The Book of Alchemy 100 Days
Decided to read a book by Suleika Jaouad called “The Book of Alchemy.” In it she inspires readers to do a 100 day journal practice using the small inspirational writings in her book. I decided to take her up on the offer.
COLLECTING PLACES - Stephanie Danler - Day 16
Prompt: Meditate on places, describe what they felt like, be specific, use imagery.
You pull open the thick glass door to a greeting. As you walk in, it feels like diving into a pool of sound and smell. The sweet, caramel smell of coffee, the whir and grind of beans, the hum of the espresso machine as it drips and occasionally spits. The music even feels warm as the brass muddles with the unmistakable voice of the blues. There is a certain quiet that creeps in as you take your first sip, a promise of a day worth living.
ENCAPULATING EPHEMERA - Jenna Boully - Day 15
Jenna says make a list of 5 words (from longer list)
Dandelion
Ferris wheel
Envelope
Silk glove
Ticket stubs
Write memories associated with each, or associations you have (200 words or less).
Limit “I” and feelings.
Assemble into a collage essay with a one-word title.
DuQuoin
The air feels heavy, like the sky is carrying an apron full of water by its edges, and the bow is barely holding. Everything seems to wilt under the weight of the August heat. Everything but the dandelions, that is. They dot the grass by the Ferris wheel, which looks smaller and slower this year. It creaks and jolts, and the speakers crackle between notes. The State Fair is a letter from the past delivered late every August. The tattered envelope, filled with yellowed wonder sticks like ticket stubs in pockets—a moist silk glove pressed against the magician's palm. Not-so-cheap thrills echo a last nostalgic shriek of summer.
SHORTENING THE NIGHT - Hedi Joauad - Day 14
Today I start school for what is likely the 35th year of my life. That’s right, I’m sure I didn’t teach for maybe 2 years, and I also didn’t start school till 2 1/2 (slacker). So the routine is familiar, but it also means that I skipped a few days. Daily things are really hard for me anyway, but I’m not throwing in the towel. It should be day 17, but ya know, I’m just going to begin again here instead of trying to do the Herculean task of doing the 3 days I missed in one sitting.
Today, Hedi asks what role superstition played in your upbringing, and I think that may be a challenging question for people who grew up very religious but no longer feel very connected to most of those beliefs. Because on the one hand, it seems as if all of it was superstition. If you don’t pray and read your Bible every day, go to church on Sundays, and give 10% of your income, you are a bad Christian. Now that I think about it, this could be part of why I resist these daily routines. The stakes feel really high, and the guilt is unbearable. But on the other hand, I also have a lot of respect for spiritual practices and wouldn’t really classify them as superstition.
On Friday, I had a really interesting talk with a friend of mine who told me about something called RSD (rejection-sensitive dysphoria) that she experiences as a person with ADD. Now, I am not a person who has been diagnosed with ADD or ADHD, but if you know what you are looking for and you know me well, there are signs. I get so twisted about rejection, even when something relatively neutral happens to me, like a text from my boss asking about a disgruntled guest who left a review when I wasn’t even working; I have the propensity to fly into a freak-out in which I decide that I am terrible at my job, people hate me, and I shouldn’t exist. Logically, I know these things aren’t true, but when this happens to me, it feels real. It’s like a kind of mini panic attack.
The superstitious element for me is maybe that I always believe that if I just worked hard enough and were good enough, I wouldn’t have to feel this way anymore. So I think, in this moment, I am trying to raise the bar. It’s not that I have to be crippled by perfectionism that keeps me from trying things or sharing things; it’s just that I’ve got to be honest when it happens and reach out instead of imploding.
MY TEACHER MRS. R - Arden Brown - Day 13
Lately, there has been a slew of teachers, coaches, and administrators who have been accused (and convicted) of having inappropriate relationships with high school students in the Southern Illinois region. With the increase in news coverage, I have had more than a few people remark to me, “What is goin’ ON in these schools all of a sudden?” Which got me thinking: is it all of a sudden? Did this happen in my high school? It sure did, just not to me.
