An Ideal Life ...

Lately I've been asked, more than once, what would my ideal life look like ...

I was asked to describe it today. I was quite lost.  How many people know how to answer that question?  'If it could really happen, how would your ideal life look?'  And so I stumbled and bumbled around, wanting to be nice, to be gentle ... but no, there was no nice gentleness allowed.

What would my ideal life look like?!

And it's interesting, to me, because I've quietly been working through Danielle LaPorte's book, The Fire Starter Sessions ... in lieu of having colleagues and friends wandering in and out of conversations with me.  I live an oddly isolated life here in Antwerp.  Maybe I even create some of the isolation myself, needing so much space to write and make photographs.  To think.  To read enough books.  And to maintain the family and home we have here.

Danielle almost beats me over the head with her repetitive, direct questions regarding my professional life.  Initially she set off a protective response in me ... protective, resistant perhaps. 

How much money would you like to be making?  Earned a tentative I would love to simply make some money ... became I would love to be financially independent. 

Her questions focus you down on your business, your self, and your needs.  The last question on her recent worksheet, as follows, was another invitation to dream. 

So ... what would you like to do with your life and career?  (Money is no object.  Dream.)

This morning, a similar question, different requirement.  Tell me how your ideal home life would look.  Dream.  And we're talking 'ideal', if it could be as you wish it to be.

I think I'm getting it.  We need to go in the direction of our dreams.  In fact, Henry David Thoreau tells us to Go confidently in the direction of your dreams. Live the life you have imagined.

And as we step out, we increase the quality and satisfaction in our lives and so influence the lives of those people around us too.  We're here to live our lives and become the best we can be during that time.  To do the 'right thing', to be eaten up by guilt for not doing so, to conform to the outline of today's 'ideal citizen' ... often these things don't respect who we are.  It seems a bit like a wing-clipping to me.

So here I am, writing a book, spinning a web of planned future actions that will spark financial independence. I'm having some off-the-wall ideas that just may work.  All this simply because people are inviting/demanding that I dream my ideal worlds, both privately and in business, into reality.

I have no idea how it will go but let's see it.

Terry Windling, on Blogging

Here's what blogging is to me: It's a modern form of the old Victorian custom of being "At Home" to visitors on a certain day of the week; it's an Open House during which friends and colleagues know they are welcome to stop by. I'm “At Home” each morning when I put up at post. Here, in the gossamer world of the 'Net, I throw my studio door open to friends and family and strangers alike. And each Comment posted is a calling card left behind by those who have crossed my doorstep.

Terri Windling, extract from, Reflections on Blogging.

I love when this woman writes.  She's wise and her blog posts are another of the places I go when I'm searching for those things I lack here in my world. 

She has a dog, a forest, some hills.  She writes, I'm a writer, artist, and book editor interested in myth, folklore, fairy tales, and the ways they are used in contemporary arts.

I loved today's essay on blogging and can only say yes.

Yesterday I was working with photographs and history of that beautiful fountain in Genova ...

Really?

Only a few, who remain children at heart, can ever find that fair, lost path again. The world calls them its singers, poets, and story-tellers but they are just people who have not forgotten.

L.M. Montgomery.

Since autumn began I've been attempting to fit my book in around family commitments and being a housewife.  It doesn't really work.  I remember those days back when I left for the office.  I recall the feeling of relief, of being in that safe space defined by clear boundaries marked 'work'.  That place where the threshold was rarely crossed by 'family'.

There was a degree of separation found there.  A door more-or-less closed on the reality that is home life and all  of those things that happen there ... from poo-filled nappies and sleepless nights, to sick cats and people you have powerful emotional ties to.

Work was always a place where I existed at another level.  Where, more often that not, objectivity was a state of being more simply found.  And I was paid for my presence, my hours, my labour.

