The Days of Day

In my research about the differences in the ways boys and girls approach learning I have found one idea repeated often.  Some boys, it seems, produce things in school to entertain their friends.  They are not at all interested in the approval of their teachers.  If what they do in class gets a laugh or a "yeah, you're cool" nod from a peer, then they have succeeded. Girls, on the other hand, live to please the teacher.  They want the teacher to like them and think they're great in every way possible... so some of us girls actually developed an immediate tinge of shame for late papers and incomplete assignments. And, that's where my art-on-the-go box comes in. I've just finished packing for a MONTH away... Georgia, Texas, and all the roads in between.  The car is full of suitcases and an ice chest, some inflatable mattresses and a pool bag.  We've got a laptop to watch videos and some iPods to listen to podcasts.  We've got snacks and water and ev...

I feel like I should send a big high five through the internet to the anonymous person who posted the DETAILED directions for how to make a hat.  It was great!  Here are some pictures: Yes... the pattern making actually required these tools PLUS a compass (the kind with the sharp thing and a pencil, not the kind that indicates true North)... Tom took the boys out to a movie and to run errands so I could really think my way through the process. Here's a photo of the first brim in progress.  At this point I'm sewing MANY concentric circles around the brim to give it enough body to shape as I want it while I wear it.  Looks big, right?  Wait 'til you see this: GOOD LORD!  That is a HUGE hat!  Tom said I looked like Daisy Buchanan from The Great Gatsby.  So true.  Okay... it IS awesome but completely impractical.  So, I trimmed the brim down, added a new binding edge, and voila...  I LOVE it!  Jackson said, "I like it, M...

Not much time to write today... just taking a break from the hat endeavor.  So far, it took me 1 1/2 hours to make the pattern.   Thought I'd share a photo of a postcard I gave to a friend who showed some interest in learning to use the tools of altered books.  I loved how it turned out, but looking at it now, I'd probably add some more to it.  Seems like it's missing a layer of color around the edges to me.   This is how we learn.  This postcard is already out of my hands, but I'm keeping the lesson for next time.

My mom, in one of her comments on my blog, reminded me about how when I was a kid I hated the books she read.  I'd get off the bus, tromp up our interminable driveway, walk in the door and find her sitting there reading what I called "philosophy."  At the time I imagined that she must have been sitting there all day long.  Now that I'm a mom I realize she'd probably just sat down there about 37 seconds before I walked in the door.  After hello (I'd like to THINK it was after hello) I'd say, "Are you reading PHILOSOPHY again?"  I wish I knew why I hated it so much.  I think it was because things seemed so crystal clear to me at that age... and the things that were mysterious were sort of magically so... certainly not worth READING about... not when books like Anne of Green Gables awaited. Anyway, she pointed out how now she reads philosophy on MY blog!! HA!  I never thought about all this stuff I write as philosophy.  Eight year old Day is FREAKI...

I just realized I never posted a picture of the glitter and bead holder all full-up with love!  I just want to EAT all these colors they look so beautiful! Hat update:  I'm going to go for it.

A few weeks ago I found this photo online and had planned to do a blog entry about thorns and roses and all that Hallmarky stuff.  I was going to write about the unknown future... will I get a job or not?  will my family be able to stand me during my transition back to work?   But then I went online this morning in search of a hat.   EGADS!   A couple of weeks ago my friend and I drove into D.C. to Eastern Market so I could visit a hat vendor I'd seen last year.  I tried on every single hat with absolutely no luck.  The sun hasn't gotten any cooler so the search continued today. First of all, you should know that the reason I always wear a baseball cap in the summer is that apparently designers think that only men are allowed to have huge heads.  So, all the dainty, pretty, feminine hats that also protect your face and neck from the sun only come in small sizes... well, I should say normal sizes.  That means that women like me, whose he...

I've written before about how it hurts my spirit to hear someone say, "I'm not creative like that." For many years I wouldn't call myself an artist.  I would say I make stuff or I'd describe my work very specifically.  "I'm not an artist.  I carve and paint furniture."  See, my DAD is an artist.  I've seen his work hanging in a museum.  I've seen his monuments in many places around the country.  But, that's not what I could do. I used to love when he'd let me watch him work.  I could have stood in one place for hours watching him carve clay to be cast into bronze.  I could have stood in the freezing cold wearing his spare welding helmet for days just to watch that metal fuse together into something that never existed before except in his imagination. I wish I'd done it more.  I didn't understand that his not talking to me while he worked didn't mean he didn't want me standing there.  It didn't mean he wish...

Here's the desktop, blessed by years of painting projects.  This is what my fingers would look like if I hadn't been able to wash them. At the moment I'm concentrating my efforts on creating lots of backgrounds for our family travel journal so I'm all ready to go on July 1 when we start our Leary Family Roadtrip. The Happily box is going to get a coat of encaustics (wax paint) on top as soon as I get a full two uninterrupted hours to go outside and work.  

I just LOVE to see where other artists work.  I find inspiration in every single studio I get to see. I thought I'd share a picture of my studio just in case there's a shred of something here that can offer YOU inspiration today.

