Summer is quickly departing.  In the next few weeks – school supplies, a trip to the Rockies to a rustic cabin, a trip to Branson with little children and wizened parents, work, deadlines, textbooks, and BAM! the “Fall” begins.  I don’t know if I’m easily overwhelmed, perhaps so, I can say I am overwhelmed.  I think I’m good at surviving things, at persistence, but in a rather melancholic way, steeled and a little removed.

I am not certain what will become of this blog as two years of a most incredible opportunity that cost us so much is coming to an end – the ability for Holly and myself to devote ourselves to our personal passions, our internal vocations: our families, our art.  Enormous changes are afoot.  I will be back to work and a full-time graduate student, Holly will practice more therapy and a little less creating artifacts, two high schoolers ever increasing their busyness, fullness; and two young ones growing ever so fast.  Our older children are fairly self-sufficient, but also ever growing and expanding, and keeping up with all requires our hearts.

In a recent interview, my interviewer looked at me and addressed the cliche “Change is difficult.”  Pause.  I agreed all over my body.  She resumed: “change is NOT difficult, it is always occurring, ALWAYS.  What we experience as “difficult” during the endless changing is perspective.”

She was right.  My mind and body were not.  I create the difficulties by my approaches and interpretations.  The difficulties themselves often becoming creative catalysts of change.  “I am proud to be melancholic.” (see following quote).  It is empowering to gradually claim responsibility for one’s self and one’s constant choices of outlook, intake, response, action.  Thus I enter the ensuing flow.

This morning has been spent reflecting the feelings I’m having of loss in relation to this blog, more open time for reading/writing/composing, family-time, couple-time.  The feeling that perspectival anticipation re: these ensuing shifts has slumped me, lessened my determination, devotion.  I countered it with Lynne Tillman (as I often do), and read the following, from Madame Realism Lies Here (everything is intentional in her writings :)):

“In her waking life, as in her dreams, she concocted art that confronted ideas about art.  

So life wasn’t easy; few people want to be challenged…

…Madame Realism’s work wasn’t her child.  But, inevitably, it was related to her, often unflatteringly…

…what if art can’t tell the truth?  What if it lies?…

…Art was a golem.  It had taken over.  It had a life of its own, and now she feared it was assessing her.  What did it say about her?…

What I make is not entirely in my power, as conscious as I try to be.  It’s always in my hands and out of my hands, too.  I like to look at things, because they make me feel good, even when they make me feel bad.  I’m proud to be melancholic.  I like to make things, because they usually make me feel good.  I am not satisfied with the world, so I add to it.  My desires are on display.  What I make I love and hate…

…She made a spectacle of herself from time to time, mostly in her work, trying to tell the truth and finding there’s no truth like an untruth.  She kept pushing herself to greater and greater joys and deprivations, which were invariably linked.  And like any interesting artist, who can’t help herself and is in thrall to her own discoveries, Madame Realism shocked herself most, over and over again.”

(from Lynne Tillman, This is Not It)

It’s like this.  So onward I go.  Be assured I will try to stay up with all of you wonderful creators.  And I will (“can’t help himself”) keep making at each opportunity.  And I thank you all so much for these past 8 months or so where I have had the inception of experiences of finding an audience, truly being read and responded to, a sort of community of creativity.  It has greatly influenced my life and practice and confidence in keeping to my dreams.  Thank you!

Be well everyone.  Be well.