Category: Play
Thursday, Jun 6, 2019 | Adventure, Art, Backyard, Big Thoughts, Cartoons, Confessions, Fire, Meditation, Play, Space, Spirit, Word of the Year, Writing |
I’ve entered a new phase in my life. It should have a name, but it’s a little too nascent to be properly defined, as yet. In this phase, I’m not teaching and The X Page Workshop has wrapped up, and collectively the team has yet to decide what comes next. My focus, therefore, turns not outward, but inward.
All this year, I’ve been seeking space. Last fall, when I was drowning in responsibilities, the word SPACE became my mantra, and my goal. I worked so hard to give myself this gift. It’s here now. And I’ve recognized that my new goal is to allow the space I’ve elbowed open to remain spacious, not to clutter it with new pursuits. What if I give my writing the attention I’ve given everything else? That is the question before me. It’s an experiment. I wonder: will the writing life, its necessary solitude, its self-generated energy, continue to call so loudly now that I can turn toward it?
Here is the gift of time, to explore.
Here is where I inevitably get caught up in looping guilty thoughts, ranging from, can we afford this?, to if we can afford this what have I done to deserve this?
There lives inside me a desire, an impulse, to give rather than to receive. The discomfort I feel when receiving — praise, thanks, gifts, anything good — is profound; it makes me almost ungracious. I’ve been trying to learn how to say thank you for years. To say it and to absorb it and to accept it. I don’t want to hoard my riches. But I don’t want to squander them either. If I am to accept this gift of time, I have to accept it despite not knowing whether anything good or useful will come of it. That’s hard. I know that if I put my time into teaching, into running workshops, good and useful things will come of it. So it’s hard to step away from purposeful actions toward an activity that seems indulgent, self-indulgent, even, and not obviously of use to anyone else.
You see, in this new phase, I am a writer.
I mean, I am writer whose focus is on writing. Stories, a new novel, cartoons. I’m not, in this phase, a writer whose focus is on sharing her skills with others. I’m a writer who is practicing her skills. I need the practice. The practice calls me.
I am setting new routines, in order not to squander my riches: these gifts of time and space. Exercise early. Meditate when the house has emptied out. Follow the rituals that ease me across the border into a creative state: open my notebook, listen to a song while drawing a self-portrait, write for three minutes (or more) answering the question: What’s on your mind? And then writing, or editing, or cartooning. Also, and as important, reading. Books, fiction. On Monday, I read an entire novel (Normal People, by Sally Rooney.) Today, what’s on your mind? turned into a meditation on love, a spoken-word poem, inflected by the Kendrick Lamar soundtrack I’d been listening to. I hung up a load of laundry in the sudden sunshine. I meditated while standing in the grass in the back yard. I decided to write this post before setting up at the dining-room table to work on cartoons.
It feels easy.
It feels pleasurable.
It feels good.
I’m not a hedonist by nature. I’m ashamed, maybe, to enjoy feeling good. To enjoy ease. Something whispers that I’m not deserving. What a strange barrier to fulfillment. Truth be told, I’m drained and exhausted, teetering on the edge of burn-out. I know in my bones that this phase is as necessary as the other phase. The inward feeds the body and the spirit to prepare it for the outward. It’s good to feel good. To swim with the current. To sit quietly and breathe deeply. The scent of flowering trees is especially intoxicating just now. Am I ascending or descending? It’s too early in this phase to know. Either way, it feels good.
xo, Carrie
Thursday, Jan 10, 2019 | Art, Big Thoughts, Cartoons, Creativity course, Drawing, Dream, Fire, Friends, Lynda Barry, Play, Space, Spirit, Writing |
How often do you sit and draw in public? Or sit and write in public? Can you imagine sitting and colouring in a child’s colouring book in public? That was the first task I set for my students this week. Most students completed it. I did too.
And as I sat at my daughter’s violin lesson, crayoning colour onto a rabbit (who was wearing running gear) chasing a rooster (who was not wearing running gear), I kept hoping no one would notice. As soon as someone did, I felt compelled to explain: this is an assignment for blah blah blah. See, actually, I’m not flaky or weird. I’m doing this for a legitimate reason.
Because colouring rabbits and roosters with crayons is not legit all on its own.
Why not? Because I’m not a child.
When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I grew up, I put away childish things.
I don’t know where that came from — well, I do: 1 Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 11 — but the words just popped into my head, and I want to rebel! I will not put away childish things!
