embodiment studies semester magazine Fall 2005 - Goddard College IMA program - (continued) back to magazine index   LHM (CMG), from snow and fire lady assinaboine assinaboine, my winter home until i start school. collection of cabins named for flowers surrounded by spruce trees hung with feathery dark green moss in the british columbia backcountry. 28 kilometer ski or 20 minute helicopter flight. a couple of outhouses, slop pits, a weather station. lady mt. assinaboine herself, canadian matterhorn, rising above us and when it is cloudy mama says the lady is wearing her blanket. indian paintbrush, castilleja miniata, vibrant red-orange with tiny green tips that taste like honey, give their name to the assinaboine park ranger's cabin ­ ours. kerosene lamp lit, woodstove heating. boots laid out to dry, i wear their felt liners and my long underwear shirt, nothing else. climb on the counter and leave láyla-sized finger marks in the butter ­ yum! my styrofoam rope swing hangs from the center beam and laughing mama swings between the stove and fridge while cooking. cabins and trees sunk down in feet of snow we walk on top of. forming sheltered areas under trees we call tree holes i often fall into when skiing. painful and cold. snow, sometimes flurries, sometimes storms. sometimes powder or a hard icy crust under blue skies, and i drop my empty garlic capsule in it and watch the tiny black specks of the snow fleas leave. snow mama digs into and places samples on her testing slide to report to parks canada. snow that could fall from mountains and avalanche beacons and how to work them and knowing i'd never be able to dig mama out. snow into which mama and i fall backward in our snowsuits and make perfect snow angels. our waterhole in the creek grows ice mama sometimes has to chop to reopen it, and icicles grow from paintbrush's tall, steep roof. we pick small ones to cool our drinks on special occasions. schnee and eis, snow and ice, my first words, spoken here. helicopters, i can recognize ­ size and make ­ by sound. like to ride in the front with a view of snow, cliffs, trees under my feet. loud and with that vibrating lift. to enter or exit wait until the propellers have stopped, and then run bent close to the ground out of their reach. one day i am flying in without mama, we get grounded by fog. the emergency rations somehow contain cookies with yogurt in the middle ­ delicious. the adult passengers amazed at my calm. i am delivered to mama the next day under blue skies. sun pit, dug into the snow by mama and her friends, where we sit naked on insulite pads and blankets, eat sandwiches, and wave at the jetliners that fly over us. one day a magpie lands on my sandwich just as i am taking a bite ­ i scream. another day, a bumblebee that looked the size of my fist when i ran away from it, is so tiny when i pull it, dead, out of my shoe later. a lot tinier than it felt when i was jumping up and down clutching my foot shouting, "my little piggy! my little piggy!" i keep its body in a tissue - "it was only trying to defend itself" ­ until mama insists that i bury it. i bury it in the snow.   burn i am sitting on mama's bed in paintbrush, playing with my stuffed giraffe. i am watching the pot on the stove. i want to fly my stuffed animals around the room in it. it is their airplane. i am waiting, knowing it will be off the stove soon. and then it will cool. and then i can play with it. every time she puts the pot in the snow mama tells me it is hot and not to touch it. but now she is turning it upside down in the bucket of snow, and she is looking at me, but she does not say anything. i am getting up, crossing the room, and grabbing the bottom of the pot. i am screaming; i am snatching my hand away. mama is running over, she is picking me up, she is carrying me to the bench. i am crying. she is getting snow from the bucket, touching it to my hand. it burns! and i am screaming "no!" and pulling my hand away. she is saying, "i have to." "no!" she is grabbing her first aid book, opening it ­ "i have to put ice on it! i'll read it to you, listen..." i am thrusting my hand at her, my palm split open. "okay, okay, okay! put ice on it!" i am crying. she is pressing the ice to my hand. it hurts, stiffening my arm. the next morning on the way to the helicopter i am looking down at my hand. it is wrapped in white gauze. i am going to the hospital. for a long time after i can tell which hand i burned because the palm is puffier than the other one.   paintbrush burning i am sitting in paintbrush on the floor, ignoring the fact i know mama changing the propane tanks means me leaving the house. i am placing my wooden and plastic animals one by one on the cars of my wooden train. some of the animals are made to fit in the slots on the train. others come from the toy ark i have, whose belly opens up in a ramp for the animals to enter. i do not want to go skiing. i want to play inside. just this once, i can tell she almost lets me. it will be getting dark soon, will be dusking, and her boyfriend and i are just skiing away. we are into the trees already a while, but only just now seeming away from the cabin. it is late to be leaving. there is that boom, and we turn and we look and we see smoke, and i know it is our cabin, know it is my mama down there, and later he will tell her he knew right away it was our cabin but now he tells me it isn't, reminds me that there are others, and we ski for a while more. soon we turn. he leaves me, rushing ahead, and it is dark and i am scared but mostly i am thinking "mama, mama, mama" and i am crying and i am not fast enough. i fall in the snow. "wait, wait, wait." he needs to bring me there. i am the one who is needed. and i am skiing as hard as i can, poles shooting into the snow to push me faster. i am following back in our track. i make it down the hill ­ one of those steep ones i always fall at the bottom of. he yells "get down," throws himself over me at the foot of the incline that leads to the cabin, and there is an explosion. something hits my head, a tiny spark maybe. and he is skiing up to the cabin, pulling off his shirt. later i will be told he was going to go in after her. i will always love him when i think of that, though i don't love him. he doesn't love me, no matter what she says. he is skiing toward the fire and i am alone again, until mama calls his name, from the side. i ski down the hill by the water hole alone, and see fire through the trees and am sure jonzey's, the tiny cabin behind ours, must be burning too, because i should see it between the fire and the trees, and i don't. but later it will still be there and we will live in it instead of paintbrush. mama calls to us to come down to the heli-pad and i am angry at her. angry, maybe, because she wasn't in the fire and i thought she was. i don't know. i am held while i cry at my one irreplaceable thing that is burning ­ i keep saying "the turtle my great grandmother gave me, the turtle my great grandmother gave me" and crying. mama says she'd like to hear me happy that she's not dead. she tells me i can get another turtle from great grandmother, that she will write to her. but i say "no" and keep crying. i know that i will never see great grandmother again, that she will die, and that she will not send me another turtle. it is very dark now. we get in the helicopter and there is the joke that will become part of our official story, that one of the two pilots in the copter thought someone was burning garlic. because that is what propane smells like. i am sitting next to mama in the helicopter and she keeps leaning over and trying to hug me and i keep pulling away from her. i say it is because she is covered in propane. she reeks of it. i can feel from her a hurt, scared feeling, a needing of comfort. i do not cry in relief that she is okay. we get to town and i am in a truck, where we sit and wait outside the hospital while mama is in there. i am looking at the back window of the truck, one of those sliding windows that open over the seat and thinking: i am in shock too, should be in there too, and want to be in there with her, not out here in the truck. mama comes out of the hospital upset. i will always remember the name of the doctor called in and think of that whenever i see his daughter at school ­ the doctor who mama told us was mad he'd been called out of bed for shock, didn't even speak to her, told the nurse to have her take a cold shower. i see the shower stall and the hospital gown in my mind, jealously. mama goes back to assinaboine later without me and searches through the wreckage. she finds one burnt crampon, which she hangs on our wall. but when i go back there is only a snowy lumpy area where our cabin used to be that is "dangerous" and i'm not allowed to go there. she finds nothing of mine. all that about the hospital and the crampon become part of the official story, which i tell a friend, walking along the metal handrail in front of the post office and outside the library on a school field trip. i tell it word for word as i've heard mama tell it over and over. - how there was ice in the valve from the propane tank being dropped in the sling from the helicopter. how mama struggled in the ditch beside the cabin to open the valve and the tank fell sideways, soaking her feet and hands with propane, freezing them. how she watched a cloud of gas go under the cabin just as she remembered the hole in the floor under the wood stove she'd just put a new log in. how she and one of the weather students, or some other man, tried to pull the tank back up onto the bank with them, but couldn't. how the roof flew monolithically into the air when the explosion happened and then landed right back down on the walls again, before the whole cabin caught fire - i tell her story, not this one.   the tiger store canmore in winter is two and three-foot high piles of dirty snow pushed by the plow to the middle and sides of the road. and me climbing over them with mama. looking both ways and me holding her hand 'cause there are cars here. assinaboine is to be up with the mountains; canmore is to be held between them. chinaman's, with its sharp face. unremarkable grotto. lady macdonald is ample. squaw's tit, what it sounds like. and the three sisters: tall sister, medium sister, short sister in a row, connected. one summer i climb chinaman's peak, later re-named ha ling because the chinese man who jumped had a name. mama's friend lags behind huffing and puffing and coughing. at the top there is a cairn and a jar with paper and a pencil inside and mama writes our names and the date. i like cairns ­ it's nice to know you're going where other people have been before. i peek carefully over the edge and get that high up spinning feeling, looking down i recognize the schoolyard. i imagine if i fall like the china man i'll fall right down onto it. i step back and sit down for my sandwich. a little restaurant on main street serves soup and salad ­ the village green. on the way back from the bathroom, i roll up a piece of paper and bring it to my mouth between my finger and thumb, "i'm moking a yoint! i'm moking a yoint! look, i'm" "shh, quiet. quiet." mama has a friend with a bushy gray beard; we crawl under the table and eat sugar from the sugar packets. i'm not allowed to eat sugar, but when i stay at his house i eat sugar cubes from his sugar bowl and put sugar on my cereal. one night he baby-sits me and i get him to read me my bedtime story forwards, backwards by sentence, backwards by word, and he is trying to read it altogether backwards when mama comes home. he puts my little blue plastic dinosaur with the ball on its tail in his mouth full of rice. i name that dinosaur poleostinkus. we all swim naked in the quarry. the banks are dirt and rocks and people have to get out to break up fights between their unleashed dogs. the water is cold and green under the bright blue sky and somebody is always playing on the wooden raft that belongs to nobody. later there will be picnic tables and sand and what mama calls "slap your dog signs" because they have a dog's head and a hand, and the leash is hard to see. the wooden raft will keep floating but the skinny dippers will migrate to the little quarries, where i will catch baby frogs and swim with them on my tummy. the ghetto is one gravel cul-de-sac of tiny houses at the corner of the highway and the bridge, where mama's friends live. in a kitchen full of men and mama and i and a doberman pincher, one of the men sneaks up behind mama and lights a loose string of her jeans on fire. she doesn't notice, and they all laugh. i rush forward and put it out with my hand, and glare at them. they think that's funny too. downtown, the outside wall of the tiger store is painted with the two-story orange and black tiger, one paw raised, waving at me. inside, i sit at the one counter with mama and have pirogues or chicken nuggets. my favorites. at night mama and i walk through the school yard wearing our matching navy blue long wool coats she got for us in italy, where my dad is, and she calls us "the team."   heart/broken i am pretending to sleep. i am lying very still, quiet and slowing my breathing. i am good at this. sometimes at night when we get home i do it in the car so that mama will carry me in to bed. she always says she knows i'm pretending. but she carries me in anyway. once she lays me on my bed i yawn and stretch, like i'm waking up. i am waiting until my babysitter, a young man i don't know, leaves the room. then i am sneaking, oh so quiet, out of bed and to the doorway. i am peeking out. i am tip toeing quickly and hiding behind the couch where he is sitting. he sees me, and i am jumping up, roaring with laughter, dancing around the couch, twisting out of his reach. he is yelling at me to go back to bed, his face getting red, and i am remembering a boy in the school yard being carried by a teacher, kicking and screaming and spitting on her. the babysitter's angry arms are reaching for me, and i am spitting on him. mama and he come back home, which is his house, and i hear her happy voice talking. i come out of the bedroom and mama is smiling warm at me. the babysitter tells her, "she wouldn't go to bed." "oh. really?" her voice is still smiling. "she spit on me." now he has her attention. she turns to me. "we brought you home chicken nuggets" ­ i see the bag in her hand, from stomach to heart opening like to receive a hug, "but now you can't have them." stomach-heart punched falling in, regret burning, and i cannot make it better. now mama is sitting on the couch, and i am standing in front of the couch, and we are alone. she is asking me about spitting on the babysitter. i explain about the big boy spitting on the teacher. she tells me about not jumping off bridges because other people are doing it. "i'm sorry." the next day, i am playing in a bedroom. mama is coming in, saying they have decided on my punishment. i am going still, arms held close to my sides, elbows in, and shoulders curving down. fear, like excitement, and i am holding my breath. she is saying, "no dinner, and a spanking ­ from him." "if [he] spanks you it will hurt for a week." mama is at the table, sitting close next to him, both on one bench. i am standing in the kitchen, across the table from them, alone. i am sneaking two of blackie's jerky treats he's not allowed to have from the cabinet in the hall. i am taking them outside and crawling