Teaser from yesterday was that I would write about HOW we get to wear the pearls AND have the dirty fingernails... how we get to hear the stories AND have everyone leave us alone.  Teaser yesterday.  Torture today. Somehow my impossible thinking -- my Wonderland reasoning -- seeped into my Northern Virginia reality and made me think for a minute that there is an answer to that question. There's not one... just a couple of hints. Here's one of them.  If you have a pile of sand, a pile of pebbles, and a pile of big rocks and your objective is to fit them into a big glass jar, there's only one way to make it work.  If you put the sand in first, then the pebbles, then the rocks, you'll have a LOT of lonely rocks that sit abandoned on the table.  However, if you start with the big rocks, then put the pebbles, then the sand... it all fits.  All of it. Here's another one (thank you Lloyd "Grandaddy" Nelson Harris):  Keep the main thing the main thing....

Here's my impossible belief for this very moment: My sons will keep their discoveries and reports of the day to themselves for just a few minutes so I can complete -- well let's me honest -- start AND complete this entry... AND they will also still know that they are the most important things in my universe.  I'll be a diligent and powerful writer AND an attentive, guilt-free mother.  Oh... and I'll be glamorous while I have the foot of a five-year old planted in my thigh! Here's the impossible thought of a friend who decided to play along:   "before breakfast I choose to believe that I am an unlimited source of creativity which insures every project I tackle turns out spectacularly well; every piece I choose to write is Pulitzer Worthy; all the while the rest of my world maintains its own order-as in the dishes wash themselves, the shelves keep dust at bay, floors resist all manner of dirt, dust, and grime. Did I mention the part about unlimited funds and re...

Today I woke up happy.  Today I am spending the day working on art projects... finishing a gift for a friend... setting up another altered book that I can take with me on my trip... completing a disco bird or two... painting and journaling with Marcus.  I hope the day is really that long!   "Try again," says that snappish queen from yesterday's blog.  "Okay," I respond, still groggy from sleep.  "Here goes: My first impossible thing to believe... Today is long enough to do all those things.  There's plenty of time!" So... I only have five impossible things to believe before breakfast, which incidentally is in an hour. I'm off to take a shower.  I'm positive that there will be PLENTY of fodder in there for impossible dreams! Don't forget... yesterday's challenge was to share with me YOUR impossible beliefs.

(Your interaction requested at the end!) The life of a creative person flows in tides.  We know that.  We create easily one day and with great friction the next.  We immerse ourselves in the project and then abandon it like the cat that won't quit peeing on the rug... then back to love with it. I've beaten myself up many times for unfinished projects, but today I'm looking for new lenses to see the tide-ness of my energy.  Here's what I've got so far: When I am loving on a creation, I am fully there... and when I am with a friend, I am fully there.  I'm not half way anyplace most of the time.  That's the shiny side of the coin.   Then, there's the side that needs some polishing from time to time.   In my life I have taken a dose or two of flack for "disappearing", leaving people wondering what I'm doing in my life that makes me unavailable to share in all the fun they're having.  The flack was always good natured, the sort of jokes...

"And the messes are the point.  Joy and sorrow, good and evil, greatness and triviality, hope and anxiety, the ideal and the actual: The ability to live with these seeming contradictions and the ambivalence and tension they create is what gives rise to wisdom.  Our most chaotic periods can be catalysts for understanding."  "...Most of us think life is supposed to work out the way we hope it will or even expect it to.  We secretly want the kitchen to finally be clean.  And yet if the kitchen was always clean, there would be no meals." YEARNINGS My big secret: I clean my house like a fiend before I leave town.   Why?  Because I love the idea that it is going to stay pristine for more than five minutes. I know with my brain that that's only true because no one will be home.  But, in this part of my life Reason doesn't rule. Anyway, it's a secret, but it's not a sign of Crazy.  I've heard that crazy is when you do the same thing over and over...

Why can't we grown ups throw on a costume for the day and become a made-up version of a person for just a few minutes? The day Tom and I first moved into our house over 10 years ago, we put a HUGE pile of trash out on the curb.  You know that moving in/moving out pile?  That pile of boxes and papers, things that broke along the way, and things that should never have been packed to begin with? Well, we put it out there about midnight and went to bed.  At about 5:00 in the morning, much too early after the day we'd had the day before, we heard what Tom thought were the world's largest raccoons.  "Raccoons!?" I thought . "Where in the hell did we move? The wilderness?  I thought this was the suburbs!"  Then I said , "Dude, you're from New Jersey, how do you KNOW?" Well, it turned out it wasn't raccoons.  It was a person.  She was on a very serious mission to find treasures.  We knew nothing about her at that time, but she did spark an...

