleep at night, we control things like the temperature and the light and the firmness of our mattresses.

This train of thought began heading down my mental set of tracks this morning when I was straightening up the living room.  As usual, when I picked up the remote control to fluff the sofa cushions, I placed it beside the TV so it would be easy for anyone to find later in the day.  My husband once pointed out to me that this is a rather ridiculous place to leave the remote control because the whole purpose of the device is to be able to use it at a distance from the TV…  The next time he says this, I may have to give him a brief history of the device.  The first remote intended to control the TV was developed over 50 years ago.  It was connected to the set by a wire and was called “Lazy Bones.”  (The invention and development of the remote control actually changed television programming since viewers no longer stayed tuned in to programs simply because they didn’t want to get up to change the channel.) 

It drives me crazy when David changes the channel right in the middle of a sentence!  And I find it gratifying to discover that I am not alone in finding this to be an irritant.  The Center for Media Literacy recently published an article titled “Home, Home on the Remote: Why Do Men Control the Clicker?” which thoroughly discusses sexual positioning and dominance within the typical American household.  While this sounds admittedly tittilating, it actually deals with who decides which channel is watched and when.  Anyway, it seems that the viewing dynamics of our family are pretty typical.  David usually controls the remote because I watch TV while doing other things such as reading, blogging, cleaning… while he usually gives it his full attention and has little tolerance for things like commercials or down time of any sort.  If the person speaking onscreen even looks like he or she is about to so much as take a breath, we are off to another channel, usually one that has been chosen for its value as a backup program.  And though I may feel something akin to an infinitesimal cosmic shift each time I am unexpectedly carried along, I don’t care enough to do anything about it.  For me TV is background noise.

This made me think about the degree of willingness with which I relinquish control in other areas of my life.  In other words, am I a control freak?  And I could honestly not find a definitive pattern. For example, I like to make my toast in the oven using the broiler setting instead of blindly trusting it to the electric toaster because it allows me to see what is going on during the cooking process and lets me jerk the perfectly browned bread out at just the right moment  On the other hand, I don’t mind letting someone else scramble my eggs.  (Again, this is not a euphemism for anything sexual…) I simply find it much more enjoyable to eat eggs when I don’t have to first examine them in their partly clear and partly yellow and totally slimy state.  I also admit that I have an aversion to pain medication, preferring to think that I have the ability to mentally control my own level of discomfort.  A little research in this direction lead me to a whole arena of gaming of which I was entirely unaware—brainwave toys.  If you are curious, just go to:  http://www.boingboing.net/2009/10/30/brainwave-toys-are-b.html  and you will surely be astounded that there exists a game in which the player trains his or her thoughts to increase power to a fan which blows a ball through a course of hoops.  (And see, I know I can’t trust you to go to this site on your own, so I have to go ahead and tell you about it.!)

About now you are probably starting to examine your own controlling tendencies.  Do you use moisturizer each day to control dryness and wrinkles?  Do you regularly try to control the curliness or straightness of your hair?  Do you use eye drops to control redness?  Or  do you similarly try to control red eye in an electronic manner when taking photos?

If you, like I, are not certain where your own locus of control resides, there is a quiz online that will guide you toward the answer.  Just go to:  http://stress.about.com/od/selfknowledgeselftests/a/locus.htm  and click on “Take this quiz.”  I did.  And discovered that I am a 90% control freak.  (For those of you who already know you must always be in control, you will be delighted to find that you can even control the number of questions you are asked!)

Of course I was not really convinced that someone else could tell me I was controlling, and having to decide this on my own, I considered some of the other things we control on a daily basis.

As a teacher my life and my bladder are dependably guided by a schedule and a bell.  Sometimes on the weekend I find myself forgetting that I can go to the bathroom any time I want to!  If you, too, find yourself considering such matters, just go to: http://www.fairview.org/staywell/quiz_load.aspx?ContentTypeId=40&ContentId=UrinaryIncontinenceQuiz where you can take the urinary incontinence quiz.  And don’t be deceived, the questions look easy, but I missed three!  And if your New Years resolutions include a desire to lose weight, you will probably want to go to: http://www.afunzone.com/ATopic/Take_The_Weight_Loss_Quiz.htm so you can accurately determine how prepared you are to be successful.   My female followers should also check out: http://www.blisstree.com/healthbolt/a-short-history-of-the-ideal-female-body/   In fact, if it doesn’t seem too controlling, I would like to suggest that my male readers also proceed to this website…  And just so you won’t be disappointed that there is not a quiz associated with this page, go to: http://www.channelone.com/news/body_image/ to find out if you have a skewed view of yourself.

If you have made another common resolution, to control spending, you should go to: http://moneycentral.msn.com/quiz/savvy-spending-quiz/home.aspx , and if you are concerned about other forms of impulsivity control, go to: http://www.psych-net.com/test/impulse-test.html . 