I’m feeling such excitement about making space to make things. I’m feeling excitement because I’m making space! I’m making space for myself, and for others. We’re going to make so many things! We are already making things! I don’t know what these things will be. I don’t know. I’m going to let myself rest in the not knowing.
from Lynda Barry’s What It Is
… To be able to stand not knowing long enough to let something alive take shape!
The two questions Lynda Barry is referring to, in her cartoon, above, are the ones we’re always asking ourselves, the ones that pop into our brains unbidden and stop us from making things: Does this suck or is this good? If it sucks, why bother? If it’s good, what’s it gonna do for me?
You can’t really stop yourself from asking those questions. I mean, the critical brain has its uses. But you can find an answer that will quiet both questions.
The answer is: I don’t know. But I’m doing it anyway.
It’s only week one, but already the work my students are showing me is blowing my mind. I’m seeing in many of them this huge appetite to make things. Like they’ve been waiting for someone to come along and tell them to make things. And these things, these amazing, expressive, funny, sad, wild things are just waiting inside of them to be made.
I’ve never coloured in a public place before, though I often write and draw in public. In order to do this, I claim a built-in excuse: I’m a writer! What a privilege it is to give myself that kind of permission — permission to do these fundamentally embarrassing tasks in public.
Why embarrassing? Because someone might look at what I’m making? A little bit, maybe.
Because no one else is doing it? A little bit, maybe.
Because making things is kind of pretentious, while also being kind of childish? Ah. Yes. That.
At night, our brains dream, constructing metaphors out of images from our daily lives, whether or not we are aware of this activity. And our waking bodies and minds want to do this too — to construct meaning from the material that surrounds us, and that we carry in us. We want also, joyfully and freely, to play. To wonder. To be here and not here. To lose track of time because we’re so occupied by our task.
This is not merely a childish desire, it is a human desire, it propels us and compels us, and sometimes it makes us sick and sad and unhappy, when we bottle it up or it struggles within us, unrecognized.
The desire to make things, to express our creativity, is fundamental. It is human.
On the page with the running rabbit and rooster, I coloured the leaves on the tree green — didn’t even think, just reached for green. Why green? I thought, pressing the crayon into the soft paper, feeling a bit annoyed with myself. Does the grass need to be green, too, and the sky blue? I found pleasure in choosing magenta for the tree’s trunk. But my flowers were yellow. I wanted everything to look pretty. In the end, I wasn’t satisfied with the colours I’d chosen, but I wrote my name at the bottom in purple block letters. A child would turn the page and start colouring another picture.
I’ll do the same. Because I don’t know yet what I’m making. I don’t know, I don’t know. But I’m doing it.
Do you need permission to do this too? If it helps, you can say that I told you to. Make things. Colour in public. Draw your own tiger. You have permission. You always, always have permission.
xo, Carrie
Sunday, Jan 6, 2019 | Cartoons, Creativity course, Dream, Exercise, Lists, Lynda Barry, Meditation, Music, Peace, Play, Sleep, Space, Spirit, Word of the Year, Writing, Yoga |
Puppy photo unrelated to post. Rose with her best friend Murphy, who is six weeks older and three times bigger.
Hello, 2019.
Hello, pleasant glass of white wine near the wrist. Hello, Saturday evening.
Hello, my lovely kind encouraging friends who somehow have found me here, in this online state in which I exist, occasionally, as if I’ve peeled myself apart to become a thing both corporeal and ethereal at once.
Today, this is what I did with a spare hour or so — drew a cartoon showing the Classroom Rules* for my new course. It seemed like a good use off my time. Why not? *with thanks to Lynda Barry for the inspiration
My new word of the year has arrived! Last night, I spoke it out loud at my Word of the Year group, so it’s official.
SPACE
Another one-syllable word: FIRE, 2018; STAND, 2017; PEACE, 2016; LIGHT, 2015. I must be drawn the solidity of the single syllable, because the choice hasn’t been deliberate. I only just noticed. The word SPACE called out to me this past fall, when I felt overwhelmed with tasks and responsibilities. I was craving not physical space, but spiritual space, mental space, space to think clearly and slowly, space to formulate, to spread out my ideas and gaze upon them, space to be whole, calm, peaceful. It has emotional and figurative connotations for me, rather than concrete ones.
But a word has a habit of showing more of itself than one can guess.
