Category: Space
Tuesday, May 28, 2019 | Art, Big Thoughts, Organizing, Peace, Politics, Space, Spirit, Success, The X Page, Work, Writing |
We did it! The X Page storytelling workshop culminated in a show in front of a sold-out audience, and the experience was so profound and meaningful that I don’t want to try to peel it apart. Suffice it say, we could feel the attention and support of the audience as the performance unfolded on stage; and throughout, I felt pure joy to be witnessing these unique personal stories told with such confidence and personality, and staged so brilliantly and effectively.
I’ve been thinking about the material world. How we attach value to things, and how we measure value according to a concept so abstract it only exists because we’ve collectively agreed to believe in it — money. We seem to believe that for a thing to matter it has be material, its worth evaluated and determined on the open market. It’s a formulation that makes no sense to me at all. It seems to me, instead, that a material thing only has value when it is attached to meaning that is beyond its material form. Things don’t matter to us because of what they cost or what we can sell them for; things matter because they connect us to the ephemeral, to experiences, to memories, to images and stories.
So much of what I do has no monetary value attached. Sometimes I get paid for my work; often I don’t. I have a new story in PRISM International that took four years to write. It’s a little over 1,000 words. I earned $90 for it. I was thrilled and happy to earn anything at all (literary magazines are run on a shoestring and a prayer, and I don’t take payment for granted). My point is not that I should have been paid more, or even that I should have been paid anything, but that the value of that story, to me, is unrelated to monetary compensation. It’s unrelated to material compensation of any kind. I wrote it to explore an idea. I loved working and reworking the words on the page. The language and structure were surprising. I felt rich every time I waded into its words. I felt fed. I felt alive.
I felt the same during our Tuesday night workshops. I felt the same during the performance on Sunday.
I believe the value of the workshop was in the connections made, the space carved out for stories to be told and heard, and the hope and joy, and sense of belonging, that comes from working with others toward something bigger than yourself.
I believe the value of my little story “Early Onset” is in its existence: strange and unsettling, and, to paraphrase the words of its main character, “terrible good, terrible good.”
We need to have enough material goods to live more than a life of struggle, survival, and trial. Beyond that, what we long for won’t be answered by the material. No prize, no public acknowledgement, no stack of cash will satisfy; quite the opposite. If we’re doing what we’re doing for material reasons, receiving material reward only makes us hungry for more, greedy for it, like addicts. Trust me; I know. I know what we’re longing for can’t be bought or sold. I know that meaning and purpose, belonging, are not commodities. I know that within us is always enough; and I know that we’re always seeking, nevertheless. We’re seeking to connect, even briefly, with mystery, with the unknown and unknowable, from whence we’ve come and to which we will return, carrying nothing.
We’re always becoming who we might be.
I am a maker of experiences, not things. Even when I make things, it’s because they’re attached to experiences — stories, cartoons: my attempt to translate experience into a form accessible by someone else, its effect ephemeral, the tiniest vanishing ripple on the greatest lake. Enough. I am enough. You are enough. We are enough. And isn’t this life just terrible, terrible good?
xo, Carrie
Friday, May 17, 2019 | Art, Big Thoughts, Coaching, Confessions, Feminism, Organizing, Peace, Space, Spirit, Word of the Year, Writing |
Sometimes my skin feels too porous, and emotions pour in almost painfully. Yesterday, I started reading a personal essay in the newspaper written by the mother of a child on the autistic spectrum who was being bullied by classmates, people he thought were his friends. I had to stand up and walk away, so strong were my feelings of sickness and pain, gut-deep, a grief and horror that seemed to wash through my bloodstream.
I stood by the sink and wept.
Stories of exclusion, cruelty, judgement of others trouble me so deeply I can hardly tolerate the pain. I guess here in my mind, I live in a world in which people see each other, are kind to each other, have compassion for each other; but in the real world, there is a lot of pain inflicted even by people who are trying to be kind; pain is also inflicted by people who only want to be left alone, people who don’t want to engage, people who don’t care, who are struggling with their own troubles; and there is pain actively inflicted by people who fear and hate others for their differences, people who don’t want to understand or learn or listen, people who actively target others, weaker and more marginalized than themselves.
