Messy Canvas: Free to vulnerably embrace the messy imperfect and call it an art.

This Day Cannot Suck

May 16, 2013 in Personal Narrative, Words with Comments Off

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I awoke this morning to the sound of the doorbell ringing. We do expect someone to do that every morning – our neighbor who usually joins us for breakfast and rides or bikes with us to school, but this was a good 30 minutes earlier than he usually comes.

“Do you think if I ignore him he’ll come back later or keep ringing the doorbell?” I asked Tony, who was groggy as well.

“I don’t know.”

I sat up slowly, peeling my body from the sheets, remembering for a brief moment those days that I used to get up early, so I could be ready when the world started waking up around me. I’ll get back to those days, I thought, when it’s time.

I went into the bathroom and brushed my teeth. I noticed the doorbell wasn’t ringing anymore. So I slowed down. Then…

*Knock-knock-knock. Then another *ding-dong.

I walked to the door to find my neighbor’s older sister.

“I missed the bus. Would it be possible for you to take me to school?”

I thought:

This is the third or fourth time this has happened. I can be kind, but I am also wary. Am I being taken advantage of? Oh, what the hell.

“Yes,” I’ll be right out, I said, rubbing the muck from my eyes.

When I got back home, Tony asked me, “Where where you?”

“I took our neighbor to school. She missed the bus.” I paused and then added, “We had a really good conversation. Usually she’s one of many kids I’m yelling at in the neighborhood to stop doing something stupid, so it was actually nice to have some one-on-one time with her. She’s going to high school next year and she’s a little nervous.”

* * *

Made kids breakfast. Put on Luther’s shoes. Ate my breakfast quickly. Wiped dripping egg off my chin with the sleeve of my sweatshirt as I walked out the door. Drove kids to school. Returned home. Listened to my mental list of to-dos:

Call the doctor. It’s time you felt better.

Get groceries before the refrigerator gets up-cycled into yet another bookshelf in our home.

Write. Remember what that feels like?

Yoga. Yeah right. That’ll take too much time.

Read. So many library books. So little time.

Laundry. Ah, it can wait.

Coffee. Nah, too much time considering the water having to boil and beans needing ground.

I felt defeated before I’d even begun. Then, out of nowhere, the mantra hit me. The mantra for today:

This day cannot suck.

Why of course! Wasn’t it Suzanne that shared her art piece on Instagram that spoke to me yesterday: “Set the tone,” it said.

The tone of today is This day cannot suck.

And here’s how it didn’t:

Shared my book cover and spun around in all the love and support that followed.
Uploaded 10 new custom #secretmessage designs to share
Witnessed the beauty of someone going through the process of writing out their incredibly achey story. Undone by the courage and vulnerability it’s taking her to do so.
Breathed my way through 30 minutes of yoga.
Washed my dreadlocks. Uh, it had been awhile.
Received a secret to beat all secrets. And no I’m not telling. Secrets are my life blood.
Watched Teresa launch something that will change and inspire people. You better believe I signed up. I have dreams that still need to see the light of day.
Asked for something I thought was ridiculous, thanks to Mandy’s prompting, and was told “yes.” No, even better, I was told, “As you wish.”
Used a Starbucks giftcard from Janae to buy an iced coffee to take with me while grocery shopping AND saw one of my favorite baristas with the black hair.
Got two new Secret Message Society Zine subscribers! Puts me over the moon every time.
Scheduled a doctor appointment for tomorrow. Big relief.
Picked wildflowers with Luther in the field by the grocery store and took them to our favorite check-out clerk. She tucked them behind her ear.
Ran into Brannon at the park, who I haven’t seen in a looooooong time. I really am still in shock that I saw him. Synchronicity at it’s finest. (Brannon is the one who helped me write my book proposal for my Thrashing Book.) Was seriously encouraged and inspired by that conversation. Could probably write a whole post just about that.
Heard the word prolific used three times today. That’s a sign.
Received a rainbow from my daughter.
Look at me, I’m writing. Right now!

And the day isn’t even over.

I do know this about my mantras. They usually have an expiration date. I’ll probably need a new one tomorrow. But it’ll find me.

Thrashing About With God – The Cover

May 16, 2013 in Thrashing About With God, Words with Comments Off

My book has a cover! And I love it so much. It has a 70′s hippy feel, but it also reminds me of Alice In Wonderland and Tim Burton and the dark place I sort of fell in love with while writing this book.

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It was created by Nick. Thank you, Nick!

The book is available for pre-order now too, like at Barnes and Noble and Amazon, and probably other places.

I have no idea how this publishing thing works so I’m inching in slow, leaning in hard on my great agent and editor, but I’m so excited. So excited! And so thankful to all of you who have been a sounding board here for so much of my thrashing with God.

