chronicled & illustrated

dragonfly on obi,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

On Saturday I leave for my long-awaited trip to Maine. There I will stay in a simple, familiar rented cottage near the water within walking distance of shops, restaurants, library and post office. I’ll be less than ten minutes from my son and granddaughter, Cadi. My other son will be flying in from New Mexico and staying with me in the house. We’re all getting together to celebrate Cadi’s second birthday.

I am very much looking forward to going, but I am in a pre-trip slump. I only just realized that this is often what happens a couple of days before a trip. I become almost immobilized. This afternoon, rather than do anyone of the myriad of things I could do to get ready, to clean house before leaving, to work on my website, to work on the projects lined up in the sidebar of my life , instead I went downstairs, got a piece of cake and watched junk-tv >PSYCHIC TWINS!!< and (at the same time) played alchemy on my laptop for approximately two hours.

It's so unusual for me to watch tv in the middle of the day, that when I do, there is a residual feeling that I've done something >a little< wrong. I haven't always felt guilty about goofing off. I used to watch a lot of tv. I used to waste a lot of time. Perhaps I still waste as much time as I always did but now when I waste time, it's on the computer so somehow it doesn't seem quite so vapid.

Anyway, this blog, my life, my writings are NOT about beating myself up. I used to do a lot of that too. But I'm past that. If I need to eat cake and watch tv for a while, I'm just grateful to have the time to do it. No, this is about reflecting on energy levels. I would be lying to myself if I didn't acknowledge that there has been a LOT going on in my life for the last two weeks that have led me to need a day of goofing off. And even though events lately have had an unusually dramatic flair, it's always the case that an upcoming trip is preceded by a set of more or less engaging life events. So maybe that's my answer to the pre-trip slump.

Perhaps it's because a trip marks the beginning of a new story. The slump is me resisting or not quite knowing how to write the last sentence of the story I'm in right now. Tomorrow as I flash through packing, cleaning, doing, I'll jot down the final sentence and period. I'll write the words, "THE END" and when I get in that car early on Saturday morning and begin that almost-impossibly long, increasingly familiar trip, it'll be a brand new page.

THE PHOTOGRAPH: taken in my dining room. The dragonfly (my favorite bug!) is pinned to an obi that I picked up in a textile fair in Connecticut years ago. The sun has faded the fabric which was old when I got it. I’ve thought about moving it out of the sun but I have decided in favor of letting it age where it is. It’s a small vignette in my home which I never think about but which love.
ROLLER COASTER: on the level
WRITING: NetWorld - a short story
LOVING: this blog
NEEDING: a good long walk by myself
HOPING: for sunny weather in Maine next week

first sketchbook-sized gel pen doodle,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

This is by far my most popular piece of art work on flickr, and very close to the top of my most popular images. Just today another sweet person found it in the depths of my photostream and favorited it. I’m so surprised by the response to it.

I do not have good instincts about what people are going to respond to. Of course on an individual basis, one can never predict what a stranger is going to like. Because of this, artists—in my opinion—aren’t doing themselves any favours by trying to please others. But it does seem as if it would be useful to be able to predict in a broader sense what might be popular.

The only thing I’ve learned for sure on flickr is that cute animals will always rack up the viewers. Photos of my dogs are among my most viewed and most favorited though they are certainly not the best photos I’ve taken. Two golden retrievers of different shades are naturally lovable.

I suppose this drawing is popular because it’s accessible. I call it and think of it as a ‘doodle’ but of course, it’s an elaborate one and one that took many hours to draw. But most people can relate to doodling, so on a doodling scale, it’s probably *high end*.

The main thing I’ve figured out is that what people like has nothing to do with how much care and time I took with it or how much skill did or didn’t go into the creation of it. Sometimes I feel frustrated that I can’t get any attention for the things that I’m more proud of, things that I regard as having been more difficult. I need to get over that! It’s the finished product that matters. No one else can know or cares what kind of blood, sweat and tears went into to it. In fact, if the bodily fluids show on it, it is doomed to failure. It needs to look effortless whether it was or not.

I’m finding that the same is true in my writing. It’s just possible that I tend to over-think, over-complicate, over-work my writing. Unfortunately, there’s no flickr for the written word, but I should probably keep this image in mind as I write. The finished work needs to be accessible, at the high-end of what’s expected, and with no evidence of my personal DNA on the page.