I can’t make sense of it.
It just doesn’t make sense in my brain.
I don’t have solutions. I can only to attempt to make spaces for that version of the world that exists in my mind to exist in real life. I’ve tried in the classroom, on the soccer field, inside my own family, and in this storytelling workshop. I know I’ve gotten things wrong. I suspect I’m sometimes the person who’s inflicted pain when trying to be kind, and acting in ignorance. But I’d rather try than hide. There is no alternative that makes sense to me.
XPagePerformance2019WEBAD
For the past 11 weeks, I’ve been privileged to be part of The X Page Workshop. It was envisioned as a creative and collaborative undertaking that would bring together women from different cultural backgrounds, all of whom are making lives for themselves and their families in Canada. Each week, a group of almost 30 of us have met to work on writing and staging stories. Together, we’ve made something that’s rich and enriching. Just with stories! Just with stories and goodwill, trust, kindness, and effort. When we’re together in the beautiful space at the Centre for Peace Advancement, as we have been every Tuesday evening since March, I feel immersed in the possibility of the world inside my mind becoming a real place. It feels like a real place, then and there.
Just thinking about being there brings me a sense of peace and ease.
It isn’t perfect. Why should it be? This world in my mind has conflict, but it also has ways of talking about conflict, because there is trust, and the trust is constantly being earned. Each small thing offered, in this world in my mind, is actually a really big thing. Our gifts to each other don’t have to be grand gestures, large acts, or come from a place of material wealth.
I think the best gift we can give to someone else is to see and acknowledge them without wanting or trying to change them in any way.
Unconditional love.
To live in this world in my mind, I have to try to live with unconditional love. And that means feeling too porous sometimes to the brokenness in the real world. That means loving what’s broken, too, unconditionally. And that hurts. But it’s the only thing that makes any sense to me at all.
xo, Carrie
Thursday, Apr 18, 2019 | Adventure, Art, Big Thoughts, Cartoons, Coaching, Creativity course, Drawing, Fun, Lists, Lynda Barry, Meditation, Peace, Space, Spirit, Teaching, Work |
End-of-term launch party.
I’m done teaching for another term. My course was on the creative process: how to set goals, envision a major project, and lay the groundwork necessary to complete the work. I spent a couple of days this week and last meeting with students to hand back their final projects (stories in comic form), and to chat about the term. Some themes emerged in our conversations. Here’s what we learned.
The importance of mistakes. So many students talked about how important their mistakes had been in shaping their project, how an apparent mistake had turned out to be important or valuable to their drawing, or how freeing it was to allow themselves to make mistakes. My theory is that through mistakes our unconscious mind gives us important information we couldn’t otherwise access; and drawing is the perfect medium for this communication with the self, because we see our “mistakes” pretty much instantly, and have to figure out what they’re trying to tell us.
The freedom of stepping away from perfectionism. Students also expressed how freeing it was to embrace their mistakes, or even how freeing it was just to give themselves permission to make mistakes. Creating a major project by hand is time-consuming and laborious, and if you don’t accept the mistakes you’ll inevitably make, you’ll never finish what you’ve started.
The calm that exists inside creation. Every student in the class put a lot of time into their projects, and some put in vast swathes of time, far more than they’d anticipated, or really, that was required to meet the project’s guidelines. (In other words, they didn’t care about the rubric, they cared about the work itself.) Students talked about losing themselves in what they were doing. It didn’t feel like work. It was fun, it was relaxing. The time flew. There is a meditative quality to making things by hand, to being focused in this way; engaged.
The time for this is always with us. (To paraphrase Lynda Barry.) This feeling of calm, this experience of getting lost inside a pleasurable task, is available anytime. And yet, we seem to need someone to remind us of this, we need a reason to get engaged in this way, a task, a project for a class to give us the excuse to get lost in making something that requires focus and effort, that is time-consuming, and that ultimately may have no material or monetary value. We feel like we have to prove that it’s worth it. I wonder why? When it seems so obvious, looking at these wonderful students and their amazing artwork — their unique, truthful, serious, funny, silly, brave, thoughtful beautiful art — that it is worth it.
This course gave the students permission to make art. To draw. To colour. To turn their lives, their observations, their ideas into cartoons. Many expressed how valuable this practice was for them, and how much they hoped others would get the chance to take the course too. “Everyone should have to take this course!” “You have to teach it again for the sake of future students!” In truth, I’m not sure what I taught was a course so much as a concept: what I tried to do was make space for the students to make space for themselves.
Anyone can draw. Most of the students had no idea what they were signing up for when they entered my classroom on day one. They thought they were taking a creative writing course; the course description was vague; they were surprised to learn they’d be doing so much drawing. They weren’t sure they could do it. Many hadn’t drawn since high school, or even grade school. “I never thought I could draw well enough to …” And to a person, they could — they could tell the stories they wanted to tell through cartoons. (“Well enough” went out the window; “well enough” had no place in our classroom.)
Pride in accomplishment. The final projects undertaken by the students were big!! This was no small undertaking. And everyone did it! The deadline got met, and each project proved to be as unique and individual as the person who created it.
Thank you, Artists of ENGL 332! Thank you for your trust. It was an adventure.
xo, Carrie
Monday, Mar 25, 2019 | Confessions, House, Lists, Space, Spirit, Stand |
(Apologies in advance for an extremely boring, list-heavy post. I will not be offended if you skip this one. I just had to figure out what went wrong today.)
Things I’ve done today:
Teaching-related: Replied to one student email; marked several student projects (so many more looming); prepped classes for this coming week; made three PowerPoint presentations; scanned artwork for PowerPoint presentations; downloaded artwork from students for launch party PowerPoint presentation; emailed event planner at university to organize details for class launch party; printer stopped working so Kevin had to drive to office, bring home crappy old printer, so I could print my class plan for tomorrow; packed bag for tomorrow’s class; transferred PowerPoint onto jump drive.
Soccer-related: Booked an exhibition game; cancelled an exhibition game; arranged ref for new exhibition game; answered emails from parents; posted summer season game schedule on TeamSnap; contacted coaches from two other teams to arrange rescheduling of regular season games (+ looked up coaches’ contact info online); emailed club admin about spring field times; emailed club admin about new player; emailed different club admin about procedure for rescheduling games; multiple emails to and from team manager about related subjects.
Child-related: Oversaw daughter’s online math test; arranged carpooling for youngest to attend birthday party (did not participate in carpool); picked eldest up from work; drove two children to swim lessons; related, found swim goggles and shampoo and loaded into bag with towel; also related, gave $10 to daughter to oversee youngest as swim lessons and walk him home; drove elder daughter to band practice; talked son through reversing into parking spot; pulled stuck ring off daughter’s finger (emergency-level panic situation); washed daughter’s shoes; instructed youngest to make birthday card; instructed eldest to open can of tuna for youngest’s very late lunch; discussed eldest’s English seminar on Death of a Salesman (he talked; I listened); facilitated cheerful conversation around the supper table.
Miscellaneous tasks: Updated calendar on the chalkboard for upcoming three weeks; four loads of laundry while watching YouTube videos and absorbing depressing Trump-crowing-about-being-exonerated news; made pasta with cabbage, walnuts, tofu and sage for supper, had to improvise and use three kinds of pasta because we were apparently out of matching pasta, which required boiling two separate pots of pasta water; put gas in car; put dishes in dishwasher, cleared table, wiped table; washed part of upstairs hallway floor.
Just for me: This blog post; rode spin bike for 70 minutes, with sprints every 5 minutes (easiest part of my day); texted a friend; multiple texts to and from my mom; took photo of dog (above) and texted it to child; ranted to Kevin about this feeling I have that I’m drowning, succumbing, going under and may not come up, and also how the house is filthy and no one vacuumed this weekend (not blaming him, just ranting generally, as he was just coming home with loads of groceries).
Things I didn’t do today: Go to church; meditate; eat lunch; read a book for pleasure; meet a friend; relax; nap; rest; do something just for the fun of it; take a break; cartoon, draw, write, sing, play piano, listen to music.