An Anthology of Babes – Book Review

May 14, 2013 in Words with Comments Off

“I almost never feel like I have ample time to indulge in my creative impulses and ideas. Nevertheless, I just keep making art anyway.”

- Lori Landau, An Anthology of Babes, p. 25

“I’d always sensed [my mom] had felt caged and yearned for a deeper connection to a more earthly spiritual god; something deemed holy yet outside of rules and ritual.”

- Monica Devine, An Anthology of Babes, p. 45

“The truth is I’m deeply tired. I haven’t felt fully rested since I became a mom…my mind is cluttered with…full-catastrophe living.”

- Lori Landau, An Anthology of Babes, p. 97

“Excuse the mess, but we live here…My sense of how to juggle everything is constantly changing.”

- Sarah Werthan Buttenwieser, An Anthology of Babes, p. 102

“We’ve crossed the threshold from all right to not all right…Everything bad and irresponsible I have ever done looms over me like a nasty bully in the alley of shame. Four days into motherhood and I am a complete failure.”

- Jenny Laird, An Anthology of Babes, p. 111

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Yesterday a mom asked me, “So how is it having lots of kids? I mean, I know you love them all, but are you glad you had so many?”

I looked at her, laughed, and then sober-faced I replied, “It’s hard.”

Recently, Suzi Banks Baum sent me a copy of An Anthology of Babes: 36 Women Give Motherhood a Voice. Suzi is the editor and collaborator for this book. She also writes for her own site Laundry Line Divine.

I finished reading this book the day before Mother’s Day, and thought it would be a timely chance to review it.

The cover has a sort of matte slick finish that feels delightful in my hands. It begins with an introduction about riding a bus with these 36 women who contributed essays and art for the book. The idea being that I get a chance to sit in a seat with each of the women, hearing their take on what it means to be maternal as well as partaking of their visual creations.

Some of the women “I sat with on the bus” I connected better with than others. I wanted to hear more from certain moms and less from others, but as I read it all and stepped back to get an overarching view of the book, I came to appreciate that there are so many different voices, weighing in on so many different approaches to being a mom. This makes this book an inspiration to all women. And you know what else? Seeing this wide arching view of all the things that make up motherhood, why it makes me feel sane. It’s not an easy undertaking.

In the book you’ll find:

Moms that are concerned with nutrition and homesteading.
Moms that have regrets and moms that don’t.
Moms that didn’t birth children traditionally, but rather used their maternal instincts to birth books, art, and creativity in themselves and other women.
Moms with adopted children.
Single moms.
Moms of babies and moms of teenagers and moms of grandkids.
Moms that couldn’t survive without creating art.
Moms that found they needed to take a break from creating.
Moms that found deep friendship in connecting to other women.

Various other topics are touched on including beauty, loneliness, fear, time management, celebrations, sanity, death, family strife, faith, illness, art therapy, etc.

The essays are short, making this easily a book a tired or frazzled or busy mother could read a chapter from a day.

The majority of essays in this book touch on artistic expression and how mothers choose to weave this into their lives. There is beautiful black and white art scattered throughout the book. It’s the most profound book I’ve seen for Mother-Artists. It’s not a practical book with how-to’s as much as it is a book touching a raw nerve, that nerve that makes us Momma-Artists feel a little crazy as we walk the edge.

The book is raw and gritty, real women writing on the real messes and emotions that accompany being a mother.

There are biographies of each of the contributing artists/writers included, so if you particularly connect with a certain woman’s voice, you can find more she has created.

I think it would make a perfect gift for a baby shower. But it’s also the kind of book you send to the dear kindred mommas in your life when they feel like they’re losing themselves in the midst of mothering and longing for permission to artistically express their wavering emotions and the messiness of it all.

You can purchase the book HERE.

About May 15th!

May 13, 2013 in Commissions, Visual Art, Zine with Comments Off

The 15th is magic around here this week. Three things I want to share with you about that date:

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1. The Secret Message Society Zine Number Two goes to print. That means issue one will no longer be available. So if you want to get in on the inaugural issue, I have 4 copies left to meet my initial goal of 30 subscribers!

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2. I told you before about Fabian Kruse and his brilliant post on paradoxes. In that post he offers a coupon to get your own custom #secretmessage created by me. That coupon expires the 15th! So go get inspired at The Friendly Anarchist sometime in the next couple days and order your #secretmessage with the discount!

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3. My friend Hillary Rain is launching her brand new site on the 15th! Go visit her now to get signed up for her mailing list, so you’ll be informed about the big unveiling.

I’m Not Scared

May 8, 2013 in Personal Narrative, Words with Comments Off

“We’re all scared. If you’re not scared you’re not paying attention.”

-Miranda Bailey, Grey’s Anatomy

I have overcome fear. I don’t know how it happened, but I’m not scared of anything anymore. Nothing. Not my kids getting hit by a car as they walk to school alone. Not my husband finding some hot woman who pays attention to all the things about him that I somehow miss. Not choking on a chicken bone or wounding someone with my words or getting cancer or accidentally leaving my phone in the bathroom of a coffee shop and it being gone upon my return to look for it. Nothing.