Reading: Tales of Protection by Erik Fosnes Hansen
Planning: A short story about a computer game designer who avoids real people
Collaborating: On editing an anthology of short stories
Writing: Words of Paradise, a novel set in the 60’s
Suppose to be: Finishing the EPIC website
Travelling: To Maine for my granddaughter’s 2nd birthday
The Roller Coaster: Just barely on the way up

I did three Important Business-like Things that took up most of my Sunny Sunday (four if we can count the trip to the grocery store), so I took some time this afternoon to do a silly meme that I saw posted on my friend Sherry’s blog, which she in turn got from her sister, Krista who got it from Facebook.

The game is this: Go to Google; Type in “your first name likes to”—for me it was “Nancy likes to”; hit search and copy the first ten items that come up. Pretty fun and funny! Here are mine (can you guess which one is about Nancy Reagan? Oh, there’s one about Nancy Sinatra too. Answers at the end ) :

1. Nancy likes to prepare for her day by catching up on the business …on her way home from work, Nancy likes to read the National. [a little boring. no. realllllly boring.]
2. When not contemplating her future in geology and the petroleum business, Nancy likes to indulge in her hobbies of science fiction art collection and gardening.[uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh, you go girl!]
3. Nancy likes to point out a common characteristic of her teachers at OCC – both in her regular classes and at the police academy.[no comment]
4. Nancy likes to visit the library and occasionally joins Larry in the exercise room, but really enjoys walking with the neighborhood ladies.[oh c’mon, I like Larry more!]
5. Nancy likes to be needed, as well as to cherish and protect her loved ones, of whom she is somewhat possessive. [watch it loved ones, I’ll crush you with my cherishment ]
6. Nancy likes to daydream and is apt to have many wishes and illusions that rarely have a chance to materialize. She is guided by her feelings and seems to live in a world of her own. [uh…huh, what? did someone say something?]
7. Nancy likes to blog about:. Nancy has not yet defined her blogs. >> [this one makes me laugh]
8. “My youngest, Nancy, likes to make brownies with chocolate sauce…” [My mother could have written that one about me. ]
9. Most Sunday mornings, Nancy likes to relax on her balcony reading the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times, before heading to a flea market. [This Nancy has a nice life]
10. She has had cataract surgery, knee replacements, high blood pressure, and a touch of senility, but Nancy likes to joke that their friend … is the “healthiest one in the house.” [Nancy Me of the Future?]

Ok…did you guess? Number 5 is Nancy Sinatra and Number 6 is Nancy Reagan. All Nancy’s are not made equal.

deep pink blues,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

The photograph is a mock-up cd cover that I did for a utata project last summer. The guitarist is my son Carson who is a singer /songwriter in Albuquerque. He’s been slowly working on a web home for himself and his music all this year, and is, in fact, my inspiration for moving my website-family to wordpress. I THINK it’s been a good move. He’s on my mind, because I just took a look at techornati tags this morning and found that he’s put in a link to my zine. The “web” is indeed a fine metaphor.

I brought this fun project out of the archives because it relates to one of the themes of my life this year. That of self-promotion. I’m terrible at it and always have been, but I have accepted that as a fault; something that I must overcome. Even as I do it (mainly on the web, at this point) I feel that others won’t like me. It’s an old primal tape running in my head. Mustn’t draw attention to ones achievements. Particularly if one isn’t absolutely sure of that those actions/behaviors/products can be counted as “achievements.” Yes, there are always doubts.

And yet, I’m pushing myself to make connections, promote my sites, feel happy that my photo was the needle found in the haystack of flickr for the german beer ad. Perhaps age has taught me a few things—usually three or four words at a time: Things take time. Little things add up. Life is too short. People like success. Pride cometh before a fall—

Oops.

Old tapes.

I titled this Pridefall because those two words are firmly associated in my mind. I have experienced the relationship many times. Pride makes us boastful, boastfulness makes us vulnerable to tripping because our nose is in the air? I don’t know. It’s a firm relationship, but not a useful one.

I’m proud of my son and his music. I’m proud that he’s hung in there with his creative endeavors even as he works so very hard at his academic and teaching careers. And in that, there is no fall. Being proud of others is ok.

By the way, the title of the album and band on my mock-up cd cover are not my son’s.
His site is carsonmetzger.net. Go. Find out his names. Read his words. Listen to his music. Go see him perform. Understand my pride.