in the doghouse with him. i am giving him one. the other one is tasty. i am sinking in my middle, confused, like looking all around: but i thought she understood why i did it? mama is leaving me in the bedroom, telling me to get ready for my spanking. "he doesn't want to do this; it hurts him more than it hurts you." "no it doesn't." they are in the other room, having dinner. i am nervous like being full of ants, putting on my pajamas. i am getting into my sleeping bag on the floor. i am making myself and the sleeping bag so smooth, so flat, it will look like i am not there at all. i am good at this. maybe they will stay in the other room a long time, maybe they will forget, maybe it won't happen, maybe they will let me stay under the covers they are coming in. i am holding my breath. flat, flat, flat. absolutely still. his voice is angry: "where is she?" "she's hiding...láyla, come out right now, or it will be much worse." i am wanting to stay where i am. maybe they will not find me. i am getting out. mama is there. he is there. "take off your pants." i am taking off my pajama pants with the red and blue figures on them. he is sitting down on the bed. i am being instructed to lay across his knee. vision narrowing. and i am across his knee, and i am crying already. "don't cry, i haven't even hit you yet!" we are walking up to the hoodoos, spires of dirt from the age of dinosaurs ­ when this was an ocean, i am told - somehow still standing like tiny mountains, or the hills anteaters make. i cannot keep up with them. "stop hyperventilating! stop crying!" mama and i walking through his gate, over the uneven stone walkway in his yard the first time i meet him. "his mother abused him. he hates women and children." i am turning my head to look at mama. dizzy, i am thinking of mama saying auntie chica used to run out the door and down the street yelling, "don't beat me, don't beat me!" mama would refuse to cry, but then baba would hit her for longer. i am making sure to scream loudly right away. he is gone, and mama is coming to kiss me goodnight, to tuck me in. i am pulling the covers over my head, curling into a ball with my knees to my chest, pressing snoopy into my heart. morning sunlight through the window, i am waking. i am thinking: morning cuddle. i am remembering last night. i am standing at the side of their bed, almost as tall as me, looking over the top at mama lying under the white sheet. i am fixing my eyes on her like he's not there. one of them is laughing, "you can get in if your bum doesn't still hurt." i am feeling the inside of my bum and it is seeming to tingle. i can't tell if it still hurts or not. i am hearing, "if [he] spanks you it will hurt for a week." the inside of my head is confused like being full of fuzz all tied in knots. i am sick to my head, like i was sick to my stomach the time we flew in his little plane and i drank a glass of milk and a glass of orange juice in a row and threw up all over my blue coat with the alligator label. and my stomach feels sick too, and hard, and cold, and heavy. and my eyes are starting to ache and strain like a film is forming, separating, narrowing, blocking the periphery of my world. the open space in the middle of my chest mama touches and makes warm is falling closed on empty space, and i am climbing into bed with them, but i am alone.   geoff of the blue cheese geoff likes blue cheese. he flies a helicopter and mama says he's crazy good. she says he took her up and flew straight at cliffs, turning at the last second. sometimes he flies into assinaboine for work and gets to visit us. usually he comes unexpectedly. and it is the best when we have blue cheese for him. and he sits at our table and eats it, and talks to mama and me. one day he brings his girlfriend, enid. she is pretty and we do snow angels and stick our tongues on icicles and laugh and laugh because we get stuck. at his apartment he has helicopter toys he lets me play with. he keeps them all in a box. some of them have remote controls and fly around the room. one hangs from the ceiling. he lets me jump on his waterbed too. one night he baby-sits and i want ketchup chips for dinner. i tell him mama always lets me eat ketchup chips for dinner (mama almost never lets me eat ketchup chips). he does not believe me. i am very serious. i follow him around the store. i tell him this over and over. he lets me eat ketchup chips for dinner. (mama: "and you believed her?") geoff buys me an unlimited swim pass and teaches me to swim. front crawl must be his favorite because he teaches me that most. breast stoke is my favorite. and diving ­ straight down for the puck. and he says he's a shark and he's going to eat me. i swim, swim ­ ah! ­ and jump out of the water. phew, made it! "you can't get out of the water!" i shriek and giggle and jump my toes away from him. dive back in and swim, swim, swim. he tosses me up in the air. wears glasses, but not in the water. does wear a swim cap in the water (i don't). and when he takes it off his jet black chicken do stands straight up. and i say, "you have a chicken do!" and he says, "cu-koo!" he calls mama's yellow truck "the yolk." mama and i love the truck, even though one door only opens from the outside and one from the inside (that one has pliers for a door handle), so you go in one side and out the other. and the door on my side opens when we go around corners fast, so when i have a friend with me i sit nearest the door and hold it shut as hard as i can. it's flown open a few times, but no one's ever fallen out. except some friend of mama's ­ he slid right out in the sitting position, she says. when mama has to go in somewhere for a minute she leaves it running and i wait with my foot on the brake in case it starts rolling. "it's a 51 GMC." geoff lived in montreal and he speaks french too, though not as well as i do. we both forget words sometimes, so we say those in english. one day mama is late after swimming and we drive "all over tout le town" looking for her. i tell him he can't be as old as mama, he acts like a kid. geoff moves away, but he always comes back. and takes us out to dinner. we never know when he's coming. sometimes we have no money, and we say, "wouldn't it be nice if geoff came and took us out to dinner," and then he calls and says, "hey, i'm in town. do you want to go out for dinner?" one night we go to meet him, and the hostess doesn't want to let us in, says we're not dressed up enough. but mama points at geoff, who's wearing his usual black jeans and t-shirt. for a minute i hold my breath, in case i won't get to see geoff, and we won't get to eat in the restaurant, but the hostess lets us in. i look at the menu. i know what i want. i whisper to mama, "can i have this?" i want to know if it's too expensive. "ask geoff." "geoff, can i have this?" he always says i can have whatever i want. i like shirley temples and virgin pina coladas. what i like best is chocolate mousse. what i like better than that is at one restaurant only: chocolate shoes! geoff knows it.   nato august before i turn eight, in the schoolyard at canmore folk festival, mama is saying she is ready for nato to be born. we do not know he is nato yet. there is another name picked if he is a girl. mama's friend gives her the idea to ride the little train that rumbles and shakes around the black circular track laid out in the field for running. the train is only ever here for folk fest, and i love to ride it. we all ride it together. later, i am playing with my best friend on the big toy, when her sister remembers she was supposed to tell me mama's water broke. the three of us run over to mama, who is in front of the stage. mama says her friend told the doctor her water broke and he said, "can i at least finish my fries first?" i can see him doing it, just like mama describes, looking down at his fries forlornly. but i don't think he really minds. mama says her legs are wet. as we go home to get the bag mama and i packed for her, i have enough energy to run around in circles like our new puppy ciel when we let her off the leash on walks. mama seems to take a long time to be ready. when we get to the hospital they give us a white room. mama has brought her stereo and a tape of pachelbel with the sounds of waves. i think it would be fun to stay here with the white walls and clean floors and the trays of food the nurses would bring me in bed. i think i shouldn't think that. i don't want to be sick. it turns out the doctor does have time to finish his fries after all, because there's enough time for mama to put on a hospital gown, and to want to go for a walk (i go with her), and to have to poo, and to turn all around on the bed, and for the nurse to feel around inside mama's vagina and talk about "dilation" a few times. and for mama to breathe really loudly and everyone to count minutes between her contractions, and for mama to not be allowed to push yet. there's enough time for me to sit next to her, and her to be mad at nato's dad, and for him and me to eat pizza in the smoking room. mama gets help turning over, and starts to push and i think it will be very soon, but i get tired waiting and take a nap. i wake up when nato's head starts to come out and run to the chair to look at my watch. it is 12:03 am. mama is propped up on her back and the doctor is sitting between her legs, and a purple thing is sticking out of her a little bit. apparently it is nato's head and it is stuck. the doctor is telling mama to relax and mama is saying, "relax?!" i want to dance all around the room. then there is nato. all bloody and purple, his umbilical cord being cut, and then wrapped in a blanket and being held by mama. and a big metal pan of placenta and i peer over the edge thinking about how mama says people in other cultures eat that because it's good nutrition. then mama is mad again because nato's dad left the hospital. but i stay with mama and sleep in a little bed. when i wake up in the morning, mama is still sitting in her bed, made into kind of a chair, holding nato. i don't think she's slept at all. i am afraid i will drop him but i get to hold nato too. i watch him sleep in the glass container ­ his incubator - all small and curled up, especially his fingers, and still purple, and with a big bruise on his head from being stuck in mama, the curly end of his little umbilical cord stuck to his belly. this gets hard and stays and stays even when he and mama get to come home, until one day it falls off.   LHM, Truth and love - from the process paper accompanying her graduating creative project A lot of the time writing for me is being afraid of what others will think of me and of people I love if I tell the full unedited truth of my experience. In our secrets we have been the guardians of each other's vulnerability, of our mutual imperfection. When I speak, will we be judged? What will happen to me in this dangerous world if I expose my vulnerability ­ publicly, on paper? I take courage from the fact that we are all vulnerable. I say that if I can just tell you the truth, that is something huge ­ for me, and for us. If you can just hear me, from my own point of view ­ that is even greater. If you can hear in my truth something that speaks to your truth or gets you to speak your truth, and you can speak it back to me, and I can hear you, then we are not alone and we can stop being afraid of each other. And that is everything. To write like I have come to write is to love without obeying, without denying the contradictions of experience, life, people, love. That is why I open snow & fire with Jorie Graham's poem that asks, "how far into the Earth can vision go and still be love?" I say all the way. My mother, or another, might suggest that to write so blatantly, to not cover up for her, is to not love her (and the same for my other loved ones). But I say there can be no greater love than this. I am saying, "Mama, I see you in all of your humanity, and I show you mine, and I love you anyway; love me anyway."     Lisa Johns (EE) , Blue - from Mother-naked, a novel in progress. She met Jane in college, Jane a Navy grad, an officer who kept her uniform sharp and her hair short. Jane, who only had to look at my mother to make her wet. Jane, who almost didn't go to Pittsburgh with a friend, Jane who walked into a bar and saw her. Two hours later they had both come and two hours later they were in love. Mali told her parents, Mali transferred schools, Mali traveled from Pittsburgh to Annapolis and when she graduated they moved into a townhouse blocks from the Academy. Jane got a teaching post and I was born years later. * A hand from above. Under the water I can't see a face only the hand. One last look around the deep end and I reach up and grab it. Strong grip. I'm lifted out and the pool water from my forced swimming lesson drips down my suit my thighs off my toes. She's standing in front of me short sleeves collecting runoff from her wrists. Her upper body leaning forward her feet kept back avoiding the puddle of the splash zone around the deep end. She's smiling. She loves surprises. * There was a day of rain that we drove to pick up Mali from work. We left early and stayed in the car. We talked about our day. I teased her about her students told her that some of the girls in her classes whisper in the hall about her ass and smile. I told her those girls think about her and deliberately hang around after class to see her and talk to her. She asked me how I could possibly know this and from what personal experience I am drawing. * She claims she knows it all and that I can ask her anything. She challenges me to stump her but really she is hoping I will confess something confess I've been kissed or wanted to be kissed or initiated a kiss or more and she doesn't believe I haven't. I haven't. * She believes I could have any girl that I will have any girl and she told me so that day. She wouldn't elaborate on her definition of "have." I asked her but she refused to explain. She said I probably already know. Is it kissing a girl? Fucking a girl? Only I didn't actually say fucking to her. Taking a girl home? She still refused. I told her that when I meet the girl of my dreams I won't bring her home. She said I was crazy because the girl will have already met her as she will be stalking me and this girl of my dreams. I told her I will call the police if I catch her doing that. * I asked her for her wedding band for the millionth time. She pulled it off and passed it to me. It is white gold with a tiny engraving inside of the infinity symbol. The engraving is worn almost invisible probably from my fingering it. I slid the ring on my middle finger the only finger it fits. It is thick and smooth and I love it. She bought the set of bands in Korea when she was on a ship cruise. She saw them in a booth and she haggled with the salesman until he gave in and let her win. She attached both on a silver chain and she wore them that way until she got home. Mali's was thinner but she had both engraved. She let me wear the ring until Mali came out and then I climbed over the seat to the back. * She teaches in two classrooms that seat about forty students. She uses all of the blackboards pushing some up and pulling others down placing her hands in the chalk and gesturing wildly. She's animated when she teaches and loud too because I can hear her from the hallway. The policy at the Academy calls for the professors to