So many poems and books and films are about women finding their voices….

I’ve just reread for perhaps the 1000th time, Mary Oliver’s The Journey. I began reading this poem after my divorce in 2009 and especially after I moved back into my childhood house. Here, I live with my three dogs and the quiet is beautiful and velvety, especially in the morning.  I wake every day grateful for the space (inside myself and in my environment) to hear my own voice.  For so many years, I seemed to have perfected the ability to block the sound of my voice by focusing on everyone else’s. I printed Oliver’s poem in 2014 and since then it has hung on my fridge in the kitchen for me to reflect on most days.

This morning I reread and wrote the poem in my current journal (hard copy) so that I can re-feel the power off its words, of her words, reaching out to me.  Thank you to Mary Oliver as she resides in peace wherever she may be. 

“One day you finally knew/what you had to do, and began….”

Making Art...

...to counter the anxiety of the 45th administration as much as I can.  Since the 2016 election I've had to double down on self-care as I send cards and letters to people in government leadership demanding of them. begging of them (and sometimes thanking them) that they do the right thing for our nation. Mostly it hasn't worked but, like teaching, maybe I rarely get to see the direct impact I've had on an outcome...even though it is there (I have faith!).

So as an art teacher, I get to work on my own art as part of my job, a definite perk to my low-paying career choice. These little pieces are simple objects but they are touchstones for me to remember that "this too shall pass" and maybe in fewer than 4 years at the rate it's going. I'll be posting a few of those pieces here.  And perhaps if I can bring myself to it, some of my poems.

Be honest. Be kind. Be creative.

Earthbound

In Chinese Astrology I am an Earth Dog.  Perhaps it is the reason for this recent Haiku:

Earthbound, roots burrow.
Cold crumbles of detritus
cling like lost lovers

asleep at the screen . . .

Oh Good Heavens....It has been a while since I last posted.  That's what happens with the ever-stampeding school year.  Meetings after school with other teachers, administrators, parents, students, clubs, and then the school year flings itself past me. I just finished grading a pile too many of student projects in a rush to get them in the grade book before midnight, the hour that all the A grades turn to pumpkins, and the D grades turn into rats.  Ever-mindful of schedules and deadlines, I like to sidle up against them (the deadlines and schedules) and dare them to cross the line.

Perhaps the best thing about this time of the night is that the house is completely quiet, aside from the snoring bulldog next to me as I type.  An occasional car rolls past out front, the grandpa clock chimes (although it's an hour off since the last time change) and I just finished a wee bit of red rye ale.  I have a week of spring break to look forward to and all my students' projects are nestled close and soundly graded in their basket.  Just wish I could be a little more awake to fully enjoy the sensations. 

Well, anyway--here's a picture of lately.

whoa--some specs there annie

Making Faces

Self portrait contour in baling wire

Talk about not being able to erase . . . . well, I was able to rebend, but you can only do that so many times with metal before it breaks on you.  Unless you heat the metal with a torch, I think it's called annealing, to relax it enough to bend again.  Kind of like working out, I guess.  The warmer you are, the more flexible you can be. 
Dan Dwyer and I did a collaboration between his class (jewelry and small sculpture) and mine (drawing and painting) at the beginning of the year (maybe ten years ago?).  I know, many of you think I've barely aged . . . well, that's the power of art.  Anyway, we hung them at the Gavilan show--there must have been a couple of hundred of these--one for each student in our classes.  Each so similar yet very different from each other. I also hung some pen and ink drawings that came from the process of creating the wire drawings, and some colored pencil drawings as well.  I like the possibilities of sustained metaphor in a project--how far can you push an idea.
I can't help but wonder if my obsession with drawing faces is contagious to any of my students.  Wonder if they continue to look in mirrors to call upon their ever-present, and hopefully ever-willing, subjects.  Some days my face is less than willing to be drawn.  But maybe that reluctance only comes with age.

Getting grounded by the Pacific Ocean

In one of our very favorite places. I wish that all people left behind were their shadows. Not exactly Carmel--but close . . .

Robinson Jeffers' poem . . .

Carmel Point

The extraordinary patience of things!

This beautiful place defaced with a crop of surburban houses-

How beautiful when we first beheld it,

Unbroken field of poppy and lupin walled with clean cliffs;

No intrusion but two or three horses pasturing,

Or a few milch cows rubbing their flanks on the outcrop rockheads-

Now the spoiler has come: does it care?

Not faintly. It has all time. It knows the people are a tide

That swells and in time will ebb, and all

Their works dissolve. Meanwhile the image of the pristine beauty

Lives in the very grain of the granite,

Safe as the endless ocean that climbs our cliff.-As for us:

We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;

We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident

As the rock and ocean that we were made from.

Goodbye to Etta James

When you're young, it seems like all the notes in a good song stick a little tighter to your soul and you end up carrying them with you for the rest of your life. Then, when you hear that song again, the notes kind of pull the old years forward with them--kind of like the memories are stuck on the little stems and flags of those particular notes. When I hear Etta James sing "At Last," the years of the early-sixties in Turlock start to accumulate around me. The most most clearly focused of those years hold a memory of me being baby-sat by my cousin Patsy (closer to the age of an aunt to me than a cousin). Patsy takes over for my mom for awhile while Mom is working some hundred miles away and has to leave my two brothers and me during the week. Somehow in my memory, the boys are barely there--probably in school, and mostly I'm hearing songs--songs playing on a record player, songs from Patsy's record collection.
And this song comes on and it's perfect, because even though the lyrics are about winning her love--at last--there's such a sadness to the music. The lyrics and the music counter each other. Like they should in this song. I don't know . . . it's as if once the loneliness gets into a person, it can never really leave. It becomes part of you--on a cellular level, forever.
It kind of feels like that.
And now Etta James has gone . . . and not exactly. . . because she's in our cells, together with the loneliness and joy and everything else stored up in the years.
I'll be celebrating my birthday this Wednesday--it appears she and I share the same date. This year it'll be a lot like that song.