I remember Mr. L. pretty vividly. I was in 9th grade, and there was a new teacher/coach named Mr. L. Mr. L. taught freshman religion, though he didn’t seem to know the material very well. His notes for his lectures didn’t seem like they were in his handwriting, because he strained to read them as he lectured.
In fact, it seemed more like someone had pushed him a stack of file folders and slid them across the desk to him, saying, “Well, Paul, if you’re gonna coach here, you’re gonna have to teach at least one class for us. Here, take these.”
Why they entrusted that guy with the tumultuous spiritual lives of 13/14-year-olds, I’ll never understand. What became very clear to everyone in the class was that while Mr. L. did not seem to enjoy teaching much, he did like talking to the pretty girls. In fact, he would move them to the front row on the left so he could pretend to lead a group activity while he chatted them up.
He was not a particularly good-looking man. He was average height, a little stocky, and he wore glasses. I imagine that if Buzz Lightyear and Jay Leno had a 30-year-old child, it would be Mr. L. I also don’t remember him being particularly charming or smart. I’m not even sure why the girls gave him the time of day. What I do know is that there were rumors. I also know that he didn’t return the following fall. Everyone I’ve asked has a similar story—a creepy teacher who was inappropriate, who all the students knew was a predator. What never used to happen was prosecution. That’s the new twist in this old story.
I HAVE BEEN EATING FIGS - Annie Campbell - Day 12
Annie asks me to write about a food that transports me back in time. I guess I understand the impulse, but I really can’t think of one. I decide instead to write about a glass 2 Pyrex bowls that, for most of the day, held watermelon.
In the summer, when I was a kid, we would vacation on the Colorado River. Often on these trips, my grandparents would join us, and occasionally a friend would join us as well. On this particular trip, our friend Alicia was with us, sitting at the raised kitchen counter. It was probably 9 p.m., and we had decided to teach my grandma how to play the card game spoons.
In this game, you pass cards from person to person, trying to get four of a kind. When you do, you sneakily grab a spoon. Once one spoon is taken, the remaining players snatch the rest. Whoever is left without a spoon loses. (It was the middle school equivalent of musical chairs). My grandmother was no match for us. We would all have our spoons, and she would still be sorting her cards one by one methodically. She didn’t even realize the game was over. We cackled and teased. And, as she was always good-natured, she laughed along and hollered at us lovingly.
We were in the thick of it, maybe our third hand, when my mom walked in with two large Pyrex bowls and set them in the middle of the counter, where we had all just made a mad dash for our spoons. In my mind’s eye, I say, “Mom! We're playing!” But I’m not sure that actually happened. What definitely happened was that, inside these bowls, a GIANT tarantula stretched its legs up the glass like long, hairy fingers. I shrieked. I ran. I always hated the things my mom was trying to scare me with: hiding around corners to jump-scare us, sneaking through the house to turn off all the lights while we were with the babysitter, or starting an impromptu water fight with a fire extinguisher when we walked outside to play.
My childhood was, at times, very unpredictable and jarring. In other ways, it taught me the value of the unexpected. The way an average night of vacation and card games could become an albeit terrifying experience when someone places an unexpected visitor on the table in the watermelon bowls.
MIND MAP - Carmen Radley - Day 11
This exercise stalled me. I didn’t want to do it. I had chances to do it, but for some reason, it just rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe I think it's the exercise I do with my student for their informative speeches. Maybe I didn’t want to be told what to do after a week of feeling caught in between the cogs of the university machine; whatever the reason, I didn’t do it.
Also, tonight I’m choosing not to do it, and that's ok. Too many times in my creative life, I have said I will do something, then done it even when it didn’t feel right. Tonight, in the smallest way, I reclaim my time and say no thanks.
I don’t want to mind map, not to evoke memories, not in my journal. That’s not for me. And I won’t let it keep me from continuing with this practice because, overall, it’s good for me.
I BEGIN AGAIN - Aura Brickler - Day 10
I didn’t know that my 39th- 40th year would be so momentous. Within a few short months, I finished my dissertation, got married to the love of my life, and we bought a building that is becoming our creative center here in DuQuoin.
