chronicled & illustrated

mirror image,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

I have a great new camera. I’ve always dreamed of one day getting a really good camera but put it off and off even when digital made photography immediate and playful and when the internet made it possible to share and get comments from people all over the world. I put it off because I have a superstition about getting good/expensive equipment. It sometimes signals the death of a creative era.

It may be a superstition, but it may also be learning. Years ago, not long after purchasing a huge roll of canvas and being given a fancy wooden easel, I stopped painting.

The problem is: you get the fancy equipment and suddenly there are expectations of producing something excellent. Suddenly it’s changed from: see what nice results I can pull off with my simple digital camera? to: if I can’t get fabulous results with this camera, I’ve wasted the money and let myself down. Suddenly the playfulness leaves and Things Get Serious.

I’m not letting that happen with this camera. It’s just the reason I put off getting one. The only way I could truly let myself down with my new camera is if I fail to use it. If the last week is any indication of future use, it seems I’m likely to be at the opposite end of that extreme. I’ve taken hundreds and hundreds of shots and the word “obsession” has been used several times.

But this all is a reminder of the kind of mental distortion that can happen around creative endeavors.

Anyway, as it happens, I am drawn to visual distortion. The photograph I used today is one taken with the new camera. It’s a view of my office area reflected in an old, cheaply-made mirror—thus the funky distortion. It’s my reminder that even if I’m still getting quite a few out of focus shots (it’s only been a week AND I don’t have a tripod yet!) that my photographs will always reflect my own vision of the world, distorted or otherwise.

After hours and hours of work over the last two and a half weeks, I have only one page left to finish (and—oh well, yeah—thousands of tiny adjustments and corrections)

Three books in the works (Galveston, Causeway and Nova) and none of them are thrilling me.

Just heard about this technique from a friend; I decided to try it on my mysterious leg pain since “western” medicine isn’t offering a cure. whatthehell…

the ins and outs of the Nikon D80 AND a computer drawing tablet and pen!

birthday present!,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

Today is my birthday. This is a wonderful surprise gift from my husband. I’m thrilled to bits and pieces and would be out taking photos except that the battery has to charge first.
I should be reading the manual but I can only absorb so much at a time. Especially before I’ve even had a chance to take one shot!

Here’s a poem written on my birthday in 1995, revised for today

Birth Day

Sunday,
glistening glinting
but growing grayer
Yesterday,
not as showy
but with morning rolling into
an afternoon of full summer
changing to cool deep night
full of fire flies and intimacy
dissolving into the first thunderstorm
of a dry season

Today
is no memory
yet
present moment
elusive fleeting
already gone
capture impossible
unlike those fire flies
who let themselves
be caught
Let me catch
this moment more fully
these summery sights
this singular smell
symphonious overlapping sounds

As I write,
the sun comes
through clustering clouds
for the third time
I know
because I am witness
that today is no better
than the last two days
I know
because it is now
if there were but one
in all of creation
this would be
the day

I ended my last post by saying I’d be busy for a while with my school girl friends who were going to be visiting from Texas. But instead I’m here because they opted out of coming. It was a shock, as they cancelled abruptly the day before they were to arrive and the decision was already made without my input.

I’m still wandering around picking up the pieces.

My friend decided not to come because the forecast for the week was for rain. She says it’s just a postponement and not a cancellation but that just makes me laugh because when—I wonder—does she think she can come to Nova Scotia with a guaranteed forecast of no rain?

I’m using this photo manipulation I call “Peeling Rain” since it’s supposedly a rainy post.

Peeling rain seems especially appropriate since it’s NOT a rainy morning here in Cape Breton. It’s a gorgeous, perfect summer’s day. Bright sun, light breeze, slightly cool. All I can think is that it’s their loss. They…stuck as they are in blisteringly hot Texas for the summer. And yet, it is my loss as well. I would have loved to have shared this day with them.

Here is my proof of the wonders of a Nova Scotian summer day. All taken this morning, July 5th:

“inner sunshine”

“joy around”

“bee happy”

“blue breeze”

“volunteers”

“purple non-rain”

made myself laugh with that title.

So, I will attempt to regain my focus and work on that almost finished short story…or maybe I should go lie in the hammock and soak up the warmth before it starts to rain.

Cheers.

in through the windows,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

I’m reminded this morning of the Woody Allen quote, “Eighty percent of life is showing up.”
My husband tells a story about when he was in high school and had a job selling shoes. Well, selling shoes is, according to him, an overstatement. He rarely sold any. He hated the job as most of it entailed standing around for several hours doing nothing but trying to look busy. And yet, even though he hated it and rarely sold anything, his boss loved him. When he mentioned this paradox to his father, his dad told him that the boss liked him because he always showed up. He was reliable and there, just in case someone wanted to buy a pair of shoes!

Over the last five days, I’ve been finishing up on The Practically Creative Quarter. This is the second full month of the new format and it’s working out great. The site functions well and—while it’s still a lot of work—it’s doable. Instead of working three solid months to get it ready, I can do a little each week and still have a variety of new things for people to read and see.

So there’s the showing up part.

That’s eighty percent of it, right?

Not really. Because the eighty percent has to include the future as well as the past! Consistency is difficult for me, so I know from experience that two months means nothing. I can fall off this wagon in a heartbeat. That’s why I always need the practical side of me to show up along side the creative side. The first PCQ was creative but not practical. The new version is, I hope, both.

But this morning, I’m being nagged by that other twenty percent. What’s that, Woody? Well we know, don’t we? It’s being good. It’s being unique. It’s offering—showing off—something that people want.