What will I make space for, in my mind and in my heart, and in my days? A friend on FB posted 100 things she intends to do this year, but I don’t think my list is so long.
- draw cartoons for class
- draw cartoons for larger project
- listen to music
- find new favourite songs, add to playlist
- revise / rewrite novel project
- write new stories for a partly-completed collection
- read peers’ work, share work with peers
- apply for grants
- go to Lynda Barry workshop this summer
- retreat weekend solo
- retreat weekend with friends
- yoga in front of the fire
- kundalini yoga
- read novels
- host a poetry night
- eat dessert with my family
- cuddle with Rose
- go for walks, be outside
- write in my notebook
- play the piano and sing
- visit my grandma
- meet friends
- connect with people
- lift weights
- cook vegetarian suppers
- play
- meditate
- sleep in
- go to Spain
- take a trip with my family
- go camping
- sit around a campfire
- lie on my back and look at the stars
- let myself dream
Today, I’ve done #1, #3, #16, and #28, and #16 is about to happen! (Panettone!)
xo, Carrie
PS Read this poem by a former student. It’s so beautiful, I keep reading it over and over. Sending huge gratitude to former students who continue to reach out to share their work with me. Thank you, thank you, a thousand times thank you.
Sunday, Oct 21, 2018 | Big Thoughts, Death, Dogs, Fun, Play, Spirit |
This post is about two separate but related events in our family’s life. I’m going to tell them backward, out of order.
The second event that happened: We got a puppy. On Friday evening. This is Rose.
The first event that happened: We said goodbye to Suzi. Just a week ago, last Sunday, our family gathered to say a difficult goodbye to a dog we knew was sick and only getting sicker, but such a tenacious present soul. The house felt so empty when she was gone. We’d been wanting a puppy for a long time, but we knew that Suzi wouldn’t have been able to tolerate sharing our attention, and we didn’t want the end of her life to be plagued by anxiety, jealousy, stress.
Still, I think we all felt a little guilty about so quickly wanting to get a puppy. But here’s how I’m thinking about it: we aren’t replacing Suzi, we’re recognizing how much she (and her departed sister DJ) meant to us, and we’re filling the house with the presence of another little creature to hold, to love, to care for. Once you’ve become accustomed to sharing your space with a dog, your space without a dog feels empty (even with six people living in said space).
If I ever had to live alone, I would get a puppy. It seems like that would solve everything; or at least one very big thing — loneliness.
I would get a puppy, and I would zip it into my coat, like I did yesterday afternoon when Rose got shivery and cold on our outing. I would get a puppy, and I would watch it tumble over itself in the wet grass, picking up leaves, hopping like a bunny, sitting down suddenly and just as suddenly darting sideways. I would get a puppy, and I would hold it close and feel its body go calm and relaxed. Time would slow down.
Puppy time/baby time/small child time isn’t like adult time. I’ve been reflecting on the capacity for play that exists and expresses itself almost constantly in the newest arrivals on our planet. Puppies, babies, young children — their whole existence revolves around play. Play is how we learn, yes, and explore, and discover: it’s necessary for survival, no doubt. But play also contains a dimension of joy. (Is joy necessary for survival?) Joy is readily accessible to the pups of the world. Joy seems to emanate from existence itself.
I wonder at it.
Do we have to work for joy when we’re older? When experience has returned to us too many signs and signals of joylessness, grief, broken trust, the weight of responsibility? When we’ve become analytical, accustomed to living our lives from outside ourselves as well as inside ourselves?
Is joy even something you can work for? Or is its essence spontaneous, intuitive, magical?
I wonder.
My guess is that we can draw joy nearer, draw its possibility nearer, through conscious effort; but we can’t command it, no more than we can command grace, or trust, or love. To witness its vivid, effortless expression is such a gift.
I miss Suzi. I mourn that she was never able to relax fully, except when asleep, that although her trust in humans grew during the 6+ years she spent with us, her experiences before we knew her had done intractable damage. I’m glad to have a puppy upon whom only love will be poured; even while I mourn for all the Suzis of the world who have had their joy blotted and extinguished by cruelty and abuse. It was a hard task looking after two rescued dogs; I wasn’t up to the task again, so soon. So we start again with a puppy instead.