Working from home, around a family life I rarely decribe here, oh my ... it's a topic I almost never touch.  But there is no degree of seperation.  I use the bathroom here amd I realise that I am also the cleaning lady and dammit, I haven't cleaned the bathroom lately.  I go downstairs for lunch and realise I'm the baker and that a new loaf needs to go in for breakfast tomorrow.  I make a coffee and see the dishes need washed and dried and put away.  I take a shower, need a towel and voila, I realise there are 3 loads of laundry there in the queue.  And what's for dinner tonight ...?

And really, I just want to hunker down in that seperate space called 'the office', and work for my money, and be objective but it's so unrealistic.  I was trained from a very young age that I needed to be responsible ... as the eldest sister, as a good little girl from Mosgiel. 

Gifting myself permission ... no, gifting myself the luxury of writing all day, it's something I am battling with at every level.  This last week has been impossible.  There are moments where I can do my writing work but as it is only the'possibility of income' ... can I even call it work?  Don't so many, as in those who know 'money doesn't grow on trees', view it as a luxury?  This writing lark. 

When you read of money and trees, did you find yourself adopting the deep voice of your father or some other remembered voice of authority?  I think only men have said that to me.  They get so mad with me and my lack of gratitude.  It's only the housework and the family.  You have it so easy. 

But I'm wondering ... 'really?' 

Anyway, I'll work it out and meanwhile, the image below.  My childish self loves the notion that there are the possibility of other worlds in puddles.

Woman Enough ...

Writers are often asked, How do you write? With a wordprocessor? an electric typewriter? a quill? longhand? But the essential question is, 'Have you found a space, that empty space, which should surround you when you write?' Into that space, which is like a form of listening, of attention, will come the words, the words your characters will speak, ideas -- inspiration.

If a writer cannot find this space, then poems and stories may be stillborn.

Doris Lessing.

This ... this is so true for me.  I recently deleted my facebook account and experienced a most astounding silence.  It took time to adjust to a life without interesting voices crowding in but I did.  And I loved it.  I wrote.  Eventually though, I realised how little people-contact there is in my everyday world and so I went back to facebook.

The alarm goes every morning at 6.45am here.  I have breakfast ready by 7.30am, when I'm home, and I'm usually here at my desk by 8.30am.  And then I read my way into the place that I work from.

It's a mixture of going through email, a scan of my facebook wall for news of the world, catching up on my blog feed and picking through a selection of new reading there.

There's no physical journey, beyond climbing the stairs to the first floor but there is some kind of journey into that place where I work.

So much can go wrong ...

I think it's why painters have studios, photographers too.  Ateliers.  Mine would be locked some days, with no visible signs of life showing.  I have this 4 hour window of time where I can concentrate intensely.  It's the time when the best of my creativity comes out to play.  I know this but I can't always hold onto it.

I'm studying the 'how' of it because I have had 5 disasterous days in a row, with life crashing into me, again and again.  I think, in the process of opening your self to dig deep and create something that didn't exist before, or to write of something you love so that the passion leaps off the page and convinces people ... you need to go to a place where you can take off your skin and just kind of feel your way with your nerve-endings, with your senses perhaps.

An argument can lay waste to that 'place', to that state of being.  Or realising that this person or that really needs you, or that the house is a mess.  That particular 4 hours out is all that I require but it's so difficult to actually take that much time in the world where I live.

Exit Stage right, and Genova.

I have a favourite poem by a writer I've loved for years. I've posted it before so forgive me if you have already ready it.  Otherwise, maybe this captures something of the struggle ...

Woman Enough

Because my grandmother's hours
were apple cakes baking,
& dust motes gathering,
& linens yellowing
& seams and hems
inevitably unraveling
I almost never keep house
though really I like houses
& wish I had a clean one.

Because my mother's minutes
were sucked into the roar
of the vacuum cleaner,
because she waltzed with the washer-dryer
& tore her hair waiting for repairmen
I send out my laundry,
& live in a dusty house,
though really I like clean houses
as well as anyone.