If you had asked me 5 years ago when I left all my belongings with my ex-wife and her three kids and ventured over to my friend Liz’s with only a chaise lounge and a cancer diagnosis if even one of those things would ever happen, I would have told you, “not in a million years.” It felt like not only my literal life was almost over, but as a soul on this planet, I just felt done.
Today, Aura invites us to write with the refrain “I will begin again.” This prompt seems prescient for me as I begin today to put oil paint on my first canvases. My grandmother was a painter. She owned an art studio for a few years before she gave it up to parent three teens who needed more attention. I, it seems, have always somehow chosen my art over children. A thing I wrestle with at times, loving kids and imagining that someday I would be a mother. But, in this season, as I begin again, moving towards full-time artistry instead of full-time academic or restaurant work, it feels like it was meant to be this way.
I will begin again…
With the confidence that I tried other things. That they didn’t work for me the way I worked for them, wholehearted and tireless.
I will begin again…
Knowing that my vision and voice are unique and valuable. That the way I see the world from my tiny Midwest microcosm is just as valid as the skyscraper.
I will begin again…
Trusting my intuition and my sense of people and opportunities. If something feels off, I will leave it be and know that it is not for me, and I don’t need it.
I will begin again…
By insisting that my home, partnership, and craft are the top of the priority list and if things don’t align with those priorities then they have to move down.
I will begin again…
And I will welcome the next time I must or choose to begin again.
FIRST LINES - Erin Khar - Day 9
Lorde Haiku Redux
Poetry is not
a luxury for women
it’s necessary.
Survival and change
first made into language, then
into idea, then...
tangible action.
Hopes and fears cobbled in words
naming the nameless.
There is nothing new,
only new ways of feeling:
out loud, strong, dreaming.
I wrote this poem a while ago using the method described by Erin. I took the line “Poetry is not a luxury for women; it’s necessary.” Realizing it fit the syllables for a haiku, I then wrote 3 more haiku to explain what it meant to me. As I listened to this section of the book, I remembered that poem and how that practice helped me when I felt stuck.
Returning to it today, I’m unsure where to begin. My reading quantity has dwindled considerably. In fact, most of my books are still packed up in the efficiency apartment until construction ends.
So I flip through my Kindle app and open an old favorite, A Field Guide to Getting Lost, by Rebecca Solnit. I find the passage I want to use, and I write.
“Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.”
It’s easy in this expansive, structured house where everything has its place to be sure to place the small forks with the others and close the drawer softly. Tuck the children pretending there aren’t secrets lurking just beyond the frame of the latched closet in with prayers of a gracious angry god who watches over. And he does watch, over and over, as the small ones are taught to be smaller, and if they’re girls, well, I guess that’s right then, isn’t it? That’s the way I made them, shrinking, smaller, small. But what of the woman who has had it, who slams the drawer. The fork that tumbles in with the spoon, who says, “Hold me, I want to swell in your hands.” What of the open cabinet and the unmade bed, the door she did not lock when she left?
You never know where a line can lead you.
INSIDE SEEING - Lou Sullivan and Alexa Wilding - Day 8
Two or three years ago, I began meditating. My life was good. I had a good job. I was pulling myself out of a very bad emotional and financial situation slowly; but surely, I was healing, but my mind couldn’t seem to catch up with that reality. I could go from feeling like I was great, everything was looking up, to intrusive thoughts triggered by a question in a simple work text message.
With some gentle prompting from my partner, I began meditating, reading, and learning to understand chakras. Crystal bowl sounds help a lot, chanting helps a lot, and as I meditate on each chakra, I hold a corresponding color in my mind: root=red, sacral=orange, solar plexus=yellow, and so on. After about 6 weeks of this practice (10-30 minutes a day), I realized that the number of times my brain said to me “I want to kill myself” had dropped from 30-100x a day to 0. I mean, every once in a while there would be a stray intrusion, but the panic and the cliff moments almost completely subsided.