address the students by rank and last names only and vice versa. The policy calls for a hierarchy to be constantly established a forced politeness extending from students to teachers and not necessarily the other way around. The policy is for an incessant courtesy of salutes and attentions and neat uniforms. But Jane disregards policy. In her classes she unbuttons her shirt rolls up her sleeves lowers herself on student desks until she is looking the students in the eyes addressing them by first names. She inquires about boyfriends girlfriends pets anniversaries. She takes her classes outside and saves dirty jokes for them. All her students know me and always say hello mess up my hair pat my shoulder and repeat her jokes. * Mali says we walk alike. If I stand on my tiptoes I can kiss her nose. If I stand flat I have a great view of her neck. Back to back linking arms and she can lift me straight in the air legs reaching up to the ceiling and I wonder if this is how a dying bug feels. I can wear her shoes with a very thick pair of socks. I have dibs on all her old t-shirts. She likes to press her hand to my forehead and push back my head and scream, "You're saved!" I love singing songs over and over and getting them stuck in her head. I love putting my finger in her ear to wake her up. She loves to tackle me to the ground put her foot on my chest and pound hers with her fists. I look nothing like her. * There are rainy days when she grabs me by the hand and leads me to the front hall where we stack the shoes. She tosses me my boots and she puts hers on. She hands me my jacket and we head out. We walk in the rain and let our hair get soaked. We flip up the jacket collars and walk to a convenience store. We shuffle up and down the aisles tramping water footprints behind us secure that we won't slip from our sturdy traction. We buy miscellaneous items things we don't really need things we don't really want. We get milk toothbrushes for Mali state magnets with the state's motto. We sample the fountain sodas declare loudly that at least one brand is stale and should be changed. We steal from the free pennies plate and donate what we steal to help lost animals and sick children. We request our change be made in dimes or nickels and on the way out of the parking lot we take turns randomly dropping the money for random people to find. At home we leave our boots in a puddle and race to find Mali a race to touch her first with cold wet hands on her arms or neck or face. And then we race for the hot shower and she usually wins cackling hysterically as she shuts the door in my face and I cackle as I lower my soaking head onto her pillow for her to find just as she settles into bed. * Wrapped up. Not warm enough in my coat I seek out hers. Hers is long down past her knees thick wool with big buttons half the size of my fingers. I tap the coat over her stomach a little below my eye level and she opens her coat to me. I press my face on her chest and she closes the coat. She leaves one button undone for light. Mali fins me by my feet. * There was a whole block of time when I was very little when I would wake up next to Jane. She wasn't working in the mornings then and she could sleep in. Mali would wake up early to get ready for her morning shift. She came home in the afternoons before Jane had to leave. She would move me into their room figuring that Jane would have an easier time keeping an eye on me. I'd wake up with an arm over my chest a leg over mine sometimes my limbs on hers and she would usually be snoring mouth open blankets kicked to her feet. I would climb on her and peel her eyes back and a few minutes later I'd be eating breakfast with her on the couch. We watched the news or old sitcoms. She hated cartoons. She almost never used an alarm clock on those mornings. Why use an alarm clock when she had me? * A different life. Jane brushed the hair from my face. "My little women," as she gazes at Mali and I. "We're not little. Just shorter," I'd say. Mali is only an inch shorter. Jane cocked her head. "Besides I am still growing. I may be taller yet." "Fat chance, little girl." * I was perpetually waiting for her. On the wall by the parade grounds. When it rained on the bench outside her office. On those days I'd re-plaster her office door with my lastest test grades report cards quotes I'd memorized sketches. On holidays, her door always looked festive. I've logged hours waiting for her. She paid my allowance on those hours. Overtime when she was late. * I came home from my first day of school with a list of instructions from the teacher. I needed to have all my books covered and Mali was at work. Jane tried everything. But nothing stayed on the books and nothing looked like it would last more than a day. Eventually she took me to the Academy's book shop. She bought thirty Navy bumper stickers. We were graded on creativity. I got an A for community spirit. Mali laughed. Jane hung the grade sheet on her office door. * The mornings we mostly still have to ourselves. She oversleeps but only because I let her. I wake her and share the itinerary the tasks the list made by Mali all the things needed doing on those Saturdays she works. "Good morning." I wake her with toast that we share. She smiles. "Good morning." "We have things to do today." Sometimes she forgets. I suspect deliberately. "Says who." I smile. "Nice try." We split the toast and she carries it to the bathroom in her mouth. I take mine and get dressed. We spend those mornings in the car. * There were nights when we were alone. Days when we were alone. She would say, "Let's go for a ride." She'd make a loop around the city a loop around Baltimore on longer days a loop around the State. She'd put the windows down and we'd drive. When I was little I'd fall asleep as soon as the sun set but older I'd be wide awake and watch the stars. Sometimes we'd sit. She'd park on the hill above the bridge coming into town and compete over who could outguess the make and models of the cars coming and going. She usually won especially at night. She knew cars by their headlights. Sometimes she'd add in the years. "But how do you know?" "I just know." "But how? They're moving. And you can't prove it." "I'm that good." "Show-off." * When I was about as high as her chest she'd rest her hand on my head. Lying together. Stretched with my head on the pillow next to hers my feet barely make it to the middle of the bed. The quilt is above us covering us heads to toes. The windows are open and the room is bright and it lights up the quilt for us and when we look up at the quilt the colors swirl. She takes her feet and pushes the quilt up trapping air and making the colors brighter. And then she quickly pulls her legs down her pants swishing at the thighs as she settles on the sheet and I laugh as the quilt comes slowly down riding the trapped air resting down slowly and then the colors are settling over our faces our hands. She let's it settle I am breathing in quilt and then her feet are up and the quilt is up and we watch it come back again. * The floor is rushing under her feet and I am screaming. She is giggling and running after backing up for more space. She starts at the front door and careens forward my hands struggling to grip her waist all the blood rushing to my head as she propels herself to the stairs. I'm upside down and screaming as she loosens her grip on my legs taking the stairs two at a time trying to scare the shit out of me as the floor gets closer. She keeps loosening her grip until I start pounding on her back. I hit her harder when she finally puts me down. * She can put her hand on my forehead and announce the coming of a cold. She says she can tell when I'll be sick and she is usually right. * Hand at the back of my neck fingers in my hair. She's still talking but bringing my head in to hers. A kiss on my forehead a look in the eye. It is her ritual. Her goodbye every time she leaves. There will be another kiss at her return. * She lets me come up and sit on her lap my legs perpendicular to hers lets me swing my arms around her neck and gaze into her eyes. She laughs and she asks what it is that I want. I can walk away with a few extra dollars or a promise for some later activity or a swig of her beer. * She has laugh lines, from always getting the jokes. She has laugh lines from mostly smiling. I have seen her cry. She gets upset and she searches for a shoulder. Only once has she used mine. She stood at the top of the stairs and buried her face in crook of my neck and sobbed. She sobbed because her father died and we stood there for a long time even after the tears had stopped. She is never tall when she cries but stooped. And when she wraps her body around Mali she sinks into herself. When she cried on me I was stunned. I felt rigid and I just put my hands on her back and her head and I held her. I was sixteen and I felt like she was going to knock me over. When she finally pulled up her head she looked me in the eyes and I was surprised. She looked at me and she took my hand and she walked downstairs. We sat on the couch and Mali joined us and she was quiet. She does not cry often. Mostly she laughs. * She has a flat stomach and it is lined with muscles. She has an outie navel and she jokes she never has to remove lint. She works out mostly with the students mostly from drills and runs and marches. She gets a holiday pouch from overeating and she has a gluttonous appetite. I poke her in the stomach after Thanksgiving or make her lift her shirt for a peek at Christmas. When I poke her she tries to burp. * She has a tendency to skip showers some days and lounge around in her pajamas until I complain that she smells. She has a tendency to randomly pull out head hairs to check if they are white. She has a tendency of insisting I will turn her hair someday. She has a tendency to yell and when I cover my ears to yell louder to make her point. She thinks I don't get it but I do. * She said we bonded right after Mali went back to work. She had me alone for ten hours straight each day for a week. I cried and cried and she would look at me. I laugh when she tells me this story. She mimics rocking a baby shaking a rattle dancing and singing. She said when Mali got home that first day she opened the fridge pulled out a bottle put it in my mouth and said, "That was hard." After that week Mali said I gained a few pounds. * Hands up fists out abs stretching for contact. It was Jane's idea. She made me hit her until my knuckles were sore. Until my wrists couldn't take it anymore the shock sending a jolt of pain to my elbows. Mali refused to watch. * The first time I used my fists she was silent. The boy pushed me hard. He put his hands on my shoulders and before I could react he pushed. I stumbled backwards. He was smiling. He was turning to leave. I hit him hard. Right hand to left jaw. He fell. I was triumphant. I stood over him. I didn't hear his mother coming. Jane came to get me. She told Mali. There were no other words. Mali screamed at Jane behind their closed door. * She bought me my first bra. I was eleven. It was blue. She said she had to go to three stores to find one in my favorite color. * I got my first cramp. Fierce for the first time feeling that part of me. It was Jane who showed me how to best position a pad how to lace my fingers and apply pressure on the exact spot over my uterus how to use a few books if that wasn't enough. It was Jane who held my hair back in high school when the pain was so bad I was nauseous. It was Jane who made honey toast and black tea her period specialty and brought it to me in their bed on a tray. She let me watch whatever I wanted on those days. * She doesn't trust her voice. She leads we are dancing. She is singing softly keeping the time. It's an old song and I know only a few words. She dances us around the kitchen into the hall dances us back again. There are inches between us and she unwraps her arm around my waist to lift my chin when I am caught looking at my feet. She dances the lead and makes me twirl and at the end of the refrains I am dipped so low my hair touches the floor. On the hardwood we are sliding in our socks on the carpet she picks up her feet her knees slicing the air. She is louder when we pass the living room where Mali is reading. At the end of the song she dances me to the sofa and twirls me into it. She picks another song and changes partners. Mali is up on her toes and swirling. Mali is led into a waltz with a rock and roll beat and they disappear out of the room. I follow them to the kitchen. There are no inches between them and when she dips Mali, her fingers slide to Mali's neck and when she is lifted the song stops on her lips as she kisses Mali. * She tears up quite often. Graduation day at the Academy. Ceremonial parades. Fourth of July flag raising. When she was little she dreamed of her uniform. She said she cried when she saw the school's steeple for the first time from the bus window. She will fake cry whenever I hit her ignore her refuse to tell her what's wrong. * Sensitive when I confess I think I am fat. Sweet when she puts a pair of her jeans next to mine. * She had a boyfriend once. His name was Harold and she was fourteen. He tried kissing her and she hit him in the mouth. As soon as it healed he started dating Ronnie instead. * Before Mali, she dated an Ericka. Ericka saw her hugging Ronnie and broke up with her. That's all she'll tell me of pre-Mali girlfriends. I asked her if she had had sex with Ericka and she asked back what I was learning in school. * Hands in her pockets. All blue except the white hat. She is standing so that I see her face from the side. She turns. * She falls over taking off her shoes. She tries to lean into the wall bringing her feet up one by one to undo the laces. But her dress socks are slippery on the wood floor and she stumbles. She puts her hat on the peg. She shuffles in those socks. She hates the feeling of them and she shuffles onto the carpet. She touches me if I am near her to generate a shock. She laughs. * She thinks it's funny to come into my room in the mornings and sit on me. She pretends I'm not there and she sits and she leans back digging in her weight and she takes her time putting on her socks brushing her hair. * She pulls her head back a small retraction as if to focus her eyes. She likes to pause think out her words. She likes to talk without blinking and I call her unnerving. Sometimes in her throat she makes a quiet sound a clearing but not a hawking. She says it is from her sinuses. She doesn't believe in spitting. * She likes her formal uniform skirt but she likes the pants more. I liked watching her dress. Methodical pristine refusing to sit down and wrinkle herself. On regular days she drags her uniform on her shoulder changing in her office. On the special days she dresses at home. She calls for me when she is ready for me to pin on her insignia. She always has to remove the pins before the uniform is washed and she complains that she put them on crooked. I wonder who pinned them on for her on the days she doesn't dress at home. * Her fingers on my wrist long fingers fingers on my arm anywhere to get my attention. She reads aloud tells a story offers a memory remembers finally what she needs to tell me. Her fingers get my attention. And she keeps them there for as long as she needs it. * She wears pilot sunglasses that stretch across her face