"Holiness isn't a state to be reached; it's an ongoing act of creativity like the origins of the universe." Yesterday I wrote about the woman who claimed Not Creative as her name.  I mentioned, briefly, that we are all, of course, creative using different tools.  Some of my favorite tools of creativity are, obviously, visual... but I'm also creative using the tools of conversation, teaching, and parenting. The passage I'm starting with is, again, from Yearnings .  It reminds me that regardless of the tools we use in tapping into InSpiration, we all tap into the same river.  We drink from one collective cup. We don't each get our own Creative Spirit to commune with.  We share the same One.  That makes us each part of one Whole.  That is what makes creativity holy. I'm happy to be part of the Whole with you when you tap into the River -- drink from the cup.  Just the fact of your presence there makes the experience richer when I go there too...

 "The 19th Century philosopher Franz Rosenzweig taught that life is a succession of leaps into pathlessness.  We take a path, follow it, and then we must leap again. There is never a final decision, a choice to end all choices....There are many ways to path : cut, follow, climb, run, skip, stroll, circumvent.  As long as the path we're on takes us where we want to go, we barely notice it." On Friday I hope to get a peek into the future.  Should I be thinking YES I'll have a job, or NO, not this year?  So, while I wait, my stomach does flip flops and signals me before my brain ever does that I'm nervous about what next year will feel like. As I read YEARNINGS, by Irwin Kula, I found the passage above.  If I'm lucky I can persuade, first my mind and then my belly, that I am pathing and that regardless of what the year actually feels like, I'll be making discoveries, recording moments of finding new truth.  Whatever decision I make, whatever opportunit...

This is THE sentence that makes me sad. Somewhere along the way we were all taught lots of "rules" about creativity.  Should you be looking to add to THE list of THE rules, here are a few: 1. Creativity can only look one specific way.  Remember, the creative people are the ones who can draw horses so they look like real horses. 2. You're either creative, or you're not.  Some of, sadly were born to live in black and white and look longingly at the ones who live in color.  Those of us who were born to live in black and white might be served casting as many shadows as we can on the color of others so they don't love it too much. 3. If you are ever labeled as NOT creative then that is the label you'll stick with until you breathe your last, non-creative breath.  No label-switching. FOUL! Yesterday I took my Idea Book to play with while Marcus was in his gymnastics class.  As happens when a grown up plays with pretty colors, I garnered a great d...

This is the face of dreaming.  The running stops for just a moment while the mind takes off on a journey with a single drop of water. I wonder what he's thinking, what seed has just appeared and sprouted a tiny root.  I wonder what it is about that one little idea or dream that became more important than the game he'd just been leading. I'm a dreamer too.  I imagine that the people who know and love me must wonder all those things about me and my moments of pause and discovery. But, in that wondering about what my son is learning about his spirit or the world, there is no urgency, no deep curiosity that must be quenched now if not sooner.  There is just the mild curiosity that is really more like honoring the mystery of his own personal mind.  For some spirits, it is often those times spent in accidental meditation that are the most important. And those of you who love us are appreciated and loved for understanding that those moments are more sacred than c...

This weekend we helped my husband's brother move into a new house.  On Sunday morning, Jackson here had to choose between staying home to play with the kids -- all five and under -- or heading out with the men to dismantle a baby bed at the old place.  He thought about it for  less than a nanosecond before he puffed up his chest, glanced at the kids, lowered his voice, and said, "I think I'll go with the men." My heart took a flip in my chest.  He identified more with the collection of men than he did with the kids!  He saw himself as one of their tribe. When he returned from his outing, he was proud to describe how he'd talked with his uncle, Grandpa, and Dad, how carried crib parts out to the van.  For a few minutes he stood removed.  He couldn't be bothered to rejoin the games of the little people.  He seemed so aware of the gulf between his moments in the land of men and his life in the land of children. He was hungry to savor his moments ...

Yesterday I wrote about the new and improved and  colorful and DELICIOUS to the eyes Idea Book.  I wrote about all the supplies I happily carry around everywhere I go. I also travel through my life with two magical souls named Jackson and Marcus, so yesterday as Marcus and I waited for Jackson's baseball game to start we sat at a picnic table under a tree and he I started our summer journal. These pictures show our first two entries.  Marcus loved it so much yesterday HE was the one to get us to sit down to draw today. Collaborative memory recording and memory making is inspiring.  My suggestion for today:  Go find someone who's not afraid to doodle and record a memory together all on one sheet of paper. Don't make Art... make COLOR!

Some ideas are worth revisiting.  I started this blog saying I've never kept a journal in any sort of organized way... but just today I realized that I've ALWAYS kept an idea book... jottings of ideas that at the moment seem revolutionary.  Until a couple of weeks ago those idea books were black and white jottings with a sketch or set of measurements added here and there.  Idea: A+, Execution: C- Why the low mark for execution?  Because I KNOW I'm a visual learner.  I know I like to look at pretty things.  My former version of an idea book, black and white and writing on one side of the page only was really not something I enjoyed looking at once the idea was jotted down.  So... the idea would get recorded and then... forgotten... which was pretty much what I was trying to avoid in the first place. And now... Here is my NEW idea journal.  If you like the idea, here's what you need: blank book, black roller ball pen, pastels, markers, colored ...