So when Lou and Alexa invited me to close my eyes and do some “inside seeing,” my internal movie screen, as I like to think of it, immediately faded to red=root, likely out of habit. I brought my hands together and felt a familiar tingling as the energy built between my palms. Next came a flash of white and a sort of pulsing. Then a turquoise like the mineral with a sort of rust texture to it. Patterns of black and white, then the timer went off.
I’m not sure why this method was so effective for me, but when I meet people who are struggling with mental health issues and anxiety, I ask if they’ve tried it. If not, I try to share my experience. It is really hard to live inside a body with a brain that is so dysregulated that it wants to hit the off switch. I'm grateful I found it when I did. Suppose you are a person who reads this and needs some support or resources. Please feel free to reach out.
RADICAL RECEPTIVITY - Marie Howe - Day 7
Marie asks that we write with our non-dominant hand using a prompt. The one I chose was “I want to remember…”
I’ve done a similar exercise when trying to balance out my brain. I have a lot of right-side dominance. I am right-handed, right-footed, and I hold soooo much tension on that side. I met a brain researcher one time who noticed this and was surprised to hear that I’m an artist. He said, “Are you naturally creative?” I said, “I’m not really sure what that means.”
I have always wanted to be left-handed; somehow I always equated that with being creative. Kimmee and I did this exercise together, and they said, "You’re pretty good at writing with your left hand." Which was kind of surprising to me. To me, it looks very kid-like.
According to my psychic, this is a good way to tap into your unconscious and listen to your spirit team. She had me do an exercise where I would ask a question with my right hand and answer it with my left. It’s pretty interesting to me that there is a dualism in the scientific and the spiritual with this exercise. I think as I move into the semester that I might try to integrate it. Also, it might be fun to do a non-dominant hand paint night with friends.
HOW ARE YOU REALLY? - Nora McInerny - Day 6
I used be a chronic “everything is fine” person, “great, thanks.” Even today, most of the time in casual conversation, when people ask how I am doing, I reply, “Rockin n rollin'.” Most days I really do mean that; I wake up every day and really give it hell all day long. I’ve always got several jobs, projects, and dreams I’m tinkering away on. So when Nora asks, “How are you really?” I can honestly look at my life and say, I’m better than I’ve ever been.
My mental health has improved drastically. 2 years ago, I was consistently plagued with daily suicidal ideation. I was anxious, insecure, and had a constant monologue that said “I’m a piece of shit,” “I am a terrible boss,” “I should kill myself.” I started meditating. I had a supportive partner. I reconnected spiritually. I started making art again. I got back onstage. In a lot of ways, I am remembering who the fuck I am.
My artwork is a source of energy and discovery. I look forward to making work and have a general sense of possibility and joy with my visual works. I don’t feel stuck or discouraged. I feel like I know what I bring and how I want to grow.
My work life has transitioned to teaching full time (8 classes) at two places I enjoy teaching. It’s almost a 9-5 schedule, which is what I have wanted for a long time. Would I embrace some variety? Sure. Overall, though, it’s good.
The two things that are recurring challenges in my life are codependency and my unhealthy relationship with my body. Those things are still around. With all of the transitions in our lives with the new building, the construction, and the imperfections of an old building, it takes a toll on our bodies and on our relationship at times. Because of my codependent nature, when my partner is frustrated with the very real problems with the building, the contractors, the moisture and temperature, I feel like a failure. I feel like I’m not doing enough. I feel it’s my fault because I really wanted us to take on this big project. Those things aren’t true, and also aren’t fair to Kim or to me. Their feelings are valid and have nothing to do with my worth or value, but bad habits are easy to return to when they turned 40 on your birthday.
With my body stuff, last year I was taking small doses of semaglutide as I was preparing for the wedding. Something I feel shame about and only Kim knows. I was also working 12-hour restaurant shifts and on my feet all the time. These days, I do a lot of painting, writing, and emailing, and I have easy access to snacks whenever I crave them. Those factors, added to my rebound appetite coming off the shots, have led to my gaining about 20 lbs. I feel fat. I feel ugly. I feel unlovable. It’s like having a fuller face and body makes me completely worthless. I spiral. I give up. I say, maybe tomorrow, but tomorrow becomes tomorrow again.
