11.11.11 – my white birthday

symmetry in numbers has always been something i've noticed. patterns, repetition, progression – i love it all. so, to get the chance to celebrate my birthday {which is an unassuming 10.26.82} on 11.11.11 was something of a numerical gift of the universe. a tribute to the balance and stability i hope to step into as i enter the last year of my 20s and absorb the strength that saturn return has bestowed upon me.

last year my closest friends both locally and around the world came together to give me color and build me wings and what a year it has been. the theme of flight woven tightly through some of the most profound moments. it began with that amazing vision i had on my run this spring in sync with the lyrics and one day, i am gunna grow wings – revealing in my spirit a rare moment of acceptance of myself, struggles and all. and while the image of flight is literally represented in the song, it also lives in that rhythm i have spent hundreds of miles savoring as i cemented my love for running this year. 

and it was running that delivered the next experience of flight this year. even before the amazing release i experienced at mile 11 of my half marathon, i had a moment, at mile 8, when i pulled away from my little brother and told myself i am going to do this – i can come in sub-two hours. i can do this. i can do anything. and suddenly there was a rush of adrenaline and focus that filled me beyond full, rushing down my back and causing the muscles across my scapula to ripple in anticipation. and even while this is all going on and i was registering the emotional and physical events happening simultaneously, i spared a quick thought for humor's sake to acknowledge that if i had wings, they'd be coming out of the part of my back shuddering as though i was trying to take flight.

the third and most recent experience of flight was the breakthrough i had in singing not too long ago. at the time i even named the blog entry flying because that is what it felt most like in the moment – this clear sense of soaring effortlessly. it was like i imagine a bird to feel in that freewheeling space where any direction is not only possible, but easy, and connected to a deep internal strength of ligaments and muscles so perfectly designed to do exactly what is needed. that strength, that knowledge, that potential, i have had all along despite all the times i have told myself otherwise.

and the flying, the acknowledgement and acceptance of own strength, as i am learning, is so often accompanied by grief. a purge. a release. as they come at greater frequency, i hope for myself that i will hit the bottom of that well of self-doubt and find something new to channel.

in the spirit of that hope, for my birthday this year, i wanted to welcome a sense of lightness, freedom and purity into the equation, take the wings you all so colorfully presented me with last year and strip away everything to its purest elements: light, air, weightlessness, luminescence and flight. 

so i gathered to me some of the clearest voices in my life {those darlings that are local} and together we infused the next year of my life with these elements. a benediction of white and light and adventure and play and connection to those things rushing toward me from my future: the cumulation of my efforts on proof, of travel, of settling into a new home, seeing radiohead {in march} and of finally getting to go to my hometown. 

a fitting welcome for the new year.

  

mark & his baby

you know, my friend mark*? well, he got a baby in the mail yesterday. a lensbaby that is. it's a funky little lens that was a belated purchase with birthday money from my parents. i took it for a spin tonight and only got around to snapping a few frames, but she is part of the family already.

pho with my friend, e.

walking down broadway.

*aka my canon 5D mark ii

$5 luxuries

from the capitol hill farmers market.

my heart sings today in red, yellow and orange.

artist's date

one of the weekly assignments we have to complete for the artist's way is an artist date where you have to take your artist self out on a date. this is simply following the basic principals of relationship maintenance: quality time. you have to go alone and it has to be fun and play. for some reason i've been resisting these a bit. i don't have problems being alone and i don't have problems doing joyful things, but somehow setting aside time {oh, that elusive being} and intent to pamper my artist self has been tough.

on monday, a mere hours before class, i decided to finally make it happen {in my defense, i've spent more time out of town than in it recently}. i went on a little jaunt down to the pike place market antique shop that is the source of my button fetish. i picked up 150 new buttons, a few random glass jars, and one big 5 gallon glass jar that will soon become my gratitude jar {i am still waiting to decide how i will put the little writings of gratitude into the jar. do i crumple them up as i drop them, leave them open so i can read them a little from the outside, or carefully fold each and every one into a crane?}. the price on the big jar was a little above what i had in mind, but then again, i had gone to the store specifically to pick up buttons and this glass jar just like the one i had been picturing for over a week, so why should i balk at the price of something so obviously intended for me {i found it within minutes of walking into the store, just as i imagined it}.

the gratitude jar will have to be shown later {by the way, looking for a less awkward way of saying the same idea} and in the meantime, enjoy the buttons!

to go or not to go....

i have to decide whether or not i'm going to NYC in april to see thom yorke kick off his solo tour.
the tipping point is that the plane tickets just went from $300 to $400 and yikes! that feels like a lot for two shows. not to mention the two extra days off i'd have to take from work.

sigh.

but look at this man. i'd get to see him, the distant mentor of my artistic life, front and center two nights in a row in one of my favorite cities.

should i do it?

a color party

a dear dear friend of mine celebrated her birthday this year by inviting a few of her good girl friends over for a night of color and cupcakes {and since i made them they were also colorful cupcakes}. we spent a good part of the night hunkered down throughout the living room making a color collage of our choice {i was red, of course}.

here is a little bit of the fun.








the collages:

resonance and reverberation

i have started a bit of heavy reading. reading that requires my full attention and often a re-read of a paragraph here and there. the book is the poetics of space by gaston bachelard initially recommended to me in november 2008 by the most influential mentor of my academic career. it only took me nine months to go about finding it at one of my local bookstore haunts {purchased 8.05.09 - twice sold tales} and another five months to move it to the top of my towering pile of books to read. i probably would have procrastinated a little longer {another three to four months} but it's been staring me down these past few weeks after the pile took a topple and all my neglected intentions to improve my mind and understanding of poetic imagination sulked at me any time i passed.