Children are now calling me to come watch an episode of Schitt’s Creek with them before bed, and I think this may be the best option at this moment in time.
xo, Carrie
Tuesday, Mar 19, 2019 | Art, Big Thoughts, Cartoons, Confessions, Creativity course, Family, Friends, Meditation, Parenting, Peace, Space, Spirit, Teaching, The X Page, Work, Writing |
Too much. There’s too much on my mind. The kids were home last week on March break, and I looked at the surfaces around our house, covered with debris, and I thought, this could be a metaphor for the surface of my mind. I’m drowning in details, in crumpled to-do lists, in scattered responsibilities, in unmet needs, in forgotten or neglected tasks.
My solution is multi-pronged, and does not, as one might think would be prudent, involve a lot of cleaning. Whenever I clear a surface, more debris appears.
Instead, my solution is in connection. Connection outward and connection inward. I go to a kundalini yoga class, and chant, whirl, and root myself deep inside my body. I go to church and rest within an hour of spiritual reflection. I draw and I write. I go for a walk with a friend. I meditate. I help lead workshops, and I stand at the front of a classroom trying to connect students to the transformative magic of their own creativity.
I’ve been sharing a journal with one of my children, as a way to “talk” back and forth about big subjects. Our household currently has three teenagers, a time of life that is especially full of big questions — what is the purpose of my life, what am I supposed to do next, who am I, where can I find meaning? There aren’t one-size-fits-all answers to these questions, it seems to me, so I can only offer ideas, suggestions, places to search.
One of my teenagers said to me, earlier this week, that people are looking for connection with something bigger than themselves. That’s it, isn’t it. That’s the general answer. I think it’s why religion has played such a critical role in human society: religion is explicitly about connecting with something larger than oneself. Most religions involve community, ritual and practice, and some personal sacrifice; all of which are important ingredients, in my experience, to feeling connected to a larger purpose and meaning. It’s important to be aware that there are healthy connections, but there are also dangerous connections (if you’ve connected with something that demands that you hurt or denigrate other people, or yourself, for example, that is not a healthy connection with a larger cause).
Sitting in church on Sunday, I thought about who I am becoming as I age and grow more rooted within myself. I’m not someone who needs a clear surface to thrive. I don’t need to live in a clean house. But I am someone who needs to pay attention to the things that are causing the clutter, the people whose lives coincide with my own, whose interests interest me, the people who share my space (and I don’t just mean my own family); I carry their cares close, in other words. The debris isn’t all mine; I’m not even sure a quarter of it really belongs to me; certainly I generate far less than I take responsibility for. And that’s where I need to take care, be more mindful — recognize and accept responsibility for the choices I make, and recognize and let go of that which is not mine to tidy, clean up, or carry.
Somehow, it’s my spiritual self that recognizes what matters. Yet the spiritual self is the easiest to neglect, and the hardest to talk about. Here’s what I’ve been telling myself to maintain those connections, inward and outward, that give me meaning and purpose: If you don’t have time to meditate, you’re too busy; if you don’t have time to go to church, you’re too busy; if you don’t have time to talk to a good friend, you’re too busy; if you don’t have time to be alone, you’re too busy. (Here’s the thing: even though I’m busy, I almost always have time.)
xo, Carrie
Wednesday, Mar 6, 2019 | Adventure, Art, Big Thoughts, Lynda Barry, Space, Spirit, The X Page, Work, Writing |
If you’ve done any writing workshops with me, you’ll remember the X page, which is a Lynda Barry staple, a page in your notebook on which you draw a big X — you “wreck the page,” as she says — and on this page, you pour out your sensory memories that emerge from whatever image you’re exploring. In the photo below, you can see that blank X mark amidst the text that surrounds it on the board, behind the writer, Tasneem Jamal. This photo was taken yesterday evening, when Tasneem was leading the writing session of The X Page, a writing and theatre workshop for immigrant and refugee women, which I’m coordinating with the help of many wonderful local partners. Last night was our first workshop session!
While the women were writing their stories in their notebooks, I modelled Tasneem’s instructions on the board (those are my X page scribbles). I got to write two new X page stories, which are brief 7-minute recollections based around an image anchored in memory. Our prompt for the evening was “suitcase,” or bag or backpack or purse.
“Backpack stuffed with my life”
I am sitting on the floor in the Detroit Airport, leaning against my backpack, a hiking backpack, that is stuffed with my life, or the life I expect to be leading in this place I’m going, somewhere I lived as a child and have not returned to for a decade. I’m 19 years old. I grin into the camera my dad is holding, already sunburned. My jeans are hot, as the day is warm. I just want to say goodbye and go — get on the plane and fly away, mostly because I am scared, though I would admit that to no one, certainly not myself. I feel as though I am fulfilling a calling that I am meant to return to this place that in my memory was a kind of paradise — Managua, Nicaragua. It was not a paradise in any way that is easy to explain. I was a child when I lived there, and I felt free.
“Grandma King’s purse”
I am inside a memory I didn’t know I’d kept. I can see my grandma’s purse held open, and I am being permitted to dig through it to look for candy, but I see all kinds of treasure here — tissues, lipsticks, keys, a wallet I want to open, gum in stick form, pens, an address books, yes, candy, wrapped; mints. Peppermints striped red and white in crackling plastic. I sit on Grandma’s lap and smell her scent, nothing fancy, her hair spray. She gets her hair set at a salon, but I wouldn’t know that, not yet, it’s a detail that will fascinate me when I’m seven or eight. She does not touch her hair in between appointments. She is not a snuggly grandma. Yet here I sit on her lap in the front seat of a car on a hot day, windows down, in the parking lot of — maybe — a grocery store. We are waiting for someone to return. I did not know I’d kept this memory. Yet here it is.
Walking home from campus this afternoon, I kept formulating and reformulating my “artist’s statement”; writing an artist statement is something I’ve asked my Creativity Unplugged students to think about doing for our end of term launch party. What would mine be? What would yours be?
Maybe this is my statement:
Life is about seeking beauty: go and find it, record it, and share it.
But I think my statement would also have to include this:
Life is about seeking beauty: go and find it, record it, and share it. We can go together.
xo, Carrie
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We did it! The X Page storytelling workshop culminated in a show in front of a sold-out audience, and the experience was so profound and meaningful that I don’t want to try to peel it apart. Suffice it say, we could feel the attention and support of the audience as the performance unfolded on stage; and throughout, I felt pure joy to be witnessing these unique personal stories told with such confidence and personality, and staged so brilliantly and effectively.
I’ve been thinking about the material world. How we attach value to things, and how we measure value according to a concept so abstract it only exists because we’ve collectively agreed to believe in it — money. We seem to believe that for a thing to matter it has be material, its worth evaluated and determined on the open market. It’s a formulation that makes no sense to me at all. It seems to me, instead, that a material thing only has value when it is attached to meaning that is beyond its material form. Things don’t matter to us because of what they cost or what we can sell them for; things matter because they connect us to the ephemeral, to experiences, to memories, to images and stories.
So much of what I do has no monetary value attached. Sometimes I get paid for my work; often I don’t. I have a new story in PRISM International that took four years to write. It’s a little over 1,000 words. I earned $90 for it. I was thrilled and happy to earn anything at all (literary magazines are run on a shoestring and a prayer, and I don’t take payment for granted). My point is not that I should have been paid more, or even that I should have been paid anything, but that the value of that story, to me, is unrelated to monetary compensation. It’s unrelated to material compensation of any kind. I wrote it to explore an idea. I loved working and reworking the words on the page. The language and structure were surprising. I felt rich every time I waded into its words. I felt fed. I felt alive.
I felt the same during our Tuesday night workshops. I felt the same during the performance on Sunday.
I believe the value of my little story “Early Onset” is in its existence: strange and unsettling, and, to paraphrase the words of its main character, “terrible good, terrible good.”
I am a maker of experiences, not things. Even when I make things, it’s because they’re attached to experiences — stories, cartoons: my attempt to translate experience into a form accessible by someone else, its effect ephemeral, the tiniest vanishing ripple on the greatest lake. Enough. I am enough. You are enough. We are enough. And isn’t this life just terrible, terrible good?