I am working on these things daily. I try to find things that I am proud of in my day on the building, like the yellow doors, the black stairs, the 3 times I vacuumed and mopped, the huge pile of boxes and trash I had picked up, the furniture I put together. I tell myself that all these things are meaningful and that we're building our dream. I am also hatching a weekly schedule to take care of my nutrition and my body care with the structure of school so I can start to feel stronger and healthier.
It’s helpful, if a little scary to be honest about those things, but I trust that writing and talking about what feels shameful or scary to me helps other people relate and feel safer and braver. I’m counting on it, even if I’m not completely fine.
JOURNEY AND JOURNAL - Pico Iyer - Day 5
In this passage, Pico asks- well, he tells the story of traveling and how journaling becomes how he records and saves his memories of his trips. I have never really used my journal that way. I have always used it for school, poetry, or working out my own thoughts. I have never really thought of it as an archive, though it is, of course, just that.
Towards the end of the writing, he offers the prompt for you to go back to a moment or a place where you were taken away from the world and able to see things more clearly. For me, this happens when I am watching a live performance or having a really incredible conversation with somebody who is also an artist.
When I am watching a performance and the light, the sound, and the emotion are just right, I feel things so deeply. It’s like my spirit leaps out of my body, and I think, “I’ve gotta do that!” My heart starts beating faster, and I can even feel my voice adjusting to the notes the singers are singing, even though there is no sound coming out of me. It is like I participate; it is like I perform right alongside them, because I am a performer.
Tonight, I went down to my friend Marquez’s art studio, had a conversation with him, and had the same feeling. Every time we meet, it is generative. He has an idea; it is often very in line with the idea that I am having, and we go back and forth and back and forth, building, almost like making a painting together through our conversation. I always walk away going, oh, I see the world a little more clearly.
Sometimes those conversations are about things that have happened to us; sometimes they are about our experiences that we are going through as artists and learning and growing, but it is always this sort of co-performance of art together through our conversation.
Those two things make me feel what Pico feels while journaling. Those things make me feel so alive. I want to write and teach and go home and paint and learn a new art skill. So I really appreciate when I can have those times. Then I have something to share in my writings like this.
One of the things we were talking about tonight was figure drawing. This is a conversation I also had with another friend of mine, who was saying that there is nowhere that you can really do figure drawing here, outside of a college classroom. I didn’t train in art, but what I realize today is that I have access to the syllabus for our college classes. I can find the books and assignments they are using and essentially put myself through art school. I also have access to YouTube and things like that, and so when Marquez was saying that I could teach at PHX how to do figure drawing, even though I do not know how to figure draw yet, which has never stopped me. So on to figure drawing it is!
BE SLOW - Rachel Schwartzman - Day 4
I was supposed to write this post yesterday, and I did the activity, but as I was writing about it, I fell asleep. The last two days have been full of labor getting the downstairs ready for our first round of company and construction, which feel like two opposing sides of a tug-of-war. Get it clean and organized so there aren’t boxes, but make the shelves easy to wrap with plastic so they don’t get sawdust in them.
Almost anytime I get quiet, as Rachel suggests, music springs into my head. “Siri, set a timer for 5 minutes.” You’ve got fiiiiive minutes to tell me what I’m wanting to he-e-ear. It’s always been like that. My worst boyfriend gave me arguably my best nickname ever—Jukebox—because I am so musical. After I clear that away, it’s the to-dos, the construction list, the teaching list, the body list. Then the images, the kind of portraits I want to paint with my oils, the drippy emotional ones I have in my head but don’t know how to make; they flash and vanish. I refocus with my breath and here come the kitties, warm and purring. They seem to have no problem with sitting meditatively for five minutes.