and she thinks she is cool when she leans on the car in the school parking lot. She lowers the glasses down on her nose and looks over the rim. Sometimes she stays in the car and rolls down the window and leans out lowering the glasses. She always parks so the sun is in front of her glancing off the lenses throwing her light. * She turns the music up as she leaves the parking lot. This is her exit on those days she gives me a ride home. Her uniform shirt buttons undone her t-shirt white underneath. She is sweating because the windows are down and it is summer. She believes air conditioning is not cool especially if anyone is watching and besides they need to hear the music too. She says people can see the car and they expect certain things and that these certain things add to the car. As if a sports car needed her and her glasses. I disagree. I remind her of her age as she pulls out. She reminds me of mine. And she reminds me of the age when I will be allowed to drive her car. This age increases every so often. I change the radio station to my type of music which is not her type but she lets me only until sex is mentioned in the lyrics. * I can be sitting in the living room watching television. I can look over as she joins me. She chooses the floor drawing up her knees ankles crossed. She sips a cup of tea and she leans her head on the arm of the couch or whatever chair I'm in. She watches not saying a word. Sometimes she steals a blanket and wraps it around her shoulders looking for all the world like she just walked in from the street. She looks away when I kiss her like she'd rather be doing something else but when I'm done she looks down and smiles. She's embarrassed but she doesn't blush. She just likes hugs better. * A girl I saw. In line by pairs. Jane's chant leading them, my name in rhyme. From Jane's mouth to hers. I like being repeated. I like her saying my name. They jog by blue and white blurring she jogs by and I do not take my eyes from hers. * She says she can't wave to me that she can't smile. She says there is no smiling in the military. But she smiles at me anyway when the brigade passes. * Jane thinks she is funny. Pouring down rain and she moves the car. Squinting through the fog and the downpour trying to recognize the brakelights in a parking lot full of cars most idling most waiting for people to come out and she moves the car. * We have a game. She tries to stomp on my feet and I try to stomp on hers. We wear socks and we chase each other. We fly around furniture stubbing our toes. Mali screams when Jane corners her breaks the rules kicks her in the shins pushes her. I never let myself get backed into a corner. I break the rules and tackle Jane. Trap her feet trying to get a good grip on her arms trying to keep her still so Mali can tickle her. Mali knows all her spots her sensitivities that send her voice to the upper chords her face contorting her feet shaking. Under the arms backs of the knees behind her ears she can keep Jane laughing and choking and I can't even participate because she is making me laugh too. When Mali stops and Jane looks for me I run. * My friend Andrea loves her. She has the biggest crush. And this after we set up a tent in my backyard for a night outdoors and Jane spent the whole night sneaking up on us and shaking the tent. This after Jane released a huge spider in it while we slept and laughed her ass off as we woke up and screamed. She even locked us out when we had to go to the bathroom taping up a sign that said "no service" and closing the curtains. We had to bang until Mali finally was startled awake and let us in. She hangs around outside my room and bursts in just as we get into juicy conversation. She shuts off the breaker switch so our music suddenly stops and the lights go out. She makes fun of our words our clothes our choices of food. She lectures us about grades friends attitudes and still Andrea blushes when Jane comes into the room. * I lost friends in the beginning. I'd have them over Mali seeming nice enough from the school meetings and over the phone and fathers and mothers surprised to be introduced to two women picking up their kids. It took awhile to even have a sleepover but when I did the parents would wonder why their kids had had so much fun. Jane switching off the lights in the whole house and playing torch tag no set bed time and unlimited amounts of chocolate. I never had fun at other friends' houses. * Staring at my friend Andrea from high school staring at Jane. Jane who loved wearing tank tops and jeans and loose watch oblivious to Andrea. Andrea the one with a boyfriend. Apparently just to please her parents. She used to sleep over all the time and once I woke up to Andrea moaning. I listened for a while and then fell asleep. The next morning when she was packing to go I saw her stuff one of Jane's t-shirts in her bag. I have no idea where she got it and I pretended I didn't see. * She looked like she would smoke in bed. Covers drawn up to her breasts knees raised to support a book her body her pillows her head leaning into the light of a table lamp. Her fingers grip the edges of the book but I can imagine a cigarette lit between two fingers and I can imagine her raising her face to inhale it while her eyes never leave the page. The ashes would go on the carpet and the butt flat against the table no need for a tray. She would clean the mess only when she ran out of table space. Now, she is leaning into the porch wall. It's not very high just a divider wall between our front steps and the neighbor's. It only comes up to her chest. The porch space is big enough for a small standing party or a grill or a single bench and now she is standing and talking with two men some friends of Mali's that stepped outside for some air. She is talking and as I approach from across the street she takes a puff on a cigarette her cigarette not the men's and one she is not supposed to have. As I get closer she sees me coming. She turns away me exhales and she tosses the butt over the wall. She turns back as I come up the stairs. She is wearing a suit. Mali picked it out she insisted that a suit is the only appropriate dress for a wake. Blue pants jacket white shirt and blue tie. Her hair is a little longer long enough to just tuck behind her ears and long enough that if she moves her head too quickly the strands come loose and cover her eyes. She likes the length calls it mysterious. I get in her face. I look at her. I know she is guilty I saw her smoking. She knows I know. "Let me smell your breath." She looks at me. Blows air through a corner of her mouth in my direction. I lean over the wall and search for the butt. I let her think I found it. I want to torment her. "You were smoking." She looks away. "I'm telling Mom." She snaps back. "You can't prove it." "There's physical evidence right over there." I point beyond the wall. "And she has her own ways to tell." She smiles slow at first. "Fine." She looks at my hands. "What's in the bag." I alked to the store. For a tie like hers. I show her. "Teach me to knot it. And I'll forget about the smoking." She nods. "Go get changed and I will." * She makes me change the oil put air in the tires rotate the tires and pump the gas. She says I need to know these things. She makes me wax the cars and take a scrub brush to the hubcaps. I am in charge of the jeep's maintenance appointments and I am expected to know the odometer reading. She says maintenance is key and there's no excuse. She complains that I am a pig and leave trash in her car. She collects the evidence for a week and then confronts me. She says she can't wait until I get my first car which she is not buying that she will make herself throw up in the backseat eat chocolate and then rub it into the floor of the car leave dirty tissues between the seats and get her fingerprints on every surface. She says she will encourage my children to do the same. She will not let me forget that I once left a school newspaper in the backseat and that by the time she discovered it the ink had set into the leather. She pulled my allowance until she replaced it. * My friend is in my room. We are blasting music not approved. It's my friend's CD and the volume is up as loud as it can go. We drop the volume at every curse scream over every curse bang our feet on the floor anything we can think of to stifle those words. Jane's at the door. She is looking at us. She wants to hear the song without all the noise. I let the song play but cover her ears. * She complains that I am worse than Ronnie a little sister who steals her cloths and never returns them. I expect her when my bedroom door is closed to come sailing in conducting a search of my drawers and closet and go sailing out. Once finding a pair of underwear she considers taboo in my drawer and holding it up on one finger she cocks her eyebrow and says, "Another sex talk, shall we?" And she forgot about her own search.     Carol Marshall (LW), Cauldron Later that day we came upon what is known as Hell's Half Acre, the wildest rapids on the Green River. This was the only time on the five-day trip that all the rafts were brought up out of the water so we could climb the hills to survey the situation ahead. If need be these rapids are passed up altogether and the rafts are carried overland beyond this spot. After much discussion it was decided that we could shoot them, but only if the rafts were to stay to the left of a large boulder close to the entrance of the rapids. We would go one raft at a time and wait at a designated spot ahead to help anyone who might need it. From our vantage point we could see that this stretch was aptly named. The path to the left of the boulder was wild, with several large boulders jutting up from the raging waters, but to the right of the boulder was a cauldron of pure white froth forming itself into a whirlpool. It was clear that the right hand path was dangerous and potentially life threatening. John, my rafting partner, was the least experienced of the men and so it was decided that our raft would go last. We went back to the boats and held our breath as one raft after the other made it safely through its wild ride; each to the left of the boulder. When it was our turn I scrunched my body into the front of the raft so I could keep the nose down and not have us flip over backwards among those rocks. I gripped the ropes with both hands as tightly as I could and we went for it. The central boulder was looming ahead quickly and when we got to it I knew instantly that John could not take us to the left. The raft was tossed like a twig into the deadly right hand path. Time slowed and as we raced down a several-foot waterfall I stared into the vortex of chaos ahead and knew I was entering the unknown. We plunged into that raging cauldron and were swallowed whole. I was pummeled by the water from every direction. The force of the water was so ferocious that it pushed us deep into that hole, raft and all, and we stayed far enough under so that the pummeling stopped, and there was only the constant pressure of unending water above us. When I was a kid at the Lake we would practice who could hold their breath the longest underwater. I was pretty good at it. Later, when I got into my twenties, and over a period of years, something would close up in my throat without warning and I couldn't breathe. I would stop and stand still; somehow, maybe because of my breath-holding competitions at Waterford, I knew that I had to not waste my breath with action, to just be very still and relax and inevitably within a minute or so my throat would open back up. I had maybe a half dozen such episodes in my life. Here, now, in this hole in Hell's Half Acre, I got very, very still, I waited, and I relaxed. In that roaring silence came peace and my body was flooded with the absolute knowledge that I could trust Artemis, Goddess of that water and those wild lands, now and forever. That trust filled every cell of my body. I felt like I could have waited there underwater forever. Without warning, the river spit us up and out and the entire raft shot out of the water at maybe a 40-degree angle. We became completely air-bourne. I was still holding on for all I was worth, but my body that had been curled tightly into a ball was now stretched out full length. As we slammed down on the other side of the cauldron I looked back to see if John was still there and somehow, miraculously, he was. I had an insane split second where I knew I could blame him for putting our lives in jeopardy or accept that Artemis had steered this course. The decision was made before the thought was finished. I hollered out "OOU-EEE! WHAT A RUSH!" from the bottom of my heart and lungs, and experienced the closest thing I ever have to ecstasy. I laughed with pure joy. John chimed in and the two of us were yelling and laughing when we caught up to the others. Anita told me that she figured my brother would kill her for losing his sister. Most of them thought we were gone. They told us we must have been underwater for the better part of two minutes and they had no idea if we were going to be coming back up, or what shape we'd be in when we did. We were fine; better than fine. I felt completely and wonderfully alive. It would be years before I would fully realize what happened to me there. I know now that I was born again. I entered that watery womb of Mother Earth, and Artemis, the mid-wife, brought me out into Her wild and natural world, wet and hollering; this time, with joy.     Susan Moul (LW), The flesh soul: the new new feminism [link]       Rhonda Patzia (alumna), Two photos [link]     Cynthia Perry (EE), Semester self-evaluation I began this semester's work in the Haybarn at Goddard measuring the height of the wooden beams from the floor. My work continued on the plane back to Kansas where I imagined combinations of colors and shapes and recorded them on paper. These were the first steps in tackling my study plan to create "art". This semester was going to be my chance to experience being an artist, a concept I've been intrigued with and played around the edges of since I started sewing 35 years ago. To ensure there was no mistake in my mind as to what my intention was I had also committed to having an exhibit of my fabric pieces in my hometown sometime during the semester. (I had already planned to show my work at my final presentation at Goddard in August of 2006.) Two and a half months of non-stop planning, prioritizing, and making brought the exhibit into reality. On November 13, 2005, I held a showing of my fabric pieces for family and friends in the sanctuary of Unity church in Lawrence, Kansas. With that event and 400 pages of process notes behind me, I can now review what happened. What I began to realize was that each of the themes, whether it was facing my fears and moving outside my comfort zone, following a plan or going with my gut feelings, making decisions or allowing something to be revealed, were all related directly to the fact that I was engaged in the creative process. In particular, I was taken with: How I knew intuitively what steps to take to see each piece to completion. How working on all the pieces at the same time, each in some state of completion, brought a tension and rhythm to the process that I needed. How I intuitively knew when to step back and give myself some space and when to make a firm decision and move on. How important it was to me to make all the decisions myself. The number of revisions each piece went through and how I made decisions that brought each piece to its best and "right" final version in the end. How I learned that truly being in the process meant I wouldn't know how things would come out. I struggled with one piece and in the end rejected it because it just didn't turn out in a form I could show. On the other hand, I ended up showing another piece that took a form I wasn't expecting at all but was very pleased with. The power of being aware. How having plenty of quiet time with myself allows me to be in touch with and recognize signs and connections from the Universe which turns this into a co-creative process. How I applied techniques I had learned from sewing, made up new techniques to fit a particular piece and even within the same piece, modified the technique to create the result I wanted. A natural marrying of technique with material. How quickly my fingers settled into patterns and habits of movement. How I also allowed the material and technique to dictate the final look. In some cases, coming right out and asking the material to reveal the form it needed to take. How much I accomplished in two and a half months (working full time at my other job also) designing and making the pieces and the displays for each one, sending out announcements, creating the collateral for the exhibit, writing pages and pages of process notes, and actually pulling off the exhibit. I like working on big projects. How rewarding it was to work with my dad. The creativity, skill, laughter, and support he brought to the experience were invaluable to me. How the creative process is my grounding. The metaphors and life lessons that were revealed simply because I was working with materials. How important my writing/journaling was to the process. Not only at the time of doing the work when I just needed to let my thoughts roll out but also to see the lessons and themes later when I read what I had written. How in the end, without my realizing it at the time, each of the four pieces I had created represented a different aspect of how I relate to the world. How I see the world. The sensibilities I bring to the experiences of my life. From my process notes I describe them as: The lively movement of "gatherings". The subtle richness of texture in "12 Stitches." The colorful simplicity of "Nine-Patch." The understated power of "Bars." They're all parts of me I need to express. To recognize. To appreciate and let out. That's what this process has given me. Wow. In the quiet moments of the morning of the show, my words lead me to this observation about myself, revealed in the form of my work.   The language I use to interpret the world and to express my self in it is form ­ in shapes and patterns, colors, texture, and movement. If I were asked to summarize what being in the creative process means to me I would say from my experience this semester that it all comes down to being in the present moment. The times I panicked were when I jumped ahead of where I was and imagined myself at the exhibit, for instance. It was unknown and scary because I wasn't there yet. If I brought my self back to the present moment and got back in the process where I was right then, I met the challenge of that moment, made the decision I needed to make, and eventually moved through to completing each of the pieces. And when they were finished, I held the exhibit. If I jump beyond where I am and try to imagine what it is I want in my exhibit at Goddard, I can't do it. But if I think about what interests me now, what a piece I've already made is saying to me, what I want to feel right now (certain color combinations, a texture or movement I want to experience), I can begin to create. I create in this moment. And the decisions I make in each following moment will move me through to where I will eventually end up with a new piece. I just have to engage. Engaging ensures that I will create something. What stands out to me the most when I read through my process notes of this semester is how confident I am when I'm engaged in the creative process. It truly is my mastery. When I move from being in my thinking/analyzing mind and commit to the creative process I get sucked into a flow that just naturally carries me. In this case, it was my love of the colors, textures, shapes, and movement that can be created with fabric that held my attention. But it was the intention I set to have an exhibit of my creative work that really pulled me through the process. It was having the exhibit that forced me to face my fears and doubts. The exhibit was something that on the one hand was very foreign to me. It caused me to question who I was to think I could consider myself an artist. And on the other hand, it was the one thing I came to know I couldn't create without. Cynthia Perry, Process writing   I have turned my front room into my studio ­ really. My ironing board is up. The Nine-Patch is on the wall. The Timeless Becoming piece for which I cut out more 1" strips tonight and will continue to work on some everyday is on the floor. I'm working on the 12 Stitches on my table. The fabric for the Bars piece is sitting out for me to continue to look at ­ the colors. And I didn't move any of it when I finished tonight. It all stays in whatever state I leave it in. This is my work space. I like not thinking I have to make it some other way. I'm even comfortable with that now. I'm interested in seeing that I'm getting all the pieces going in various stages. I can't just work on one of them at a time. In some ways, each feeds the other. Or I get inspired with one and move to it. Then another thought comes about the other one. I'm working on the voile piece on my work table. The Nine Patch hangs on the wall and I'll be putting the Bars up on the other blank wall in my room this weekend. * Have I mentioned how much I like living in my studio. I am truly living in it this time. I've always had a sewing area, usually a whole room so I could keep out whatever I'm working on; didn't have to put it away because the space needed to be used for something else. But now I'm more than just keeping it out. It's not neatly folded somewhere. All the projects are in process. I eat at my table in the window in the same space, lie down on the floor to rest with the pieces on the walls around me. The ironing board is set up all the time. The high shelf beside the work table is filled with the things I need to work ­ various threads, masking tape, a ruler and the marking pen, scissors, CDs I'm listening to, not in any order on the shelf. It creates a comfortable feeling. I'm really into the space. * At least working toward an exhibit has made me make a commitment that gets it outside my head. Outside of wondering, imagining, pretending and into experiencing it. The good and the bad. The unknowns. The ones that turn out differently from what I had imagined they would because I didn't realize that doing that stitch pattern on that fabric shape would cause that result. Something I didn't have figured out beforehand. * But that example is as devastating for me to handle as the one related to a relationship where I get some scenario going in my head ­ some idea of how I expect or want the piece to look when I finish ­ and it doesn't happen that way. Mad that my emotions have the power to take me to a place in my head that can't happen in reality. I can get myself there so quickly and deeply in my head. I can be addicted. I want to be addicted. To unthinkingly give in. Building up a feeling for someone. The expectancy, the energy that builds toward some moment in the future. And what's left when that moment comes. A memory. I have lived most of my life on the side of expectancy. Always building up to something. Not necessarily having downers because I create another expectancy the minute one is finished. I expect too much. Or maybe i have just expected and never committed enough to get to the other side very many times. The side that hurts. That says it wasn't all that you expected. Life never can be. It's too difficult to be with anyone else but yourself. So i live with the process. It's my addiction. My love that i can't get enough of. That I'm willing to give so much to. That I can give as much as I want to. It's the tension between loving something so much but also having to deal with it in reality. I'm giving myself over to this process of making like I've never given myself in a relationship. After writing this morning and knowing now that I have the Bars piece to get to work on, I feel grounded. I've come back to myself. I want to stay grounded. I need to. The process is the grounding in my life. I have definitely found a new love in my life ­ my self in the creative process. I've always felt that if I were to be left all alone except for my fabric, it would be enough. The idea of knowing that there is always something that can be created is very comforting to me. It's also very empowering for me. I don't have to rely on anyone else to "give me life". I am my own person. * I'm finding that having to think about how something would be "shown" in an exhibit is getting in the way of something I might do. I'll have an idea and begin to work through it in my head ­ thinking about how it would be. Many times I'll scrap an idea because it seems it wouldn't be possible to hang it or put it up. I guess I have to realize I have the wall, the floor, or hanging in between. Maybe it's the same issue I have with thinking about being an artist ­ of using my head instead of my hands to figure out what I'm going to do. I need to just play with my ideas and let it come that way. I'll figure out how to "show" it when that time comes. * How long I've been tight with this issue ­ the issue of creating for creating's sake. The issue of thinking I'm not good enough to do this kind of thing. I thought a lot about how much of how I view the world is through form ­ the line, shape, texture and color of things. That's how I create. I see the world in shapes. I interpret what I see as shape, texture, and color. And I respond with form. Seeing this from the perspective of an aesthetician verifies even more for me that aesthetics is part of what I'm probing. I had this flash of a title for my thesis - "But is it Art? - permission to be an artist." It was one of those times that I have often when I look at the trunk when I would have liked more than anything to be able to express how those colors and texture make me feel. It's more a sense that I want to be their color and texture. That IS it. I realized that if I try to figure out what I might "create" next from the place of calling myself an artist, I get too scared, I lose confidence. BUT if I start from where I am IN THE PROCESS and just let the next step, the next piece unfold from there I'm OK. It's just the next feeling that I need to express. Being in the process feels comfortable. It's not scary or inauthentic. It's the real thing. And if I can get to the exhibit (seeing my pieces hanging in a room with people looking at them as art) on that path, if I can know that I got there in an authentic way, maybe I'll be OK. My passion and the process have combined. And I'm learning that the doing is much more powerful than analysis and imagining. And where does passion come from? The mind or the imaginings? How passionate can I be without an exhibit or a relationship? Really passionate. Not imagining passion. Not creating for no reason. Passion that pushes me on. Passion that forces me. How passionate can I be without a commitment? Without engaging? Without saying THIS IS WHO I AM. THS IS WHAT I FEEL. THS IS WHAT I NEED. It's not a need because I can't find it in myself. It's a need because I CAN find it in myself. Because I CAN create I NEED the exhibit. Because I DO love myself I WANT a relationship. They're the commitments that force me out. That bring the unknowns. That are scary. That make me angry. That make me want to run. That bring such a high. * So I was cutting up some fruit for my late night snack in the kitchen and looked through the window onto the work table at the orange threads. Why was the pattern being distorted? I just don't understand what's happening here. I headed back to the work table to try and figure it out because I knew then that this wasn't going to work. I pulled out the paper "collar" pattern and began laying it on the stitches to see where I was going off. Sure enough, every stitch after the first one was getting off the curve a bit. Now there was a metaphor. The actual physicalness (I know that's not a word but I use it a lot) of why this phenomenon is happening. I don't even know what general category this falls under - the case of a curved line moving out from itself and changing. AND I need to decide conceptually, emotionally, metaphorically if I want the pattern to stay the same or change. I think that's saying that this design needs to be based on what it means to me emotionally, metaphorically rather than ending up with a pattern that's based on having figured out a solution to the geometric, formal aspect of the design itself. Wow. There's a good distinction to have made. Another clue into how and on what I base my designs. I do need to know there is a deeper meaning to what I'm doing. To make a connection at some emotional level. It's not the kind of emotion that Collingwood bases his theory of creativity on. Where the maker has an emotion and that emotion carries them through the creative process to the other end. Where they have no idea what the final outcome will be until they get to the other end. And where the final product then describes to the maker what their initial emotion was. No, I start from a place of physicalness ­ of lines, shapes, colors and texture. And from that, meaningfulness seems to emerge or be revealed. Most times in metaphor. As in this case. That was the turning point. The moment I realized that every line moving away from the first line was changed a bit to where by the last line the original curve was barely distinguishable. Change taking place right before my eyes. Me, making change happen. But change based on an initial line that was still there just in a different shape. These kinds of insights/meanings are revealed through and because of the fact that I'm working with materials. Asking them to do certain things, placing them in combination with other things sets up tensions that reveal truths. Whoa! (Or however you spell it.) There's another biggy. Now the creative process is becoming even deeper. Now I'm beginning to see a reason to do this that has nothing to do with whether the finished product is called "art". Where "art" isn't even the goal. This is a major insight. A huge experience to have. It is the love of working with the materials AND the truths that are revealed that are the reasons I do this. That takes most of the worry about being judged away. It's a personal thing that is then given/shared with others to interpret as they will. But I don't think they can ever experience or come to the same truth I have. I think that is only possible from being in the process of making. Others may get to the truths, the deep understandings, the real lessons about life from doing other things. I am finding them in this process. I am creating ­ making where there wasn't before - and just by doing that I am being led to really neat, meaningful ideas that can be used in my life. With this having just been revealed as the reason to do this process, I'm now hooked. Because now I can detach from the "art" and "artist" thing. I'm doing something for myself - to learn about life. That's the unknown going into a project. Not whether it's going to be considered "art" when it's completed. What I'm thinking now is that I can go into this process simply because I want to experience revelation ­ being revealed something. That's enough and that's meaningful. I would also have to say, so that it doesn't look like I'm completely bashing "art", that it's neat that the product of this kind of a process is recognized by society. But how much of what the viewer sees as "art" is the artistic qualities, the formal aspects, and how much of it is the meaning that was revealed? This question comes up when looking at the Amish quilt. For me, as a maker, I am finding meaning through the process. This kind of meaning has probably been there for me (happening in my unconsciousness) all the years I've been working with these materials; it was only in writing about it that I was able to bring it into my consciousness. The Amish quiltmaker may also have had the same kinds of revelations. I can never know. She herself may never consciously know. (I can be fairly sure that at least one of the main reasons she was making the quilt was for utilitarian reasons.) But the fact is that the quilts that hung in the 1971 Whitney Museum exhibit were displayed as art because of their flat formal artistic qualities ­ their line, shape, and color. Will the viewer of my 12 Stitch curved line pattern see it as a progression of lines laid down graphically in a flat design, or as change and all that means, as I did? Is this the question I'm trying to answer with all this? Perhaps the answer to that will be revealed more as I move on. I don't feel I've carried out a very logical conclusion or given significant supporting arguments to what seems to be a basic question in my thesis work. Doing the work, though, as revealed in this writing, is certainly giving me another perspective from which to come at this question. I want to continue on in the process to find out more. The question for me to answer now is, have I decided that this stitch will begin with a gently curving line and move to the changed shape? I'll look at it and decide. I've just learned that the judgment of whether it's art doesn't need to play into my thinking in the making. I mean I don't have to come from the place of art to begin. But how about the other "j" word ­ justification. How much do I need to justify my work by explaining to my audience the meaning it has for me? There was a time when that would have been a big issue. I would have wanted others to know that part. But it feels now that it's enough for me to know that meaning was revealed. It's HUGE enough. But it's enough that I know it. That's why I do this work. It's one of the amazing outcomes of it. I'm feeling I won't need to tell my audience what meaning a certain piece revealed or has for me to justify its existence. There might be a time when I would describe something but it would be for the reason that I think it would enhance the viewer's experience of the piece ­ not because I needed them to know this to justify my doing the piece at all. In all this, I really can't say that I understand the phenomenon that's happening. But I can see now what's going to happen and I'm OK with that. * When I think about what I might do for a Borders piece I realize that I'm trying to get at the essence of what the border, binding means to me. Not its essence philosophically or spiritually, but its physical essence. How I relate to its physicalness. It's the same thing I'm trying to express when I see the bark on the sycamore tree. I want to recreate the feeling that those colors and texture produce in me. And it seems it needs to be in 3-dimensional form. There is an essence there that I can't put a word to but it's the same essence I'm trying to figure out how to express in a borders piece. It's more than the color combinations of the Nine-Patch that are vibrant and striking to me. It's more than the shapes and texture of the Bars. I'm trying to express a physical reaction. A sense of a physicalness. I guess that's the difference I see between the flat quilt and a garment. That's pretty obvious now that I say it. But it's also why I need more than the flatness. The Borders piece will be my next piece and it needs to be in the exhibit. BUT it's not the real "next" piece. It's the transition to it. I have visual ideas in my mind of what the real "next" piece(s) will be and I know that I need to get there through the Borders piece. Interesting that it's the Borders piece, the one that asks the question whether something is being held in or something is being kept out that becomes the transition. For me, it's both. I'm holding in my expression of my self and I'm keeping out anyone else being able to give me their self. If all creativity is really love, that's it. Borders is also the one that I relate so much to the Amish and the society they have created within their borders. Somehow there's a pressure when it's "art" that yes, adds pressure but it also makes me want it more. * Seven times 88 is 616 yards. I hate that I took it to this example in my head but that's 6 football field lengths. Wow. What happens as I pick up speed and move along is that the colors of the 6" strip and the binding blend in the periphery of my vision so that when the blue of the binding is beside the chartreuse of the strip, the blue takes on a look of turquoise or when the purple is next to the chartreuse it becomes a dark burgundy/rust and the purple changes color when it's next to the russet. The small insets are doing what I had imaged they would do. Bringing life to the edge. It brings me joy to see what has randomly been created. Every time I look I let out a small sigh at the marvelous configuration that has happened. * I have a good feel for how long and hard I can keep the iron on the cotton (and not scorch the material), creasing that part while the fingers of my left hand turn under the binding in front of the point of the iron. I move the iron along at a steady rate over the piece of fabric that runs the length of the ironing board. I actually felt like I was molding, manipulating the fabric with the iron at times. As the gatherings begin to pile up and take their natural form I notice that the gathered edge is adding a texture to the piece that I hadn't anticipated. * I feel I have something to say about potential. It feels like the reading, writing, thinking and acting I've done the past two or three years is about that. Whether it's about perceptions, beauty, deep ecology, re-enchanting our everyday life, or the creative process. It bothers me that every time I try to write about this kind of stuff it sounds airy or naïve or idealistic. Not concrete. * Will I continue to play and make when it's over. That's what I'm really wondering. I just received Ellie's reply and after reading it ­ reading what I wrote last time - I'm feeling a kind of sad and a little panicky. Like I can't keep doing it at the level of that packet. This packet won't be as good, as rich, as revealing. It's like I want to stop with right here. It's back to "life after the exhibit" in my head. How can I make that process be as creative as this is? As "concrete"? as what I'm doing now? Knowing exactly where I was in the process, what I would be doing that evening when I got home was my comfort. I'm having a major thing with this being over. More I would have to say than doing it. The not having it in my life now that I've tasted it. It's unbearable for me to think of it not being in my life. It's amazing to me that the thing I felt so much fear about even doing in the first place has become something I don't ever want to give up. My fear now is being on the other side of it. To the point of crying. It's sadness. I DON'T WANT TO EVER GIVE IT UP. Like I've had to give up other things. To be without it. Like I've had to be without in my life. Is this the one thing I can call my own. It is my own. It's me. It doesn't get any closer than that. I can have it. Keep it. It's my decision. I get to make this one. And because there's no one else involved, I can have it be the way I need it to be. For me. I can live my life as fully as I can. That's my decision. My gift to myself. I needed to say I don't ever want to give it up. I needed to know that it means that much to me. It's that important to me. It makes that much difference in my life. "It" being the process. So I've found my voice ­ not only in the making but through writing about it. I've connected with my voice. Maybe that's what I don't want to lose. My connection with myself. Like it's where I can be now. That I'll always have that. Maybe it's not until you really know that connection that you really feel like expressing it and sharing it. Or knowing that connection makes you want to express it. Share it. * I said to myself on my walk home from the bus yesterday, I'm really only really comfortable with myself. I'm my least natural when I'm working with people when there's talking that needs to be done. When I'm in a meeting it doesn't come naturally to me to feel the flow, know when to say something or really say what I'm thinking. So I normally don't say much, especially if there are more than three other people. Then the group's too big. I think about everything too much in those situations. Either before I say something or after I say it. * This thing about being involved with someone to make them feel good. That's the thing I'm aware that I'm not doing. It has to do with my thinking that that's the only way someone will "like" me. If I like what they're doing or talking about. It feels like a compromise to me now. Like I'm not being truthful to myself OR to the person, really. It's giving up my time to be with or listen to them talk about or do something that I really don't want to do or I don't believe in. A "vision has to be the deep burning 'YES' that empowers you to say 'No'"! (Stephen Covey) Hadn't gotten so involved in something for myself that I naturally just said "no" to other things in my life. I'm there now. I'm being my authentic self when I can say "no". When I can wear the same pants to work three days in a row. When I don't care what my hair looks like. I'm saying there's more to me than that. I've discovered the "more" in me. I don't have to fake it. Or pretend that I'm having a good time. Or that I agree. * Every color was in its right place from the beginning. Nothing stood out to me as being off. I didn't take any more time to hem and haw about whether this would be better here etc. My first instincts were right on. I didn't question them after that. Before I started I said to myself. OK, gatherings. I want you to let me know how you want to be for this thing. I didn't have a choice. I had to cut it there and that's exactly where it needed to be cut to make this piece be right. It would give me just enough gatherings to complete the arrangement on the frame. My request had been answered all the way through. I asked the fabric to let me know how it wanted to be in this. I let go of my ideas. Of any preconceived ways that it should be. I had allowed the fabric to show me. And it did. That was neat. For me to allow myself to be unsure the day before the exhibit was a big thing. And for me to step aside and give the final answer to the fabric was another neat thing to experience the day before the exhibit. * Before he left, I put my arms around him and gave him a big thank you. That's something I've never done before. So spontaneous and full of energy. I really did get energized from moving the chairs. When I came up to the sanctuary after that to situate the pieces I noticed that I was making decisions about this and that with no hesitation. At one point my Mom was standing near Gatherings and I saw her fingers headed for the folds. I shouted out, Don't touch that. And I sense a new kind of confidence. I felt so natural and authentic and comfortable at the exhibit. Being on the other side of the exhibit gave me such a real sense of time. How it moves on. Maybe more than I've ever felt. And something about not holding on to anything. How we can't hold on. We have to experience and move on. Let life flow. It will flow. I'm really feeling the movement of life. This was a particular event that I decided to have in the future. So I was focused on it. Spent my time preparing for it. But every moment is an event. Each one comes and we move through it. To the next. And the next. My life is moving. It doesn't feel so much like change. But movement. I'm feeling energized from this feeling of movement. And awakened to it. It's a feeling of flowing with life. Again last night I said out loud that there is no reason why I should ever not be engaged and participating. That life is so there for fulfillment. I was feeling it so much. I'm thinking now that the word possibility implies on the edge. You have to be on the edge to be open to possibilities? Possibilities are choices. And choices put you on the edge. The edge is potential. So I move along a continuum of potential. * I was so excited, so glad to hear that it read right. My joy lead to an overwhelming feeling that brought tears to my eyes. It felt like I had come up against something big and gotten through it. There was a shift. I was high. Still in a state of real satisfaction. The kind of satisfaction that comes from sticking with something. Seeing it through. And finding out what it's like on the other side. * It's amazing to me when I think about it what a big deal it is to get these expressions of myself out in the world. How much it means. How much it affects me. What it means to the people I've asked to come. Art. It has an amazing power to it. So I admit that I like saying this is who I am. This is what I can do. Did. Am doing. I like being out there. I'm still more comfortable with the parts of it that don't require words. But I'm doing more and more of the words also. There are times when I think that all I really would have liked to have had was Timeless. Sitting in the middle of the floor. But really, really big. In some ways that's more telling. That I could put just that out there when I have all these other visions in my head. To not have to show those to others. To say this is what the quilt comes down to. Time. This is what life comes down to. Time. And how we spend it. I love the message. And there's a part of me that needs to get down to the essence of something in that way. But I'm not quite ready to say this is all of me that I'm going to show. I need others to see these other parts of me. The lively movement of Gatherings. The subtle richness of texture in 12 Stitches. The colorful simplicity of Nine-Patch. The understated power of Bars. They're all parts of me that I need to express. To recognize. To appreciate and let out. That's what this project has given me. Has revealed. A glimpse of each of these parts of me. Really. I'm amazed to see those distinctions made real in my work. Seeing them in this form makes me know in a more true way that they really are all who I am. I can be and need to be all these ways. I look at the world in these ways. Wow. * I sat on the floor in the middle of my studio eating popcorn out of a bag and crying. That crying that comes from deep inside. And said out loud, with tears running down my face, I needed it to be gray today, for the wind to be blowing. I had just returned from a walk in/with the wind, thinking how glad I was that my lover the wind was there. I needed to know I could feel. And here I was feeling. I wasn't finished feeling from that moment yesterday when I realized and said out loud how much I didn't want to lose this process. This process of going somewhere. Of saying something. The process that leads to the exhibit? When I said I didn't want to lose like I've lost before. For the first time saying it out loud. I lost something very dear to me. Saying it was dear to me. Admitting it was special. Up to now trying to convince myself maybe that it wasn't that big a deal. That it wasn't that special. But being led to a place yesterday where I could say and feel how much it meant to me. How devastated I was that I lost it. Not wanting to go through that again. But today that feeling has taken me to another time in my life when the same thing happened. A time I also realize now that I never have really cried about. I never REALLY allowed myself to feel that loss. I acted like it was OK. It wasn't that big a deal. But now that I get close to experiencing something I don't want to lose I have reached back to that time to know the real loss I felt. I said yesterday, don't give me this idea, this experience, this possibility and then take it way from me (the process and the exhibit). I needed to have this process take me to the place where I could say I do fear loss. Even though I feel closer to myself also. It's because of being that much closer to my self that I can feel and admit my feelings about loss. They aren't the kind of feelings that lead to guilt or thinking I need to make it better or all right or the way it was. The fact that this process led me to feeling and saying that I do hurt is amazing when I think about it. I would never have thought I would have gotten to this point. It came upon me so suddenly but so strongly. It's like the Universe had to use this to come upon me by surprise. To get me involved in something where I lose myself so easily, give myself so totally to it, and then BOOM, realize that it won't always be this way. It's OK. I'm glad it happened. I feel better now knowing that I had those reactions. That I feel that deeply about loss. * Our path led through prairie grasses, so tall that I felt as though I was one of them. They were gorgeous, not only in their amber and russet tones but in their swaying and sometimes violent movement. (Moving as one mass just like the flocks of gulls and other small birds that darted and wove together in the air above us.) The wind on top of Sanders Point was so strong it almost blew me over. I planted myself firmly. It stung my face as I stood straight into it. I loved the feel of its biting cold. I was surrounded by the wild movement of the tall grasses on the hillside. And out from that, whitecaps that flared up on the lake. With daylight fading quickly the grays, browns, blacks, russets and greens became even more rich, deeper. There were no words to express my feelings of being in that world of wind and color at that time. It was powerful. It was breathtaking. I loved it. The next day I realized just how much my interest lies within the world of nature. It's a world that has opened up to me or that I have given myself to over the past two or three years. My bigger search, my real passion beyond whether I'm an artist is how I can express the beauty I see in the world. How to preserve it and help others see it. * I just stood inside the doorway and stared at it I thought to myself that the arrangement I had chosen worked. There wasn't anything I would change about it. Each time I see it I'm taken with it. Everything in my morning routine was out of sequence this morning because I kept running back to the computer to say the next thing. The thing I didn't want to forget. The thing that was important for me to get out and know that I understood or felt. Being on the other side of the exhibit and in a place to allow new ideas to come is really helping me understand where it is I come from when I create. What is important to me. What I want to say. I can read the theory about what they call these different approaches and think I know where I stand on them, but doing it allows me to experience the process. TO EXPERIENCE. WHAT I HAVE TO DO to get at my LIFE!!!! The difference this time, in creating, in being after the exhibit is that I'm comfortable with the idea that I would exhibit these things. I just automatically think that that's what I'll do with them. I recognize that since I started reading my notes I've slowly kicked into the next level of work. I was eating my breakfast this morning and had these clear thoughts about the creative process and how being creative is so much a part of life, IS life. I had this rush that says, "Oh my God, I'm so still in the process. Of understanding more. Making more connections. Explaining to myself what it is for me. Coming up with my approach. My philosophy of life. All because I experienced it!! * To appreciate the parts that do fit. And I'm doing that ­ with all my friends. And that feels very mature and good. My female self is such a strong influence, in her drive for beauty. (Being in a relationship that is right, that allows for an outpouring of expression, is beauty to her.) But I have found a better balance. Balance with my male self whose search is for truth. I now begin from a place of being true to myself and I find beauty in my world to satisfy myself first. More mature. (I use that word a lot. It's a feeling I have that moves me away from a certain naivety that I used to project toward a state where I am still very "taken" with life but in a richer, more grounded way.) * It's not repeating anything. This part of the process is very different from when I began back in September. I mean I'm at the point of beginning to think of pieces I could do but what I'm visioning now is happened BECAUSE of what I've been through. It's very different from when I first started. And at the same time that I'm thinking of new ideas I'm processing the last things I did. The exhibit. What this means to me. Such a rich way to live. I have opened to the world right here much more in the past year. * As I looked at each piece in the show I found myself thinking that each of these women was saying what they wanted to say in their own way. I was coming from a different place in going to this exhibit and looking at these pieces. I felt something in common with these women because I had exhibited my stuff too. I was in sympathy for what they were doing and at the same time knew very quickly which ones spoke to me. * From my root chakra I am so much more grounded now. And from the second chakra, I am so much stronger in knowing "who I am". I wasn't getting sucked into his control. I was still in control in that I was working within the intention, the energy I had set. I also realize that some of the things I have written are as profound TO ME as what other artists have said. I'm thinking about the part where I asked the "gatherings" to let me know, about how they did, and about how I recognized the strength (and newness) that it took and was for me to allow that to happen the afternoon before the exhibit. For some reason that part made a huge impression on me when I read it. Looking at it in the past and from the outside now, I realize how much on the edge I allowed myself to be at that point. I didn't even realize how much "on the edge" I was then. But when I was in the flow, I allowed it to happen that way. I opened myself to the process. I had some confidence deep inside that I would get to a resolution. I do have a deep need to express and I've learned that when I'm expressing myself, I experience life at its very purest. I make a connection that feeds me and pours out in all the other areas of my life. Love. The process itself really became a friend, my closest companion. Many times it was just me and it. But that was so enough. * Looks like I just gave a definition of what relationship means to me ­ something that allows for an outpouring of expression. Using this definition, when I do my art I'm in relationship. When I play music, I'm in relationship. Art is both love and friendship and understanding. (Ansel Adams) No it's not a test. That's what it isn't. It's a sharing. * The other aspect of art that I have come to value is art as a new form of wealth: the more creative people become, the more opportunity they have to experience the joys of creativity, the less they will be consumers, especially of mass-produced culture, and the more time they will embed themselves in that form of richness. I see that as a kind of new wealth that counts for more than owning or having material things. Roszak * I have awakened this morning with lots to write about. I have to keep writing a journal when this is over. I just realized it's as if I'm talking with someone. I realize now so much that I need to express myself through this form because it keeps me out of my academic voice. When I think about saying what I want to say right now in a well-thought out way, I feel frustrated. Like there's too much to try and pull together that way. I don't have it all thought out. But I do have some definite connections I want to talk about. That are important to me. Writing them in a personal journal sets up a kind of filter through which my thoughts just flow. I don't have the idea that what I say has to be in order. I can rearrange when I go back. It doesn't necessarily have to be thought through. I don't sit for long periods of time thinking about what I need to say next. Wording the whole sentence in my head like I do when I write "academically". Those long periods of thought then making me lose track of where I really wanted to go with the idea I had. Writing in a personal journal allows me to just let the words flow out. In fact, I feel so confident in this process now that I know this format will be my first pass on getting my thoughts out. I gained that trust in this vehicle for expressing when I reread all my process notes from this semester. My writing brings me to tears. Again I find that the words I wrote are so powerful. I think a whole lot of that reaction comes because I never go back and read what I've written at the time of writing it. It's only when I read it later that I connect it to me. Realize (sometimes barely) that I wrote those things. Realize more importantly that I felt them. I am so pleased with what came out of me, now the words as much as, and maybe more than, the fabric. That's what it feels like I want to do the most right now. Read my own writing. Read my own process and what it was/is to me. It feels like if I make other things I want to continue the process of writing. That's so much a part of how I do my "art". It helps to write at the time of doing (it's a very natural part of the process) and is so worthwhile to have when I finish and look back. My words support some other part of the process that doesn't show in the fabric pieces. That I'm not even aware of, most of the time (until I read them later). * I'm set up to stitch Timeless Becoming on the couch. And I do. But there's this strange sensation. I see the strip of cloth moving along the floor through the doorway into the other room. It's like this life-line that has been pulled away from the center, the heart, the what? Is Timeless expanding? Changing? It looks kind of neat. Like a Goldsworthy line moving somewhere. Taking me somewhere. * I awaken at 2:30am and have to write. As I leave my bedroom, I notice what appears as a thin strip of light in the hallway - a shadow formed from moonlight coming in the window? I jog myself into reality and think it couldn't be from the moon this time of month. And then I realize it's the strip of muslin lying on the floor. Wow. What interesting effects this strip is having on me, moving out and beyond the place it's known for so long. The only place I thought it did belong. I sit at the computer to write seeing the movement of the undulating white strip out of the corner of my eye. * "Oh the Timeless cut loose, huh?" Oh my God, he saw it, to begin with. He remembered the name of it, secondly. AND he described exactly what it did!!! * So I've been thinking about making more gatherings but presenting them in a way that highlights both edges. This may be it. Sets the stage for the next "gatherings" piece I'm going to do. The one where the strips of gatherings just fall from the ceiling, free form. And maybe lie on the floor. Movement. Movement to the next form that grows naturally from this one. Neat. Feels like a momentum is picking up. Not to a frantic pace. But to something where I can feel that things are going to start moving again. New ideas. Seems like maybe it just takes doing something with one piece to cause the overall momentum to raise. Now I have the time to let the "next" thing come naturally. Both from the pieces I've already done and thinking about pieces that relate to new themes. I also realize there have to be times when I won't know what to do. It won't be obvious to me. My challenge will come in keeping an outlet for that work in sight. In having a reason for doing it. It was perfect that I had the exhibit. Now that I'm through it I realize that it was critical to have had the goal of the exhibit. Without it this semester I would have just been doing. I think all my writing came from the fact that I was doing more than "making". I was making for a reason. Can I do another one? I think the next few months are critical to what happens when I'm finished at Goddard. If I can keep a thread of making going during this time and not get back into the intellectual place of just writing my thesis, I think that will help me see how life can be after Goddard. The next thing will come from something very close it seems. I have to stay pulled in. Be aware of the small things that are happening around me. That's what being close means. Following on from the point where I'm at. Not jumping way ahead, out there, to a place that has no connections to anything now. What I need to do is just start in on the feeling that I want to have in making it. * I am so thrilled to come to the realization that my "thesis" writing process can be so personal. That I have the OK to continue to work with my words. I want to push that part of me. That voice in me. I was dreading so much having to return to the scholarly/academic stuff. My MA is personal. I so want to stay in this place and go deeper with it. I'm actually invigorated to continue now. I write so fast when thoughts like these are coming to me. I can't keep up with my thoughts. Such a difference in speed from when I'm writing my thesis statement. There I sit on each word. Wondering if it really conveys or is really what I want to say. I think both speeds are needed. I just don't want the thesis to seem too "written" because of that. I don't want to get away from my voice when I'm thinking and processing fast. I realized that I was going to have gobs more written stuff pulled out than I would need for a summary. So what happened is that I began working on two levels. Pulling out what supported the themes I identified and then starting a second level of writing short paragraphs or sentences as an overall feeling struck me. This writing is what will become my summary evaluation. Everything I pulled out and put under certain themes will become support for and part of my process paper. I'm also noting books that have been important to me as I read through the material. That'll become my academic support. All a process. Of layers almost. I'm so much more relaxed working without the need to be scholarly. I can see that that kind of stuff will come out naturally if I'm in this relaxed place. It already has in my writing in places. I'll refer to an art theory or something about the creative process in relation to how I do it. In the case of the process paper, I had to balance the need to go deep inside myself with keeping the light tone in my voice. When I say deep inside I mean really getting to the core of what this has been about.     Gwen Stanley (EE), Graphic novel - packet notes, proposal October 21 I did a lot of drawing/sketching in undergrad but it didn't thrill me; a couple years ago I experimented with drawing on top of the magazine ads, and then I started drawing from the ads as a reference, and then from old family photos. My most recent project is a collection of drawings from photographs of my mother as a child (mid-1950's photos.) I started doing this using watercolors, but now I actually draw the outlines, scan them in and use my drawing tablet to do the coloring and shading. That way I never run out of paint. My husband and I saw the film The Realm of the Unknown about the artist Henry Darger, a couple weeks ago. I'd never heard of him, but the cover struck me because his work reminded me of mine - he used collage with a drawing of a little girl. It turns out that he used tracing methods, drawing over old ads and photos, and then watercolored them in. We couldn't believe how much his work was like mine! One of the main reasons I'd felt funny about doing my drawings is that I felt they'd been seen as 'naive' or primitive, but now I could see the beauty in that. The details in clothes are something I especially love to draw and paint. A few days later I dreamt that I had created a graphic novel in that style, with a plot revolving around a woman at the time of World War II and afterwards (since I've been thinking about that time so much). My husband, who is a cartoonist by trade, told me that that's the sort of storyline that makes a good graphic novel. With all I'm learning about that period, and all the materials I already have, I could write a very good story that's historically accurate as well as emotionally true-to-life. This would be a huge project/endeavor, so obviously I probably couldn't do this for my thesis at this point, but I was thinking of incorporating a bit of it into my packets...in any case, I got really inspired to draw and use what i've been learning about that era and incorporate some emotional aspects as well. October 21 I am right now working on revising my study plan and bibliography- which you will receive with my packet on Monday. There is much more passion in me for this, and I really think it's a good culmination of my academic and creative sides. October 24 I'm happy to say that last couple weeks have seen quite a shift in me in terms of my passion towards my semester's work. I have never to the best of my memory revised a study plan; there is something in me that usually shies from changing what I have already planned out in terms of schoolwork. When you mentioned drawing in your last letter, though, I realized that if I'm going to be putting time and effort into something like this, I should truly enjoy it. I did enjoy the academic side of the study for a couple semesters, as I really have a love for the visual elements - as manifested especially in the advertisements - and that helped me to handle the dryness of semiotic theory, which I used to try to understand the era better. I've come to realize that an emotional understanding is just as important as an academic one, and so want to work towards that in my thesis project. After we wrote last week I revised my study plan and am sending a revised bibliography, as well. I've included plenty of graphic novels in addition to the scholarly books I've read so far this semester. I've been doing research on how one applies for grants and works towards publication, and I'd like to include that as work for next packet. As I become more pregnant (and my energy levels fluctuate), I find that my creative drive is demanding more and more attention. At the same time, I'm bit by bit dropping things off my normal agenda that in the large scheme of things don't really matter. I'm happy that I've found a way to incorporate my drawing and painting into my schoolwork. The drawing is very cleansing for me, helps me to feel clearer in thought, and more able to do other things that I have to do on a daily basis. You said in your last email, there is a lot of prejudice in the art world against heart and especially against female heart. there are reasons for that, that we can talk about another time. I think the main thing is that as artists and as women we have to be loyal to ourselves, to what we really like and want. otherwise both art and we are lost. This interests me very much. I have to say I've always felt pretty uncomfortable with what I see as the 'art world', at least, museums and such. It feels very unreachable and dry to me. When I saw the documentary on Charles Darger (the artist I mentioned in my email), I realized that I needn't feel embarrassed of my drawings or the style in which I do them, because I absolutely enjoy them. A large part of me tends to over-intellectualize everything I do to the point where it's difficult for me to let myself enjoy something emotional. I hope that in a way, this project can help me overcome that tendency- which would really help me in all aspects of my life. I suppose it's a far cry from my original method of using semiotic theory, but that wasn't really working for me, and didn't inspire me in any great way. As I mentioned I've never changed a study plan midway but I really think that what I've come up with is doable for me at this point. I feel more comfortable with the work now; and closer to it. November 20 I can't tell you how much I've been enjoying drawing and coming up with a storyline for this graphic novel. I've never undertaken such a long comic- I've only done a 4 or 5 page one at the most- but when I look at it as a whole story, it's very inspiring to me to make people want to read it and hold their interest. In my excitement over this project I've done thumbnails for the whole first part of the story. Each page has an explanation of the plot and what's going on. Most of them are pretty rough, as they're just something I'll refer to as I draw out the panels. I am envisioning the story in 4 parts, with the first one being mainly introductory and setting the context for the reader. The setting is a town in New Hampshire ­ I will probably come up with a fictional name, but it will be a blue-collar town populated by French Canadians, much like Manchester, New Hampshire, which has a French Quarter. This is a part of the country that I know well, and nearabouts where some of my family is from, so I will be able to obtain first and second-hand information and anecdotes about life in the 40's there. I'm going to make the protagonist (I haven't decided on a name yet!) a 23 year old woman who was raised tin this small town in New Hampshire, who recently got married and whose husband is gone overseas. They have no children of their own but she has been left to take care of her brother's children, as her brother is overseas and his wife has died. She lives with her parents; she and her husband moved in with them when they got married. The living quarters are pretty cramped, but she finds that somewhat comforting now that her husband is away. Like a lot of women at that time, she takes a wartime job and so her life has changed very much in the last couple years. I want to emphasize her dreams towards the end of this first part, so that the reader can get a feel for the growing anxiety she has. She may not have the vocabulary or understanding to explain and interpret her dreams, but we can leave that up to the reader, and things will become clearer as the plot progresses. This is also a way to integrate my interest in symbolism as well. December 7 I have written a very rough draft of the first part of the graphic novel. As I see it now, the purpose of this first part is to set the emotional tone of the whole work, and to introduce the setting and characters. The good thing is that I can change the narrative without necessarily changing the artwork. I want the panels to flow naturally one from another, just as if we were being told a story by a relative. Likewise, I want the narrative to sound easygoing and true. I think this will be one of the biggest challenges I have next semester; to write narrative that sounds real. I first wrote down the whole first part in one piece, and then it occurred to me that it might work better to do a sort of outline, with both descriptions and narrative as parts of the outline. I've never seen anyone use this process, but it helped me to organize my ideas in a more efficient way. I see the use of the character's dreams as being a key to the plot of this work. As she describes her everyday life, and we as readers are taken panel by panel through the narrative, I think dreams would be a great way to integrate more personal feeling throughout the whole thing. Narrative for Part One The entire novel will be 64 pages, sectioned into 4 parts. As it is now, the first part numbers 12 pages. The following description includes narrative, dialogue, and text that sets the tone for the novel. This is a very rough draft of the narrative, as my goal is to finish the first part of the novel by the end of next semester. 1. The first page is a full page drawing of a small town in New Hampshire. It is wintertime and the town is blanketed in snow. Icicles hang from the telephone lines, and there is a blueish-grey sky that fills the space between the old wooden buildings. This scene is drawn from the point of view of the protagonist; we cannot see her, only what's in her path. The lighting is rather dark as it's still very early morning. Smoke climbs up from several chimneys. 2. Three horizontal panels. The first shows the protagonist in her winter hat and scarf, with puffs of her breath coming out in the cold. Her head and eyes are cast downward as she walks. The second is a more detailed version of what we saw on the first page, as she walks past some of the storefronts. The third is a closeup of her feet. She is trudging through the snow wearing men's boots. a. In 1943, I took a war job at a local factory. It was a common thing to do, and I suppose some husbands objected to it, but mine was proud. Even women with children were doing their part to help out. Single, married, everybody pitched in. b. I walked about two miles to the factory, early in the mornings, before the sun was all the way up. I remember that how white the iced over river was that winter. c. I was all of 23, had been married only a year or so, and it'd been about 2 years since the attack on Pearl Harbor. 3. Four panels. The protagonist walks past a country store that has a 'closed' sign on it, and we see a glowing light coming from the second story window. These panels do not show the character, but show her footprints in the snow. She passes a dairy with a row of parked trucks getting ready to deliver milk and a brick Catholic church that has a mass schedule outside. In the last panel of the page, we see her from behind, turning the corner around the church, near a statue of the Virgin Mary. The region that the story is set in is predominately Catholic. 4. This is a full page of the outside of the factory. I will have to use photo references for this, and I'm looking for some New England factories shown from the outside. 5. Another 3 panel spread. Protagonist punches in her timecard and greets her coworkers. There are several men and women. We see the hallway where they hang their coats. a. There were about a dozen of us women at the factory that winter. We stuck together, and didn't really talk to the men much at all. We were putting together parts for ships, as well and as fast as we could, to help win the war and bring the men home. There was a sense of purpose in all of it. 6. A four panel page. The first panel shows a typical prewar kitchen, not too fancy, but clean and tidy with a checkered floor. a. Back at the house, the kitchen was quiet all morning. The second panel shows a boy of about 8 and a girl of 5, on their way home from school, holding hands. b. I had taken on responsibility for my niece and nephew, as my brother was overseas and his wife had died a few years earlier, it was good to have them around. The next two panels are the protagonist at the grocery store, with a shot of the counter with products of the time as well as a hand holding a ration booklet. c. In the afternoon there were always errands to be done. Grocery shopping, and that had to be done carefully with our strict budget and with the rationing we were assigned 7. This is a full page showing a group of 5 women around a kitchen table in the protagonist's home. There is sewing and knitting on the table, along with a pot of coffee and a plate of cookies. a. And when the errands were finished, there was occasionally time for socializing. 8. Two panel page. The first panel shows the protagonist looking at herself in the mirror over her dresser, brushing her hair out. On her dresser there's a framed photo of herself in high school, as well as one of herself with her husband, a. Though the house was full of people, that only made me feel more lonely. The draft notice had come just a year after we'd been married, and I was just getting used to having him around. Before I knew it, he was off and I was left taking care of the house and all that had to be done. The second panel shows the bed beside her dresser, empty. a. At first there was a certain relief to the quiet house, the empty bed. After a month or so, the quiet began to grate on me. 9. A two panel page describing events centering on the protagonist meeting her husband. The first panel shows her walking her dog at the fair and talking to a handsome man wearing a hat. a. I met my husband at a country fair in 1941. It was a short engagement. My parents didn't like him at first The second panel shows her husband chopping wood at her parents' house. b. But they warmed to him after we moved in with them and they saw how well he treated me. It didn't hurt that he helped around the house. My parents weren't in the best of shape and the house needed a lot of work. 10. This is a full page of their house covered with snow and icicles. It's a typical New England house, white with a brown roof, with cords of wood outside. a. When his deployment papers came in not a a year after the wedding, I was left with the big old house to look after. 11. A full page showing her as a child, standing outside by a wood fence holding a baby doll. As she was born in 1920, this would have been about 1926. a. It was the house I grew up in. 12. A full page showing the protagonist lying in bed asleep. This final panel in part one, will introduce her dreams as a plot device.