 

I will conclude my blog today with a poem, an apology, and one final link.  The poem is titled “Manipulation Theory.”  It was inspired by a toy I had as a young child that consisted of a plastic figure on a plastic base that could be controlled by pressing your thumb on the underside of the plastic pedestal.  (It is admittedly filled with euphemism and innuendo…)

 

MANIPULATION THEORY

 

it would be easier

to induce hunkering if

just once, I were the giant, knowing

from having been shown

that magic thumb-button

and the most effective

syringe-like motion

 

if just once, I were

able to understand the relationship

between easy to operate elastic bands

and a breakable plastic housing

 

no prior knowledge of physics needed

perhaps a little field work

on falling bodies, because

buckling knees I know

and that automatic loss

of tension in the neck

 

that almost thrill

almost recovery

inevitable shift of weight

and loss of solids

as the oval earth beneath my feet

rocks without reason

 

The apology is for allowing this blog to go on so long today.  Once I got started on this topic I just couldn’t control myself.

And finally, I want to share with you a link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lutUDZ7Dq0s   Don’t ask, just go there!

The Charm of the Unfamiliar

I was recently on a thrifting adventure and found myself at the local Goodwill store.  And since it was cold outside, I was vaguely shopping for something warm.  (A quick aside here—it is surely a known law of thrifting that you can’t actually go in search of a specific item when thrift shopping; you must merely scan the day’s offerings and be open to a serendipitous discovery.)  Anyway, I happened upon a pair of leggings that were black and covered in a polka dot pattern of gray skulls.  Since I am around young people daily, I am aware of the fashion industry’s recent trend toward “death fashion.”  And as I am not totally out of touch with my own generation, I had a moment of self-questioning, about whether it would be appropriate to wear the skull pants.  And then I bought them.  And, yes, I do wear them.  They are warm.  And they do have a dot pattern, of sorts.  And I don’t generally base my decisions, fashion or otherwise, on what is or isn’t appropriate.

So I started thinking about why the fashion industry would choose to decorate clothing with skulls.  I discovered that some people take the skull motif very seriously.  One blog I came across said in very plain language that any article of clothing that sports death imagery is straight from the devil and is cursed.  I was not sure if this meant I was going to hell or if my ass was going to grow astronomically, you know, because of its proximity to such evil.  Either way, the situation contains just enough ambiguity to allow me to continue to wear the leggings. 

One of the articles I read claimed that our culture’s attraction to the skull bones, as opposed to other human bones, is based partially on the idea of neoteny, or juvenilization, the notion that the large eye sockets give it a kind of puppy-like visual appeal.  In other words, on some level, we somehow find skulls to be cute!  Ironically, this idea of cuteness was almost enough to make me stop wearing the pants.  Anyone who knows me well at all knows I can’t stand to be called cute and have always dreamt of being thought of as… well, I admit it, exotic.  Of course, I made the mistake of sharing this with my friend Lisa a few years ago.  She taught in the room next to me at the time and seemed to delight in trying to brighten up my day with small surprises.  She thought it would be fun to have one of our mutual students comment on my appearance one day and tell me how absolutely exotic I looked.  Unfortunately, the young man she chose to recruit for this task was either somewhat hard of hearing or possessed a limited vocabulary, because later that day, he saw me walking down the crowded hall during the passing period between classes and yelled at the top of his lungs, “Mrs. Hicks!  You look so… erotic today!”  Oh well, at least he didn’t call me cute…

It’s funny, really, how caught up in ourselves we can be with regard to self-image and the ways other perceive us.  When I was on vacation last week, a cocktail waitress gave me a hearty compliment on my patchouli scent.  A few days later, however, a woman walked into the library where I was searching for the perfect beach novel, flopped down in a chair, and said dramatically, and quite loudly, to her nearby friend, “Oh, someone is wearing that nasty ass patchouli!  I hate that smell!”  And, okay, if I were quicker on the uptake, I could have pointed out to her that patchouli has been used for centuries as an insect repellent.  You know, subtly implying that she was being a pest of sorts…  But I am neither quick nor the type to say such a thing to a stranger.  Instead, I spent the remainder of the morning pondering my reaction to both the compliment and the perceived insult.  Why was it okay to revel in the warmth of one and not to become prickly in the wake of the other?  And what is it about some scents, such as patchouli, that is so polarizing, appealing to some people and repulsing others?

This member of the mint family has long been simultaneously prized and despised.  Evidently it was once used to let buyers of India ink know that their purchase genuinely came from India.  It has been used to treat ailments ranging from bad breath to snake bites, and is usually described as sweet, woodsy, pungent, rich, herbaceous, and yes, exotic.  It is also considered to be an aphrodisiac and known to get better with age, with its scent becoming deeper and fuller over time, its harshness mellowing with age.  On a darker note, patchouli is associated with death and is commonly nicknamed “graveyard dirt."  So what does it really say about my personality that I go about sporting my skull patterned pants while smelling of sex and cemeteries?  Maybe my own personal curse is my inability to reconcile all of the various aspects of my self, ranging from childlike, to seductive, to downright dark.  And maybe I just think too much and need to take a break, maybe do a little thrift shopping… and perhaps it is appropriate to end with a poem about the strange places a mind can drift.

TOO FAR GONE BY TUESDAY

colors can push over the 

edge, but I really like the sketchiness

of pencil sound, the way the round

undefined housing shelters me 

from the lead

I prefer the promise

of erasability, so ironically decisive

yet I cross things out

out of habit

even this writing

is not without some danger

the friction can become tiresome,

can become needy,

can become devisive,

and I might get caught up

in the reflection

of that shiny metal piece

that ties eraser to wood,

that little connector

so needless intricate 

and cold.