Rachel writes of staring at an oil painting above her computer, the globe on her desk, the slow things that remind her to be present. I consider the painting in our entryway made by Kim’s grandmother, whom I never met. It is of Cleopatra; it is large; the grain of the wood is fully visible, and all around the edge there is this checkered framing detail made of what looks like abalone and onyx. Painting the stairs last night, I kept looking up at her. My favorite thing is that she looks like she is giving side eye. This sassy, elegant queen guards the entry and lets you know, if you enter ARThaus, there’s gonna be tea.
I’ve always been a daydreamer. I think about things deeply, turn them over and over in my head. I stare out the window a lot. The library in me loves the sky, the clouds, the blue. When I was a child, I imagined god as a child’s face in the clouds. Today I imagine god as an energy that orchestrates the cosmos from chaos, and spirituality as participation with that energy. The careful attention paid to the world around me, the patterns and lessons I learn and learn again, the willingness to share my journey, the acceptance of the invitation to tasks, 5 minutes to be slow.
THE ART IF DAILINESS - Michael Beirut - Day 3
Michael explains his practice of drawing something every day for 100 days and how he shared that practice with his students. He created an assignment asking them to pick a creative task that they could do for 100 days. He then invites the reader to reflect on similar things we have done before to understand how we can succeed at the task at hand.
I have never been good at daily rituals. It’s coffee and kisses, food and kittens for me. Everything else requires memory. I have to remember to do all the little things that seemingly come so easily to my partner. They jump out of bed, brush their teeth, feed the cats, put on makeup, get dressed, and it’s out the door (on time even), usually after putting in a load of laundry and picking up the house and making their side of the bed that I am in.
When I have tried daily things before, be it prayer, meditation, going to the gym, a new face routine, etc., most of the time it doesn’t stick. I am hoping to change this about myself with this 100 project.
What works:
I am most likely to succeed at tasks like this if they are small in terms of time. I don’t always have a large stretch of free time on any given day. I am also a social creature; if I do things with people or have a chance to share what I’m making, I’m much more likely to stay at it. If it makes me feel good, like coffee, it’s easier to stick to the routine.
What doesn’t work:
If I find that I am not “good at” the task, it is hard to stay committed, sorry violin. If it hurts my body, I lose motivation, freaking lunges and burpees! If it’s just for me, or a private practice, I find other more important things, and it moves down the priority list.
With this 100-day project, I am listening to the passage and writing SOMETHING on this blog. It doesn’t have to be good or long, just a daily practice established. Unblocking my brain from saying you can’t ______ every day. Because I can and I am.
JUST 10 MINUTES - Ash Parsons Story - Day 2
Sometimes I struggle to write. Talking comes easy, as does image making, but actually writing—long hand or on computer—feels like a chore. I don’t even like texting. It’s like it accesses another part of my brain/personality than other stuff does. I can sit and talk to someone, or watch a show whilst drawing or making something with my hands, but ask me to write sentences. I need to have motivation, silence, and usually coffee or a nice glass of wine to get the words going.
For this, today’s passage was interesting. I am good with images. What if I just tried to write images from my day as Ash does? To borrow a phrase from yesterday: “Here goes nothing.”
1) A white strip of light slices cleanly through the slit in the blackout curtains as the pressure of paws on my shoulder wakes me.
2) I look over at his wrinkled forehead and his black fuzzy nose. His round eyes blink over his big black irises as he begins to purr. I pet his warm suedey skin and kiss him on the nose. I have come to love this, at times, inconvenient morning ritual.
3) After I feed the cats, I make myself a cup of Earl Grey and climb back in bed where I ease up the volume slowly on Devil Wears Prada 2. As I dunk my bag, impatiently waiting for it to steep, the music and the antics of the bitchy Meryl Streep are easy fodder for my waking brain.
4) Around the time Gaga has entered the runway, a welcome surprise, Kim wakes. When they return from the morning bathroom run, I contort my body around the sleeping cats. I rub their back over their tank top and kiss their shoulder. Their skin is cool and smooth against my lips. Their breath sounds like a hand rubbing on a tufted rug, and I know they are not yet ready to reveille.