I am woman enough
to love the kneading of bread
as much as the feel
of typewriter keys
under my fingers
springy, springy.
& the smell of clean laundry
& simmering soup
are almost as dear to me
as the smell of paper and ink.

I wish there were not a choice;
I wish I could be two women.
I wish the days could be longer.
But they are short.
So I write while
the dust piles up.

I sit at my typewriter
remembering my grandmother
& all my mothers,
& the minutes they lost
loving houses better than themselves
& the man I love cleans up the kitchen
grumbling only a little
because he knows
that after all these centuries
it is easier for him
than for me.

Erica Jong.

I had to shower, dress, go find a birthday present for a party this afternoon.  I had to get lunch from the supermarket.  After it all, I came back upstairs just after midday and experimented with layers and frames for my photographs ... trying to 'play' my way back into writing. 

Let's see how the rest of it goes.  The shot ... a city street in Genova.

Things I'm Learning About Writing A Book

I'm learning ...

I don't write a book in the same way I might train my body at the gym.  It's not about pushing the limits and building up strength.  It's not about endurance. 

And it's not about 9 to 5.  It's about 'anytime'.  My most exciting idea, so far, came while I was walking back through city streets in the early morning, a 5 celsius day.  I was thinking bad thoughts about Antwerp's polluted air.

I smsed my idea to myself.  I had a book for the tram and I know how time stretches and warps on these journeys of mine.  I need to make notes.  Always.  Because I forget stuff.  Even brilliant stuff.

Always make notes.

I have a song, sometimes more than one but usually just one, that I put on repeat ... endlessly on repeat.  It helps somehow.  It disappears into the background but creates a state of mind.  I recently heard Man Booker prize winner, Eleanor Catton, admit to doing it and I thought, 'So it's normal'!'  Many have tried to convince me that it's so far from normal and I should stop immediately.

So, currently, whenever I hear Ben Howard's 'Old Pine' then I know it's time to work.  Maybe I should put a dedication to him in the front of this book.  I've played his song hundreds, if not thousands, of times already. 

Obviously this can only be done when I'm working alone here ...

I am learning to steal the Belgian's bloke's desk-chair the moment he leaves for work, as my chair is an ergonomic disaster, even though we were careful in choosing it and paid more than we wanted to.  He just sighs, rolls my chair away from his desk, and waits while I return his in the evenings.  Thank goodness he works away from home all day ...

Most importantly perhaps, I'm learning not to panic when I can't think of what to write, how to dive in and begin when I have 'just 3 hours to produce something new!!!!'  It will come.  It does.

Oh and if I have the 130 photographs I have chosen (so far) for the book colour-photocopied to A4-size to work on, in batches of 20, then it seems less wicked.  Or is that like the kid playing hide-n-seek, standing in the middle of the room with her hands over her eyes, pretending that she can't be seen.  Hmmmm.

And finally, I'm learning that committing to writing a blog post everyday in November has been more helpful than I could have imagined.

Now,  I'll leave you with Ben. 

Oh ... I've posted this song before?  At least you don't share an office with me  :-)

Soul Stuff ...

The practice of any art isn’t to make a living, it’s to make your soul grow.

Kurt Vonnegut.

Kurt's quotes seemed like an answer to my angst about money and art. 

Meanwhile, this singer is making me smile. Most particularly, her song, 'You and I'. 

I love the lines: let's get rich and buy our parents homes in the south of France
Let's get rich and give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance.

I was out early this morning, 5 celsius, a clear-sky day but the air hurts the lungs we decided.  Cold or pollution, or both, we couldn't decide.

I'm using Frances Mayes book, Under the Tuscan Sun, to pull me through the quieter moments.  The tram was packed coming home but I was off in my mind and wandering with her in Sovana, where she wrote of being in ancient places, We can walk here, the latest little dots on the time line.  Knowing that, it always amazes me that I am intensely interested in how the map is folded, where the gas gauge is pointed, whether we have withdrawn enough cash, how everything matters intensely even as it is disappearing.