the final push to pick up the book came from an entirely different direction. in the process of an exam i took this week {which is something i will go into more at a later time}, i took a personality test which was fairly unsurprising and accurate for the most part. there was one moment however, where the psychologist* defined me as someone who is less driven toward specific goals and more invested in the things along the way. i know i'm losing a little specificity here that she had when she initially said it, but the point is essentially the same and in fact, articulates a major point of dissatisfaction i have with my life:

i have big dreams. i have big ambitions. i have big goals. and underlying it all is a certainty about the kind of life i will live, the role that creativity will have, and the scope to which my work will reach. and for some reason, despite all of this reason-defying confidence that patiently rides out each storm of fears and hits to the self-confidence, i never seem to get anywhere. i don't actually go in the direction i have so clearly envisioned for myself.

and so, since thursday i have been asking myself again and again and again how exactly have i held myself up? i have prayed to the part of me that has seemed to dig it's heels into the ground and keep me static in this place of relative risk-free comfort. i have thanked it. i have forgiven it. i have loved it.

but now i am done and i find myself believing that this is the year. for what? i'm not so sure yet, but i am saturated in questions of how to move forward and how to remain authentic to the part of me that delights in finishing another knitting, sewing, painting, bookbinding, blogging, {insert any/all of the other creative interests i pursuit}, project without diluting my energy so much i don't move on the big things i want to do.

so, how do i start to make work that matters, not just fun hobby-ish sorts of projects here and there?

skip back to tonight and i'm exhausted from a non-stop day beginning at 9am and day number six of work. all i can think of is the desire to take time for myself and all i can come up with is a bath. so, i scooped up committed by elizabeth gilbert {of the eat pray love fame}, which is the more predictable comfort/bath read and then also grabbed the poetics of space on my way to my tropical smelling bubbles and hot water.

and i started slugging. and slugging and slugging. and immediately the critical voice that always seems to have a lot to say whenever i read anything academic suddenly perched on my shoulder to scoff at my efforts {aside: this voice was a major problem in the 2nd half of my college career. it was absolutely certain i was in over my head and couldn't come up with meaningful interpretations, ect}.

gradually meaning started to sink into my bath-addled, overworked and under-slept brain and things started to stand out with stunning clarity and my mind would sit up and take notice and sense would suddenly come easily from the convoluted and contorted sentence structure.

the moment i really took notice was when he defined the ideas of resonance and reverberation. resonance, particularly as a response to something expressive or beautiful, is a term very familiar to me. i even have a label in my blog for posts that particularly address moments when i am so moved i feel as though i'm a tuning fork freshly struck. it's a familiar and sought after experience of my life. it's a moment of living on the edge, but it's most always in appreciation of someone else's work. here, he describes the step after the resonance:

the resonances are dispersed on the different planes of our life in the world, while the repercussions invite us to give greater depth to our own existence. in the resonance we hear the poem, in the reverberations we speak it, it is our own. the reverberations bring about a change of being. it is as though the poet's being were our being...this is an impression all impassioned poetry-lovers know well: the poem possess us entirely.

yes, yes and yes. i am no stranger to this phenomena of becoming more alive through art. and while bachelard uses the word poem, of course any means of creativity can bear the poetic image. so what next? what does one do with this heightened sense of aliveness?

needless to say, the reverberation, in spite of its derivative name, has a simple phenomenological nature in the domain of poetic imagination. for it involves bringing about a veritable awakening of poetic creation, even in the soul of the reader, through the reverberations of a single poetic image. by its novelty, a poetic image sets in motion the entire linguistic mechanism. the poetic image places us at the origin of the speaking being.

through this reverberation, but going immediately beyond all psychology or psychoanalysis, we feel a poetic power rising naively within us. after the original reverberation, we are able to experience resonances, sentimental repercussion, reminders of our past. but the image has touched the depths before it stirs the surface...it takes root in us. it has been given us by another, but we begin to have the impression that we could have created it, that we should have created it. it becomes a new being in our language, expressing us by making us what it expresses; in other words, it is at once a becoming of expression, and a becoming of our being. here expression creates being.

for the past decade or so i have been infatuated with the process of resonance without being able to necessarily articulate the reality of reverberating. by articulating the process in which i take in all that inspires me from sorbet colored sunsets to the symphony to thom yorke, and then, the crucial bit of transformation, i now feel as though i know where to direction my energy: the reverberation portion of this transformative process.

i'm still a little hazy on the questions that i want to ask myself beyond: what do i do with it beyond collecting these experiences of resonance/reverberation like baubles on a charm bracelet? how do i in turn, create work that will turn around and inspire me and others? how do i make art that is lasting, and not necessarily for a wider audience, but for me? not just something to pass off as yet another hand-made gift {not that i think they lack value, just not a value i want to build my life's work around}.

so, that's all my deep thoughts for tonight.



*no, nothing to be worried about here, folks, i promise. :)

mmm....buttons

so this is what i should do with all of my extra vintage buttons:

a taste of the suns

it's been a long time since i've posted from the sun/sky exchange between my ten15am friends, sahra and cam but even though their presence has been silent here, they've been constant despite all the business and weight of their personal lives.

{by the way, the ten15am.com project got put on hiatus, but the final posting was a self portrait by all of us regulars--including sahra and cam--which you can see here}

so, here is a sampling of a few of the past month or two's {or five's} worth of images shared between the three of us:

cam:

sahra:

me: