Dare.

Notre Dames des Victoires, Quebec

Did you know there was a sequel to the Artist's Way, an "intermediate" course for people who are doing their art? Neither did I. It's called Walking in this World, and I'm listening to an abridged version from audible.com. (Did you know about audible.com? You should.) I hate abridgments, but I don't have time or attention span for the workbook right now, so I'll settle for the gist.

So far, it's reminding me of all kinds of things I'd sort of forgotten. Like the power of audacity, how the universe inclines itself toward daring like a satellite dish toward a clear and strong signal. I shouldn't need reminding. In the time since I began this blog, my life has been manifest evidence of that truth. I've been going back through my archives a lot in the shaping of this book and I come across posts that make me cringe. I've really put it out there sometimes: hope, hurt, fear, desire. Did I really put out an a.p.b. for my dream agent and editor? And did I really pray that I wouldn't have to go get a job, even as I was getting form rejection letters and our home was about to be foreclosed on?

Gah, says the inner critic. I can't believe you did that. Let's take it all down when the book comes out, and hope no one remembers what a dope you were.

But the dreams came true. The prayers were answered.

Well, don't push your luck.

I don't think it was luck.

The book could be a flop.

I know.

There are others who are more deserving of the opportunity.

Without a doubt.

And you're fat.

Thank you, that will be all.


I believe in the law of attraction, though not in the way The Secret describes. It's not as simple as cause and effect. But something shifts when you say what it is you really want. Things start happening. I'm beginning to think that the internet has a way of amplifying those signals. All around, I see people emboldened to "put it out there": plucky life lists, passionate opinions, audacious schemes. I think of these posts as little down payments. They leverage big dreams. And not just for one dreamer. Lives are being changed. It revises the idea of what is possible--what, really, is asking for too much?

I bet every one of those posts were composed while an inner critic shrieked "Don't you dare!" They dared. So should everyone dare to get behind their dreams. Why you? Why not you? To paraphrase the guy who paraphrased Goethe*, whatever it is you can do, or dream you can do, begin it. And maybe blog it.

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*The full quote is "Whatever you do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it." Apparently, Goethe never wrote it. But as they say with regard to the authorship of Shakespeare, whoever did was a genius.

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Push

When I get to the end of writing this book, I could probably write another on the process alone. I am having to draw on every tool I have to manage the pressure, the self-doubt, the self-criticism, the infinite self-made distractions, and every other challenge my internal saboteur can conjure. Maybe I'll develop a quest-style video game: So You Think You Can Write.

A teacher of mine used to say self-awareness happens in a spiral. You think you've dealt with an issue, only to find you've got to work on it all over again at the next level. I must have heard it, and preached it, a hundred times. And still, I've been so surprised to meet enemies of creativity I thought I'd vanquished a long time ago. They've gotten much sneakier while they've been laying low.

It's taking everything I've got to keep moving past them: deep breathing, white noise, a lot of caffeine, a little alcohol, chocolate, and a whole lot of prayer. It's barely enough. But maybe the prayers leveraged some kind of cosmic cheat code. Last week, I came across this thoughtfully written piece, drawing on some of the principles of The Artist's Way. I've written about my recovery from creative jealousy myself, and if you've hung around here for a while, you've probably come across my big prescription pad that is preprinted with that title. I recommend it liberally to everyone. I whipped that pad out again as I shared the envy post on Kirtsy and Facebook, so glad to be cured, myself.

Some people get the sudden epiphany, the burning bush. I don't, and even if I did, I'd probably be all, "Do you smell something burning?" and walk right past it. I mean, it takes me a while to realize that the finger is not just held out for me to sniff, but is actually pointing somewhere. I linked to that post in three places before it occurred to me to ask myself what I have been envious of recently. Like I said, the enemy gets sneakier. It's easy to identify envy in the form of covetousness. Contempt and cynicism (addendum: let's throw in cleverness) are its more sophisticated guises, and unfortunately, they blend in perfectly with the zeitgeist.

Of what or whom I was envious is beside the point. What it pointed to, as the Artist's Way teaches and as the blog post reminded me, is that I have been depriving myself of two very powerful and very basic tools of creative life: play and kinship. AW calls them "the artist's date" and "sacred circle." I have a really hard time with phrases like that, the way my cousin Erika refuses to order gimmicky menu items by name. And that's okay, as long as neither of us starves over it. A little irony is good ballast for flights of imagination. But you don't want so much that you can't budge.

I could stand to cut a sandbag or two loose. I take time to relax and socialize, but how often do I really play? I have wonderful people in my life, but how much do I let myself lean? Not often. Not much. Not lately. I would like to learn to do more of both.

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Red, gold and green

A year ago, we made the shift from a wonderful, sheltered private school to a wonderful, boisterous public school. I worried about my sensitive middle child, who seemed to grieve the loss of his old classmates most deeply, and was taking the longest to find his place amid the bustle and hum.

Today, on the second day of his second year there, he brought home this self-portrait. I think it says he's doing alright.

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The Field, Abandoned

My childcare fund ran out before the summer holidays did, so it's been a bit of a scramble around here lately. I've missed flying out the door past the nanny in the mornings and coming home to folded laundry in the afternoons. It is, I am convinced, how life should be. No one will do the folding, or stack the dishwasher, while the boys are back in school this week, and it will likely be chaos on the domestic front for the next couple of months as I move into the home stretch with my memoir, but I can't wait to fly out the door again in the mornings, into the next chapter's arms.

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Fais Do Do

Each of my children has had his own special lullabye. For my firstborn, it was The Mockingbird Song. For the baby, it was "Twinkle Star." For my middle child, it was the one my parents sang to me. I thought of it as my very own, and was amazed to discover, a few years ago, that it also belongs to generations of French children. I've never thought to ask Mom where they picked it up. Maybe in Montreal, where they fell in love and became engaged. The English words sung to me are not a translation, but I can't imagine the melody accompanying any other verse.

Go to sleep,
my little one darling.
Go to sleep, my little one love.
Mommy loves you. Daddy loves you.
Go to sleep,
my little one darling.
Go to sleep, my little one love.

If my heart were a music box, this is the tune it would play when you opened it up.

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Travellers

We were watching a movie in the family room the other night, when the boys asked if they could sleep on the floor in their sleeping bags. You'd think, after changing beds sixteen times in five weeks, they'd want to sleep in their own bunks. But I think they were missing the feeling of us together on the road, five of us in the van by day, sharing a hotel room by night. Even in my mother's tiny house for three weeks, we were pretty much on top of each other. It might sound like the seventh circle of hell to some, and I won't lie to you, there were nights I woke up feeling claustrophobic and disoriented, desperate to be back in my own bed. But on the evening after we'd been robbed in Quebec City, I looked at my family, seated around a table in a restaurant inn in the Ontario countryside, and knew that the bond between the five of us had reached a new level since we'd walked out our front door, a month earlier.

I don't think that can happen in a vacation of a week, or even two. Maybe three. I think it happens when you are away long enough to get homesick, to get uncomfortable, to become rootless. You wake up at night, panicked, like the little bird in the children's story who asks, "Who is my mother?", only the question for you is, "Where is my home?" And since you can't click your heels together three times and get back to the place where you are comfortable, you are forced to really answer the question, and discover that the answer is beside you in bed, and sleeping on the floor. Home, here, breathing all around you.

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The Thin Place

A little more than two months to deadline, and I am head down, neck deep in my memoir. Last night I dreamt I was ready to share some of it with my father, who died in eight years ago this month. Thunder woke me up before I could read anything to him.

Grey dawn beneath the window blind, white flashes of lightening. Rain.

It's been so long since I've seen you.

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