Give/receive. Maybe my spirit needs to receive joy, witness joy, in order to be able to give joy/give with joy.
xo, Carrie
Saturday, Jul 21, 2018 | Backyard, Big Thoughts, Fire, Good News, Meditation, Peace, Play, Publishing, Spirit, Stand, Summer, Word of the Year, Work, Writing |
FIRE is my word of the year, and its many meanings are very present with me at present. On my run this morning, I thought about how a fire can be an emergency, how it can burn down a house, or raze a forest. Going through fire is a metaphor for suffering and surviving, for being tempered by a painful experience. But after a fire, the soil is enriched by ash and carbon, and new life begins to grow.
Like fire that is an emergency, loss changes the landscape. Losing Marg was like going through fire. Of course, it was also like many other things, too, because Marg was extremely generous in her dying, and did everything possible to show her love and care for us, despite how sick she was. She had clarity about what was happening, and her wisdom gave us clarity, too. The fire tempered her, and it tempered us, too.
After loss comes grief. Sometimes grief comes even before loss — as we see loss coming toward us on the horizon. Grief isn’t predictable. It doesn’t follow a set timeline. At different points this spring, I recognized that grief was my companion, and that it was helping me to set my course.
Immediately after Marg’s death, I felt like a sleepwalker, numb, too tired to think, but slowly and steadily I drifted toward a different phase of being in the world — of being in the world. I began to meditate outside in our back yard. I let myself rest. I let myself not do next to nothing; listen, pay attention, breathe. Instinctively, I gave myself space. And with space, with breath, with oxygen to feed it, my interior fire began to flicker to life again. It was in that burnt out quiet space, in the aftermath and ash, that new shoots of green began to grow. I thought about (think about) Marg all the time. She was and is present in my mind, in my decision-making. Her clarity guides me, and her willingness in life to step forward, to be responsible, to take charge and to lead.
Because fire has another meaning, too — fire as passion, as heat and light and desire. There are times when I live without noticing how I’m feeling, numbed by routine and responsibility and the relentless obligations of being a mother to four children, a teacher, a writer, a volunteer. These are times when I’m dull, ticking boxes, struggling to keep my weak flame lit. And then there are times when I’m on fire! I’m paying attention — my attentiveness becomes acute, and I can see clearly what matters and what doesn’t matter.
From a place of quiet attention, comes clarity.
I have been tempered by fire, and my sense of purpose is strengthened. This I know: to feed my spirit, to remain grounded and whole, I must live creatively. Living creatively means improvising, sometimes; it means pursuing work that may not have a financial value; it means making space for others to play too. Since Marg’s death, I’ve found myself making choices from a place that feels powerful and certain. I ask: what matters to me, and am I acting on what matters to me? Next Sunday, I’ll be speaking at church because when I saw the call for volunteers, instead of questioning the impulse, wondering whether I had the authority to speak, or the time to prepare, or the courage to stand up, I just said yes: this matters to me, and I will do it.
Another example: This spring, as I heard about protests in Nicaragua, as the situation became ever more troubling and desperate, as protestors were being killed, I wondered: Why isn’t this news being covered in the Canadian media? What can our government do to help the situation? And then I asked: Is there anything I can do? Yes! I could use my resources, skills, and contacts to write an opinion piece appealing to the Canadian government and getting this news before the public, at least to a small degree — I pitched the idea to an editor at the Globe and Mail, and wrote the piece while sitting in a tent on a rainy afternoon last weekend. I consulted with Nicaraguan contacts to ensure my facts were accurate. I sought feedback. And the piece was published in today’s Opinion section of the Globe. It’s a small act, but it’s something.
I’ve discovered something powerful about acting on what matters to me: It gives me fuel for the fire, energy to do more.
There are so many small ways to be whole, to feel whole. I don’t seek a work-life balance, because my work and life are utterly intertwined. I’m not interested in the concept of balance. I’m interested in recognizing which fires need to be fed, and which should be smothered. That’s a different kind of balance. It means asking: what do I have control over and what do I need to let go of?
A fire can burn out of control. Some emergencies cannot be prevented or stopped, can only be endured, withstood, survived, contained. But there are many smaller fires: a candle, a campfire, the flame inside a wood stove. These fires draw us, warm us, soothe us, invite community. The constantly changing shape of the flame is meditative and centring. We gather with others around the light and heat.
I hope to have more news to share in the weeks to come. More irons in the fire. More heat, more light. Meanwhile, more summer.
