Friday, October 21, 2011

Friday Before-Art Rapidwrite

I am planning on going into my art room to work on some cereal-box journal pages after Grown Moppet finishes watching Supernatural. Since I always struggle whether I "should" be doing written or art journaling (tending to negelct one or the other at any given time) I figured I could write here for 30 minutes then move into the studio to do something a little more hands-on. Moppet 5 is asleep, which is good when I look at it from the vantage point of Right Now...it will not feel so good tomorrow, when she wakes up earlier than I want to get out of bed! Ooops, plans have changed. Husband just informed me that he and all 3 middle Moppets are sleeping out in the tent tonight. That means I will not want to be in my art room, because it is so far away from the bedroom where Moppet 5 is sleeping - she doesn't have a very loud voice and I don't have a baby monitor, so I want to make sure I hear her.

I don't feel like dealing with the mess of paints, anyway. I will either sit here at the computer and write or otherwise occupy myself, or sit in the living room and read or actually handwrite in a journal. I have not been dealing with things honestly in my journaling recently - of course, I haven't been journaling much at all due to being on Baby Time...but when when I do I am not getting at the Meat of Things...definitely due to fear and resistance. There is also the fact that I rarely remember to briefly jot down thoughts that are good writing fodder, so when I sit down to write I can choose something and just go with it. I have a lot of these thoughts at night while I lie in bed, since it usually takes me quite a while to fall asleep.

I have a desire in my journaling to be kinda raw and totally honest and emotional...the only two art journalers I can think of (whose work is well-known) who seem to get into really primal stuff about themselves and their lives are first, Juliana Coles and to a lesser extent, Traci Bunkers. Juliana Coles actually has this process she teaches called Extreme Visual Journaling, which deals exclusively with reaching into the depths of yourself. She uses mixed-media journaling with cool psychological techniques like non-dominant handwriting, letter-writing to the self, or to other people living or dead or perhaps only known to you through books they write, etc. I love reading about her process, and would love to create a similar-but-different kind of process one day. But the truth is that I am totally scared of the depths of myself. Not theologically, although I am scared of the depths of myself in that way, too. I mean I Just Don't Want To Deal With It. But journaling doesn't hold long-term interest for me if I stay on a shallower plane.

I want to write about all the weird experiences I have had and how they have shaped me. I want to write about all the things that have happened to me that are just like what happens to everyone. I want to simultaneously individuate myself and drown in the Teeming Sea of Humanity.

I was just looking at this blog by a woman whose idol is Tasha Tudor, and there were all these poems about nature and quotes from Charlotte Mason, and talk of gardens and canning and the joys of home arts. That is the kind of site I visited a lot from about 2001-2006, and now I can hardly stand to be a click away from one. This is one of the subjects I could really delve into, and I have written a long zine article on the subject - and I was somewhat honest and revealing about the subject in that article. But there was still a bit of the Psychiatrist/Patient dynamic that comes out in a lot of my personal writing...I sound like I am a caring psychiatrist telling an interesting, but somewhat emotionally detached story about a patient. Or a client. Whatever you call people who pay you to listen to them.

But I still skirted over how I truly think and feel about the years I spent in the Biblical Womanhood camp. The thoughts and feelings are multilayered and mostly uncomfortable. They go into deep issues of family and relationships and sex and how I relate to God and right down into the ultimate scary questions...What is my purpose here on Earth, what can I expect from life, how can I survive the raw joy and pain of living and dying? When I peel into the onion of my life, every single thing I could possibly write about will eventually ask those same questions, and they are not rhetorical.

I am drinking decaf now, strong decaf, but decaf nevertheless. Still, it is only 10:15 and I wanted to do something creative until about midnight. I am starting to feel resistance, just talking about possibly writing something real.

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