“After the final no there comes a yes”
“After the final no there comes a yes, and on that yes the future world depends.” — Wallace Stevens
Last week I wrote myself a letter and mailed it. I just got it back, and as I write this, have not yet opened it. Ok, I just opened it. What is the part of me, I wonder, that waits to open it until I am writing to you? I think it is the same part that reaches, in a myriad of ways, for the sustaining sense of otherness. But when I wrote the letter I was depending on the four-year-old me who says “write this letter as if it is from the kindest-wisest most encouraging person you know.”
The Third Thing
This post is about the magic of number three, and how it applies to makers.
My online class, A Grain of Hope, just finished. We talked briefly about the numbers 1, 2 and 3 — the unity of one, the duality of two and the possibility of breakthrough with three. I will focus on three, the third thing, and give some examples, but first I want to lay the groundwork with number two:
Two brings both relationship and the trap of dualistic thinking. Two deceptions that we makers, and probably most humans, fall into are perfectionism and comparison. That is, how trying to be perfect, or comparing ourselves with others, leads to endless unresolved spirals in the mind. In this setup, we are never good enough, or even when we are, it’s only for brief moments. These mind-weeds leave no ground for the third thing. We get stuck in the thicket of good-bad, right-wrong, and pretty-ugly tangles in our mind. It is tiring. These mind-weeds stop us in the studio and at our writing desk.
What follows are some examples of puncturing duality with the third thing.
Images from “Winter Seed’s Promise”
I have just returned from a week in Taos, New Mexico, where I taught “Winter Seed’s Promise.” The students collected seeds over the winter, and also on walks on the grounds where we all stay in Taos. The seeds became images of promise, possibility, fragility, curiosity, secrets, and time. Seeds were the inspiration for writing, drawing and painting from beginning students to professionals. There was an international atmosphere in our classroom with French, Italian, American and German students.
Below are lots of images inspired by seeds, and further down is the work with alphabet variations:
“All we have to decide is what to what to do with the time that has been given us.”
— Gandalf in The Fellowship of the Ring, JRR Tolkien
When I discovered this weekend that all the files, the folders, everything I had written, and all the images too had disappeared from my laptop — I thought of the writer who told the story of coming down to her studio one morning after a storm, and saw the rain pouring in through the roof. After some moments of sitting on the stairs with her head in her hands she said to herself: First, I will write. Then I will figure out what to do with this roof. So here I am in my studio, beginning again with pen and paper. I am thinking of the title of my upcoming online class, grain of hope, and all the videos I prepared that have disappeared. This loss coincides in my mind with the growing sense of chaos, dread and danger for our world.
Nonetheless, I am even now beginning to feel restored by turning my attention to the inner world, and writing to you. What is the constant that holds us, the you that remains beneath every change and disaster? How long has the moon been disappearing and re-appearing, while orbiting this earth and witnessing every flood, fire and storm? The scientists estimate 4.5 billion years…
Coiner of Names
As far as I can tell, there is no “get out of jail free” card for the maker. There are, perhaps, skills that make imprisonment by self-doubt, stuckness, numbness, lack of imagination and failure less daunting and shorter-lived. For example, as I look forward to the next four months of being at home in my studio, my writing side is dormant, unresponsive and uninteresting. Thoughts of failure and leaving writing all together rise to the surface.
I remind myself that I can change what happens, leap from a negative state of mind, by changing my behavior. I remember my dream from what seems ages ago:
“Voyaging beyond the bathtub…”
In his book, Essays for Artwork, George Wyllie, a Scottish artist, spoke humorously about art-making. He insists that going beyond your comfort zone and the trends of the day — that “voyaging beyond the bathtub” is fuel for creativity. Inspiration requires food, and the necessity for makers to adventure, to shift and “unplan the future”. There is a need to get beyond the walls of the bathtub and the gallery, to get beyond what is familiar and ignite like minds. Collaborate in new ways. Shake off old ideas by wandering into unknown places and finding artists across the sea or the desert or the road. You don’t have to go far, but finding a new perspective is inherently refreshing.
Walking down a cobblestone street in Stroncone, we happened upon a small opening in the wall, and walked into the Studio D’Arte of C. Massoli. Two small rooms filled with his drawings, sculptures, and paintings; and his desk with the lovely old books on the shelf…
“I’m listening for what you want.”
Many of you know the poem from Sharon Olds, Improv. I feel that line in her poem, I’m listening for what you want, in so many ways. As now, sitting alone in a cafe, jazz playing, listening inward, listening for what my hands want to say. Listening for what you want. Listening for what wants to come. I want to say thank you to all my readers, to all of you who come here to read and comment, to each of you who have asked me to make my online class available again. Because of your requests, my online class, “Speak to Me From Everywhere” is now available on my website. I hope you will enjoy the practices, demos, bookmaking and poetry. This course is meant for you to keep, work at your own pace, and be able to return to, like a good book. Register here:
“Hone and spread your spirit till you yourself are a sail.” — Annie Dillard
A storm came to our town yesterday, and many of us have no power. It is only the fourth day, and it brings to mind all the people in Ukraine, the winter and war, their many weeks of no power, and our good fortune. I am up early, it is still dark.
….Still, before we lost power, I was thinking about writing to you on the subject of “happiness”.
A Tattered Yearning
On this side of the world February is a quiet, introspective time, often accompanied by the yearning for spring. It can be a dark and dreary time, but this is fertile ground for making and creating. Creativity is fed by allowing darkness, boredom, loneliness and uncertainty — allowing these unwelcome things to rise and make something of themselves. I am thinking about how the seeds we plant now, in the earth or in our hearts, are the ones that blossom in spring. The spring needs our seeds.
“Perhaps / The truth depends on a walk around a lake”
Wallace Stevens, the poet (who had a day job at an insurance company), considered a seventeen-and-a-half-mile walk “a good days jaunt.” He walked in town, in the woods, and along highways. It was the walking that mattered. His poems depended on the enlivening of his senses, and the movement and observations that walking cultivated. It was in the early 1900s, when people walked more. And when they walked they did not have phones or earphones, and so were more attentive to their surroundings, noticing smell and sound and sight, even touch and taste. The mind was open to make space for new arrivals in the form of insight, phrases or words.