Tobago,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

“Poetry…making the private world public, that’s what the poet does.”
Allen Ginsberg

This photo and this quote coincided in my life today. The photo is one I took four years ago on a wonderful vacation in Tobago. I posted it on flickr two years ago when I was in my first frenzy of uploading. There was something so freeing and new about having my photos online for a lot (or even some) people to see. It was a rush.

I’ve always liked photography and wanted to do more of it, more seriously. Digital photography was the spur I needed to make taking photos a part of daily life. Then flickr came along and I was hooked. It’s changed for me over the two plus years I’ve been a flickr member. Now I upload several photos a week at the most. But for a while, I uploaded EVERYTHING.

The Tobago photos were done before I had a digital camera so I scanned in a few and put them on flickr, too. I was proud of them but knew that the real credit went to the island of Tobago: the land, the light, the sky, the water. It’s possible to take a bad photo there (I know because some of mine were bad) but with so much glorious scenery to work with, I felt I couldn’t go too wrong.

Today a fellow from Germany who’s working on an ad for a “Mexican-style” German beer asked if he could use this photo in a collage. Here’s a mock-up of the ad with my palm tree and sky barely showing in the background:

Of course I said yes. I’m pleased. I’m pleased he found it. I’m pleased he picked it. And more than anything, I’m pleased he asked. As we soon find out if we put anything on the internet, it can easily be taken for free. That he needs a higher resolution may be the reason but whatever it is, he’s offered to pay me for it and I hope he does. If nothing else, I put in a day’s work just trying to get a high resolution scanned on my home scanner!

So what does this have to do with Allen Ginsburg and the quote about poetry? It’s that online photo sites and blogs and so much more, have—for those of us who choose to be involved in it—made our private lives public. It can definitely have a dark, down side to it. But, such as for me today, it also has it’s upside.

My little vacation photo is my first foray into *professional* photography. Whether it’s the last remains to be seen but I’m happy I had the opportunity to make the photo public rather than to have it sitting in a box in a cabinet in my house where no one ever saw it again.

Cheers!

old words,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

This list looks old because it is. A vintage list of words compiled and typed on an honest-to-God typewriter because no one had a home computer in 1975.

A year or so earlier, I had asked my sister and a couple of close friends if they would be interested in getting together weekly to *talk.* I made it clear that my idea was to have a group where we could discuss personal life issues in a deep and real way. My sister and friends took me up on the offer, they asked a few people they knew and soon seven of us were meeting weekly, taking turns at each others home.

In our living rooms with husbands, boyfriends and eventually children politely asked to Leave Us Alone, we talked about our lives. This was no ‘koffee-klatch’. We tackled big issues like how to deal with anger and confrontation. How to change ingrained bad habits or alter those traits we were born with but didn’t like, into more adaptive ways of behaving insofar as that is possible.

We called ourselves simply, Group. Membership changed. Some of the original seven didn’t stay long. Others came in and some of those lasted and some didn’t. I moved away and came back and moved away again, as did others. But we met —looking back on it—with astounding regularity. At first we always had wine and cheese and fruit and crackers and later as we matured, decided that the wine was getting in our way and switched to tea. In later years, we find wine is acceptable once again.

The list, though. The list was an exercise that we did. We kept finding ourselves dealing with feelings, emotions. We encouraged each other, in turn, to talk in depth about how we felt about whatever issue was causing us a problem and repeatedly we realized that we didn’t have the vocabulary for expressing exactly what we felt. So we came up with The List. It was fun to think of every emotion we could. There were debates about whether a certain thing was, in fact, an emotion or a behavior. It was instructive.

Later, if someone expressed feeling MAD, we could refer her to the list where she might find that particular MAD was more precisely, alienated, hopeless, ignored and frustrated. This seemed helpful. We realized that the big widely-painted emotions were not just one simple emotion but a unique set of emotions that felt predominantly mad, sad, or glad.

To be able to express the nuances of what we felt led us to know ourselves more fully and to ultimately know others with more insight. In order to deal with complex emotional issues (that affect all the practical issues: jobs, marriages, parenting, family), we found that it helped to first name, then untangle all the emotions involved.

There are four of us who survived several decades together. We no longer get together weekly in each other’s living rooms but we email and get together when we can. We still call ourselves “Group.” The earnest exploration we did all of those weeks, and the wisdom we accumulated still informs our lives in profound ways.

When I forget what was learned, Group is there to remind me.

We don’t have to look at the list anymore. In fact, we never used it that much. Like so many things in life, it was in the process of doing it that the learning took place.