5) We get in Kim’s SUV to meet Lisa and Rob for lunch at MOD. My glasses have oil ground on them from the night before when I prepped 4 new boards and a canvas. I grab a microfiber from under the console and polish it off; next I turn my attention to the cup holder that has smudges. I rub vigorously until my hand slips, and I switch the drive mode to fake 4-wheel drive.
6) We all arrive early to lunch because we are on Kim and Lisa time, which is a thoughtful 10-15 minutes early. As I see them approach, I wave my whole arm above my head exaggeratedly and yell, “HellOAH.” They meet my excitement with friendly waves.
7) We pull up to Booby’s to take down my art show, and as we step through the doorway, most of the lights are not on. As my eyes adjust to the dim light, I see the blue light reflected off the glass of my paintings. We take them down one by one and wrap them for safe travel. I help Chris take the nails out of the wall with my hands. I feel the sharp pressure of the thin nail heads on the pad of my thumb and the grainy drywall between my fingers.
8) Shuffling through the Halloween aisles in Homegoods, Kimmee taps my shoulder and says Look. I peer a few aisles down to see our friends Kelly, DJ, and Zach. I holler ca-caw twice, filled by a long CAWH to get their attention (Kelly’s favorite animal is a crow). Zach taps her shoulder and points at us as we giggle and head over for hugs.
9) Back home, we decide to set up a photo shoot for a gay art show we will do in Paducah for October. We pull the curtains to darken the living room, and we balance a prism on the kitchen table. We move a lightbulb around until it throws a rainbow against a background, and I hold my body in various positions as Kimmee snaps and adjusts my poses and gaze. Gertie jumps on my shoulder and begins to purr. We hold her, pet her, and tell her she's the prettiest girl.
10) After the shoot, I cuddle with the kitties in a black furry blanket with pink lips and vampire teeth. Gertie purrs rhythmically while Elliot makes biscuits. Kim sautees and bakes a delicious meal that I've never had before. It's almost like an empanada or a hand pie made from veggie crumbles, cheese, and shredded potatoes encased in a biscuit-like crust. We laugh and chuckle and recount our adventures. Another weekend ending too soon, but happy.
HERE GOES NOTHING - Dani Shapiro - Day 1
“What would you write if you weren’t afraid?”
First thing that came to mind? Writing the word fuck over and over and over. Just fuck for an entire journal page. Take that, Julia Cameron (I have a love-hate relationship with her morning pages). Mature, I know. But as I sat with it for a minute, I had a flash memory.
I was maybe 9, and my parents were newly divorced or still divorcing (it took like 2 years, so who knows). I was angry about so many things, but really had nowhere to express it. One day I took a small flip notebook out of my desk. I scrawled the word “FUCK” in rough, deep, fast lines. I then hid that little book in my closet, a tiny secret that I wasn’t all smiles and jokes.
A week or so later, my mom called me to the kitchen table. She had the book in her hand. I froze. My heart was pounding, my face got hot. I was toast. She said “Do you know what I found in here?” I said, “ya.” She said, “Are you allowed to say words like that?” “No,” I said with tears streaming down my cheeks.
I remember I was grounded. I remember that that felt unfair. I remember that I would wake up at 2 or 3 in the morning to her screaming fuck and other cuss words at my dad in another fight. I remember that she didn’t get grounded for it. So it’s maybe not surprising that that was the first thing that sprang to mind when Dani Shapiro asked her question.
My life is so different now, and so much better. I can write fuck anytime I want in any notebook I want, but that doesn’t mean I don’t get angry or that things don’t feel unfair. Recently, I got rejected for a job that I was more than qualified for and for which I gave the interview of my lifetime. Also, I was volunteering somewhere, and one day I walked in; someone said, “Well, we didn’t know this person was coming, but apparently someone said you should know this person is here.” Oh, that person, that person that raped me that now works as a rape counselor? They are here? Volunteering? Got it.
FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK. FUCK.
So, today I did a little painting to commemorate these feelings.
It might become a series. The fuck it paintings. I think it might be a tool for healing.
