Getting work done, inventories and indexes of art lessons, press releases, blueberry fields art class, making something beautiful with what is, finishing the writing, art class press release, how to wrap up the writing, Jack Kerouac ...
11/28/11
3:19p
She had had a good day this far, though she was only coming to her Nanowrimo writing project in the late afternoon. At least she was still getting to it on a teaching day. The morning had been the free adult drawing class at the library. The previous day she had gotten in a good stint with her writing, done some work on the art project that was overdue, done the chores that most needed doing, and tracked down materials for the art class. There had been a press release to write for the next month's art program. That meant searching for art examples to send with it. In that process she was able to index two more topics for her index cards of lessons materials.
She had inventory lists of the art lessons in her many boxes of mostly chronological lesson folders. She kept the lists of each box's contents, in one binder. Finding material on a topic or lesson meant visually scanning through each list. Her plan was to index each topic as it came up in her roster of monthly lessons. She had just indexed winter and Christmas, so that each subject had a file card stating the box location and number of folders of that topic in that box. With each file card completed she would be better able to find her material on that topic. She was up to 21 file cards now, and gloated that she had gotten that far. There were about 12 file boxes of lessons, each with 50-60 lesson folders.
It had taken awhile to gather photos of the art for the press release. The photos had needed the usual enhancing. Then there had been the struggle to decide on the wording of the announcement. She needed to keep the description flexible enough to allow for changing circumstances, yet still interesting enough to appeal to readers. It seemed like a constant battle to keep up with writing the monthly press releases for the two art classes she taught at the library. She kept thinking that once a year's worth was done, she could simply use the same announcements again. But there was always tweaking and new ideas that came along. Or, because of the calendar, a rearrangement of one lesson to another month.
The dinner she made the night before had been delicious, again. She had sauteed in olive oil, chopped eggplant with granulated garlic and fresh chopped basil - to a brown and somewhat charred state. This she tossed with fettucini and grated parmesan. Half a packet of shrimp ramen soup seasoning gave the flavoring and salt. The meal was so tasty that she had this time not been able to save half of it for the next day.
They had worked on images of crimson blueberry fields. They started by brainstorming a group list of qualities, associations, and visual aspects about the blueberry barrens. The five students came up with such an array of ideas. They had songs, foods, the type of land blueberries grow on. She learned several new things about blueberries that day.
They started with an exercise of two continuous line drawings from the photos. Whenever she had less photos of one image than could go around, she distributed the photos by random choice. For the first exercise they were to draw from one photo then switch with someone and draw from that photo. They then drew two continuous line drawings of invented blueberry scenes. For the final picture they each chose a photo, but these she again distributed randomly. Her theory was that if students worked with the image they liked best, the next time the topic came around, anything else would be a disappointment. Better to learn to make something beautiful out of what one had on hand.
This was a principle by which she cooked. She was realizing that it could also be applied to her commission work. That was the challenge - to make something beautiful and meaningful with whatever is in front of you. Besides, holding art classes and doing commission art work provided subjects to write about.
She had finally seen, though she was sure she would revisit the same conflicts repeatedly for quite awhile still, that with her obligations, she needed to own them - to find a place where she wanted to do them for the sake of doing them. When she got to that spot, all concerns about deadlines and the expectations of others fell away. Once she wanted to do the thing for itself, it did not matter to her whether it was on schedule or not. She was by then standing behind the work so much that the expectations she had projected about it, no longer held power over her. How did she get to the place of owning the project? She had to stick with it until she was hooked on doing it. It might still be like pulling teeth to get down to work on a thing. If she could manage to warn people what they might be dealing with, perhaps the process might be easier. For now she had to find a way to remember this outlook whenever she found herself in this position. She should write this up on a file card and keep it somewhere as a reminder.
4:22p 894 words
She hoped to go check in at the Nano write-in at the library, to at least let the presenter know she had been working all along on the project. It would be the last write-in, if it was still going on. She could have sent a message instead, but she preferred to meet face-to-face if possible. She wondered where things stood with the others who had started out in the group.
In the morning she had felt as if she had plenty to write about this time. She even had thoughts running through her head of how she would wrap up her ideas, the ideas she had been struggling with. The process of writing like this and writing so extensively about her current concerns, made her wonder who all those self-help gurus and lifestyle experts were that laid out all sorts of answers over how to lead or live one's life. She wondered how they could be qualified to give such answers , since she rarely seemed to meet anyone who held the same ideas she did. It seemed like a very self-inflated position to be in, for herself or anyone.
She was scraping the barrel again for what she wanted to think or tell about, that she felt free to tell about.
The press release she had just sent out for the adult art class announced three classes of holiday cards, scenes, and ornaments. She wanted to do some papercutting and perhaps some paperfolding within the classes. This aspect had to be subtley spoken about, as some people did not like doing that kind of thing. They only wanted to handle drawing and painting instruments and had strong resistances to anything different. There was resistance to so much on each front - whether about specific subject matter or about media. One student spoke in class that morning of hating the 'drills', and just wanting to get down to the picture making.
4:48p 1218 words
When she returned from the library, she would have to do the weekly minimum cleaning preparation for the students coming in the morning. Then to scratch up something for supper. By then it might be too late to get any more work done on the art project. She would have to see how she felt for that.
The students who came in the morning would be doing the blueberry fields lesson. One had done it last year and loved it and had been hoping to get to doing it again. Another had missed it that year. The last student may have done a similar one many years ago. At least working with so much red color pleased all of them.
That seemed to be it. Her head seemed to be empty of ideas. There was nothing else to tell about except the state of having nothing else to tell about. In that freeform continuous writing method, which she was somewhat trying to do but not really, one was supposed to just write about having nothing to say, if one had nothing to say. That was what she was doing now - filling out as much as she could about having nothing to say. Imagine being in conversation with someone --- why what a ridiculous supposition - one would never consider talking nonstop or repeating such a thing over and over again to another that there was nothing to say. It would be an assault to the ears, an assault to their mental space. The two things of talking and writing were very different.
She had to remember to make a copy of a page of native american drawings a friend of hers had made at the age of seven and shown recently. That person had grown up to study art and work in art. She felt the drawing was such good example for kids of how real 'artists'' young art had looked just like theirs at that age. The kids' class topic was to be native american motifs, costumes, traditions. It would be great if she had an example of the artist's art as an adult.
5:13p 1575 words
How would she finish this whole writing? It might have to just stop, having continued exactly as it did. Some questions had perhaps resolved themselves if she had indeed found solutions to them. She certainly would not be reading through all that writing to see what she had written about. She could remember some of it. She had tried to keep a little bit of track of things she had touched on by keeping a list of the titles she'd given to each days writing. Some of the early days might still need titles - or they had just been given place holder titles. There was so much repetition to this writing she knew.
She had never read Jack Kerouac's novel On the Road. She had never been interested to read it. Now she would have to look into it just to see what the big deal had been about.
5:21p 1728 words
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