“I like to think of the mind as a room.”

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doorway“I like to think of the mind as a room. In that room, we keep all of our usual ideas about life, God, what’s possible and what’s not. The room has a door. That door is ever so slightly ajar, and outside we can see a great deal of dazzling light. Out there in the dazzling light are a lot of new ideas that we consider too far-out for us, and so we keep them out there. The ideas we are comfortable with are in the room with us. The other ideas are out, and we keep them out.” -Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way (51)

The other day a friend wrote to me, explaining why she couldn’t do The Artist’s Way. 1) She was way too busy. It would be impossible to do Morning Pages as she didn’t have 15 or 20 minutes a day to devote to them. And then, 2) now that her children are older, she spends all of her time doing things solo, and has lots of personal time, so Artist’s Dates are completely unnecessary.

Huh?

It took me a little while to process this, and to realize that I make the same excuses, even now (even though I am committed). I’m too busy. I’m not busy enough, or (as I usually put it), I selfishly already spend plenty of time doing whatever it is I want to do….

Okay, Bethany, which one is it?

One of my favorite exercises from The Artist’s Way is the Imaginary Lives one–what other 5 lives can you imagine for yourself? I begin the exercise reluctantly, then I get into it. I would raise horses. Be a visual artist. A film-maker. A famous poet  (key-note speaker at conferences! leading a group of poets on a trip to Ireland! 8 or 10 books of poems! devoted disciples!). A mystery-novelist (like Agatha Christie or Donna Leon, with 18-100 mysteries!).

It’s fun to imagine creating a different life, especially when you don’t have to actually create it. (It’s impossible! I could never do that!)

But then Julia Cameron asks us to imagine what one or two small pieces of one of those lives you might insert into this life. And that’s where the real fun begins. Crack that door open, just let a tiny bit of change in, and see what happens.

windows

Secret Rooms

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image found at http://madbite.com/2011/06/09/secret-doorways-and-hidden-lairs/

Perhaps because of last night’s windstorm, and our power outage, I had that dream again, the one in which I remember that my house has secret rooms.

A realtor was trying to list our house, and I felt that she had undervalued it. Oh, I thought, I know just what to show her!

I started with the hidden apartment, the one entered by a kind of hatch in the garage wall. It was a studio apartment, never occupied, filled with boxes. Anyone owning this house would, of course, want to rent it out. I wondered, even as I spoke, why I never had.

And there was more! I showed her the children’s rooms with the lofts and secret cubbies. We walked through the kitchen downstairs (an elaborate, fully equipped kitchen for parties). Then, my sister was there, and said, “What’s that room?”

The guest suite! I had forgotten about it entirely. It had a hot tub! From the bed, you could see the ocean! Really!

Whenever I have this dream (or a variation of it), I know that there is some potential I’m overlooking.

On another note (though not entirely), I loved this post from Writer Unboxed (written by the amazing Lisa Cron, author of Wired for Story). I read it twice, I followed all the links, I watched the entire (irreverent) Dartmouth commencement speech given by Shonda Rimes (of Grey’s Anatomy fame). I think you should, too.

What Are Your Blocks?

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Photos courtesy of Ron Quinn

“Most of the time when we are blocked in an area of our life, it is because we feel safer that way.” (Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way, 30)

While composing this post, which was going to be, mostly, a quotation accompanied by a photograph of a logjam, I went on-line to find a good picture, and then I remembered the Lewis County flood of 2007 (7 years ago this week).

It was an epic time for my family. High water combined with timber and debris took out six or seven local bridges, and closed the bridge on Elk Creek road, the road where my parents and other family lived. Although my immediate family did not lose any property, houses of some of my cousins were flooded. The clean-up took months.

My youngest sister was, at that time, the Postmaster in Doty, Washington, and the bridge on Elk Creek road stood between her and home, completely buried in log debris. The back way, through Dryad, had its bridge swept away entirely. She was offered food and shelter, but it had been a harrowing day, and she wanted to be with her family.

Floods are a force of nature, but so is my red-headed sister.

A vehicle couldn’t cross over that bridge, but one could, if determined, climb across. A neighbor in the same predicament said that she’d go, too. Of course by the time the Post Office closed, it was dark, but my sister found a pair of old pants in the Goodwill box at the Doty Pentecostal Church, and, wearing her Clarks, she set out. (I don’t know what kind of shoes the neighbor was wearing.)

The logjam became their road home.

There’s a literary device, aporia, that teaches us this as well. It’s from the Greek (difficulty, perplexity, from aporos, impassable), but one way to think of it is as a signpost pointing the way.

As my friend Thom Lee says of bandaids: they show where the healing needs to occur.

Identifying your blocks is only the first step. Instead of thinking “impassable,” see your block as the very place where you must focus your attention. 

The Artist’s Date

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carolsjournalI do a lot of daydreaming. I always have. I spend quite a lot of time alone. Even when I was teaching at the college, one of my guilty pleasures was going to a coffee place or (ideally!) a bookstore with coffee to write. When my kids were younger and I was really busy, I often wrote in my minivan at soccer practices…

My guilty pleasures now that I’m not teaching full-time are still writing-with-coffee. Also reading novels (I read a lot of novels…kind of an addiction). That, and meeting a girlfriend to write (over coffee, usually…okay, so coffee is definitely an addiction).

So, shouldn’t I have this Artist’s Date thing in the bag? Don’t I spend plenty of time, already, alone with my inner artist?

No, I don’t. It turns out that the artist’s date shouldn’t be work (even when it is the wonderful work of writing), and it shouldn’t be with other people. It should be play, AND it should get me out of my comfort zone.

Out of my comfort zone? Dang.

(To see Julia Cameron talking about the artist’s date, go to this site: http://juliacameronlive.com/basic-tools/.)

I have a couple of ideas for artist’s dates. For one thing, I’ve always wished I could draw…but my perfectionist tendencies get in the way. What if I pursued this, playfully, joyfully? Just for an hour or two this week?

images borrowed from http://www.ellenfelsenthal.com/pages/horses1_07.html

I also want to ride a horse, which I have not done in years, in decades.

What would YOU do on an artist’s date?