I didn’t start The PCQ to show off. From the beginning, it was about me wanting a place to process creativity. If I still have issues with creativity—need for perfection, trouble finishing things, over-stretching my limitations, and more—I knew that other people do too. So I thought I’d share those challenges with others. What I’ve learned and what I’m learning. But somewhere in all that, I have to deal with the exposure of myself—repeatedly, as it turns out. I often have a bad, let-down day after an email update goes out to my subscribers.

I was writing a piece of fiction last week where a grandmother is watching her granddaughter practice a performance. It’s just the two of them; the granddaughter is talented and very good in the performance. Afterward the little girl gets quiet and comes to sit very close to the grandmother. The grandmother leans down and whispers to her, “Sometimes we can end up feeling that we did something wrong even when everyone tells us we’re good.”

Those words, coming out of my character’s mouth, surprised me. I didn’t know I was going to write that but it sums up my feelings about the showing off part of showing up.

No matter how many people are reading The PCQ (and the numbers are good!)—I feel like the granddaughter in my story, wishing I had a comforting grandmother to snuggle up against. Someone who would know instinctively the down side of showing off.

And yet, those are momentary feelings. The project that is The PCQ is still about process. It’s not perfect because I’m not and because I have sworn off even yearning toward perfection.

My plan is to show up and take the eighty percent odds that it’ll be good enough.

THE ILLUSTRATION: this is a photograph of light hitting a watercolor painting. Speaking of showing off, it was the first painting of mine (done over 20 years ago!) that I felt was good enough to be framed. I loved the way this photograph turned out because the “real” light seems to be coming in through the painted window. Illusions.

READING: Causeway, Linden MacIntyre
EXPECTING: Company! two childhood friends are spontaneously flying up from Texas for a week!
HOPING: We have decent weather (what else?)

learning our colours,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

One evening while in Maine, I picked up my granddaughter, Acadia, and took her for a little drive. It was getting toward dusk. We stopped between my son’s house and my rented cottage several times as Cadi was asking to “see the water.” We got in and out of the car and took short walks.

These days, she holds tightly to one of my fingers as we walk. I showed her things. A bird flying. White cherry blossoms and lilacs. Bees on the bushes. A feather. A pine cone. The sound the water makes as it rushes over the rocks. The older boys playing on the other side of the street.

Our last stop was where this photo was taken. The wetlands at this spot are always stunning to see whether it’s sun, fog, rain, morning, noon or night. This day had been gloriously sunny. One of those late spring days when the new warmth, super-blue sky and the fresh young leaves and grasses combine for a spectacular crispness that will soon blur into summer fullness—rich, deep green, hot, but no longer new.

As the sun went down I held Cadi while snapping a dozen photos or so. She was patient with me and afterward we talked about what was happening to the colour of the clouds. I reminded her that they are usually white but that sometimes when the sun goes away for the night they change into a variety of colours. Cadi’s only just learning her colours. She has the idea now, but the specifics as to green, blue, red are still in process. Sometimes she gets them right and sometimes she doesn’t.

I started naming the colours in the sky.

“Pink.” “Orange.” “Violet.”

“Yellow,” whispered Cadi, her eyes fixed on the sunset.

“Yes,” I agreed, so pleased that she was with me, “yellow, too.”

READING: I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes by Jaclyn Moriarity
WRITING: NetWorld, a short story
PLANNING: Our new front porch
WATCHING: A mama woodpecker feeding her babies in a tree outside the bedroom window

two loves,
originally uploaded by nuanc.

So now it’s time to write. I have other things to do, of course. I am supposed to be working on the update of the EPIC website.

It’s so far overdue that I’m embarrassed—even though there is no one but me upset by it or waiting for it (though my husband will definitely like it—and me —when it’s done!). As well, I accumulated other things to do while I was away. I started a small artist’s site for my son and promised him some business cards. I want to do that asap because his career is taking off in small ways and I want to give him what I can to help. And of course, those are *fun* things to do. There are other things on the to-do list as well. But none of them are crucial. They are all things that can be fitted in around whatever is most important.

So now, it’s time to write.

All the way down to Maine, I thought about three stories in various stages. First I thought about the one I had just started. I have about a page and a half written. JUST a beginning…but, the idea came to me full-fledged (a rarity!) and with hours by myself to do nothing but drive and think, I filled in a lot of what was vague. Or, I think I did. One never really knows until the writing is being done. Sometimes what is in your head, isn’t what comes out on paper and stories can definitely take sharp turns that weren’t on the planned journey.

A second story I thought about was one I did a lot of work on a year or more ago. I liked it, it seemed like a good beginning, but I never could push myself to finish it. So I thought it through. Decided what needed to happen. How I could improve the tone of the piece. I don’t even think it would take that long to have a finished first draft.

The third thing I thought about was just an idea for a story. It has to do with music and communication and ‘races’ of ‘people’ who use music for their own ends. I am not sure yet what else. It’s definitely NOT a story yet but I write down the whiff of an idea here so as not to forget or minimize it as a future possibility.

This is all motivating to me because I had just about given up on writing short stories. Novels, it seems, are my forte. A short story feels frustrating and limiting and I began telling myself that it was okay for me not to write short stories if I didn’t want to. But now…with a collaboration project in the planning stages, I’m motivated again. If I can pull off any of these ideas, it’ll please me to have gotten back to a written form that I should be able to participate in whether it’s my favourite or not.

READING: Tales of Protections by Eric Fosnes Hansen (book club this Saturday!)
WRITING: NetWorld, a short story
WEBBING: Quintessential Abstractions, an artist’s website
PHYSICALLY: lousy, I’ve got a cold
EMOTIONALLY: calm, optimistic

The Illustration: this is a layered composition made up of one of my doodles (marker and gelpens) and pages of my writing. Click on it to see a larger version on flickr.