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Jan 16, 2018 | Adventure, Art, Big Thoughts, Cartoons, Death, Drawing, Fun, Lynda Barry, Play, Writing |
Title: Finding Footing
Captions: I ran with Heather this morning. It was snowing. The snow was so deep we couldn’t find our footing. We talked about our words of the year: fire and fresh. At home, I put unmelted snow from my hair on Annie’s forehead.
(What I like about this cartoon is the image of the snowflake that appears in each panel. It creates a visual motif that links the pictures with the text. The “on” should be “onto” but when writing in pen, mistakes get made and they’re permanent. So be it.)
The joy of embarking on a new project is the mystery of what its process will unearth. It’s too early into the cartooning project to guess what’s yet to be learned by doing it. What I’ve noticed so far is that already I have a sense of how many words can fit into each panel. Brevity and clarity are paramount. Thematic clarity is valuable, but sometimes a scattered cartoon, written and drawn in haste, can have its charms.
Title: Time-Challenged
Captions: This particular cartoon is very time-challenged. Things that happened today: Forgot to pick up Angus from work … Tuned out during scripture reading at church … Walked backward into the cold wind with Calvin.
(This cartoon was written and drawn in almost exactly 10 minutes, which I think is the absolute minimum amount of time required.)
Some days I’ve drawn two cartoons, one on a political subject, and the other more personal. For the purposes of keeping the project streamlined, I’m allowing myself to post only one cartoon each day (on Facebook and Twitter); so far, I’ve chosen the personal over the political. The political cartoons have gone into blog posts instead. I don’t feel that I’ve settled on a drawing singular style, yet. I like that. I like the freedom to experiment with both subject matter and style.
Title: Is It Like Climbing A Mountain Of Snow?
Captions: What happens if I don’t feel like drawing? Is it like climbing a mountain of snow to get to campus? Like doing the dishes and vacuuming? If I just show up, just do it, just keep going, it will happen?
(This was the one day so far that I really didn’t feel like cartooning. I’m glad that I did. It’s a good reminder to just show up and do it, even if you don’t feel like it; good advice for life in general, for writing in particular.)
Questions I’m mulling: What makes a good cartoon? What’s too personal, in terms of subject matter? Would these cartoons be of interest only to family and friends? Is it possible to find the universal in the daily? (Of course it is! The question, really, is how?)
Title: Messy House
Caption: “My house is messy,” Asmaa said, and I said, “I won’t look.” But she wanted to show me. On the coffee table, a pan of butter, markings where dough was rolled out. She brought me a plate of baklava. “Too sweet?” “No!” I ate three.
(Most of these cartoons pair random scenes from the day with largely unrelated captions, and I enjoy discovering how these two dissimilar things respond to each other, but for this one, all the scenes drawn come from the story described in the text.)
Something interesting I’ve observed: that cartoons have the capacity to envelope sad, difficult narratives in a way that eases the pain, I think. Something I think about quite a lot is how to write about trauma without traumatizing the reader. I see in cartooning a possible means of tackling challenging subjects in non-traumatizing ways. Cartoons remind me of poems, a bit.
Title: This Day
Captions: This day has almost crushed me, yet it hasn’t been hard, objectively. I felt close to collapse, inside and out. I felt swarmed inside by anxiety that was almost pain. Yet, I did all of the things.
(Here, I think the scenes from the day soften the description of depression/anxiety in the text.)
Things I like about this project: I get to draw everyday. It’s an opportunity to reflect on my day, and pay attention to it in a different, unusual, creative way. It’s also an opportunity to invent thematic coherence and narrative out of the raw material of life. Life is raw. We humans, we have a tendency to pattern. Pattern may be illusion, but it is powerful. Pattern brings comfort — order to disorder, shape to chaos, coherence to uncertainty.
Title: Suddenly I Felt That I Understood
Captions: Today, I baked bread and I read Mary Oliver’s A Poetry Handbook. In it, she quotes a line from Emily Dickinson… “After great pain, a formal feeling comes —” Which suddenly I felt that I understood absolutely.
(The drawing of my hands kneading bread dough didn’t really turn out. But now you know what that panel is all about. Kind of looks like two islands separating in the middle of a lake … or, I don’t know; what do you see? I’m trying very hard not to re-do any “mistakes” in the cartoons, but rather to accept them as speaking from or to some secret part of myself I couldn’t otherwise reveal.)
xo, Carrie
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