So I walk around this planet, fearless, telling myself over and over again that it all makes sense because it has to, it just has to. They may call my fearlessness naivety because I’m far removed from war and pestilence and hunger, but I watch my dog rip into a spider and I see the tiny corpse of a mouse curled up in the grass against the brick of my home, his little skeleton visible underneath his gray flesh and I know that stump in my yard once held a tree before it became an inconvenience to my property manager.

I recently watched that episode on Grey’s about the man on death row, and I recall the time I rested for a 24 hour period at a Benedictine Sisters’ Retreat center and I watched them pray over the list of names of those currently awaiting their executions. I remember how Vonnegut says that some people have funny chemicals in their bodies and those people do some atrocious things, and I think about that man on death row saying he slit the throats of women because it felt good. That seems pretty atrocious. Another human being, atrocious. Another human being, something to fear. It’s strange.

“But I’m not scared,” I tell myself.

I watch Meredith and the death row guy banter back and forth, using the line, “Whatever makes you sleep at night.”

“I’m sleeping at night. I’m not scared anymore.” I tell myself.

At one point Meredith tells the death row guy that he’s just scared. We do things when we’re scared that we wouldn’t normally do. Meredith is there to watch him get executed by lethal injection. She wanted to see, and afterwards, she couldn’t stop crying. I don’t fault her, not for going to see his execution and not for crying, because we do things we wouldn’t normally do when we’re scared.

Saturday night around eleven o’clock, I heard gunshots. 5 gunshots. They were loud. Right in my backyard, it sounded like. There was a residual crackle that sounded like rocks were hitting my window. “It could be firecrackers,” I thought. “But it could not be. I just don’t know. And it’s SO loud.” My dog was barking.

I eased myself off the couch and locked the back door. I walked slowly to the front door and locked it also. I was home alone with my kids. I felt my skin turn greenish-yellow, as the nausea stirred in my gut. Did I want to lock myself in or did I want to grab my kids and run. Run away. Run where?

“I am helpless. I am defenseless. I am vulnerable,” I thought as I grabbed my phone and slinked myself up stairs.

“I am scared. Me, the fearless one. I am quivering. I can’t catch breath. I am wide-eyed. I am seeing how alone I can actually feel.”

I let the moment paralyze me, because I didn’t seem to have a choice and I told myself this too is okay. The fearless one paralyzed by fear. I had a moment of clarity, of seeing that even being willing to not fear the onslaught of fear is something. Something. And I needed something.

I called Tony. I heard him say, “I can’t do anything for you, but I’m on my way.”

I knew he was right, but I felt sicker that he was so stunted by his humanity. Fly to me on the wind. Beam yourself up Scotty. Get here now. Be the thing that has always stepped between me and death. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t. The artist in me thought about how all good tragedies are nearly happy endings, that’s what makes them so achingly tragic. Of course he’ll arrive just too late.

I had flashes of Bible verses saying “think on what is good,” and I laughed. Out loud, I laughed, because positive thinking was comical to me as I stood in my fear puddle. This IS the cosmic joke. That we can, in fact, be completely in control.

But I did think of what is “good,” despite myself. My sleeping boys. My sleeping girls. My soul friends. My husband. My people that love me. I thought of them all in a flash, and I thought of Miranda Bailey saying we’re all scared. And I thought of Meredith telling the atrocious neck slitter that he too is just scared. And I thought, I’m scared because my heart is so very big. I know it’s an easy target. I’m an easy target.

We all are. We all are. We all are.

Knowing that makes me feel fearless.

Warble – Custom Secret Message Art Series

May 7, 2013 in Commissions, Visual Art with Comments Off

Psychologist, Author and Artist, Rachel Awes, has a thing for listening. She has created a book called All I Did Was Listen with beautiful graphics and hand lettered words. She also has a blog where she does a regular post called Listening to You. In this post she features other artists’ artwork centered on the theme of listening.

She featured one of my #secretmessages this month, which you can see in full HERE. In this post she also offers a coupon to get your own custom #secretmessage created, good through the end of the month! Go check it out!

I thought it would be fun to do a giveaway for this piece of art that is featured on Rachel’s blog.

In the spirit of Rachel’s blog, I’d like to listen to some of YOUR #secretmessages. So warble away. Here’s how:

To be eligible to win, share your own #secretmessages on Instagram. Your #secretmessage may be inked, painted, or art journaled, but it doesn’t have to be. You could just scribble your words down on a piece of paper or a chalkboard and take a photo. Or cut words out of a magazine or book to form a #secretmessage and take a photo. (Photos must be newly posted to your Instagram feed in May.)

Tag your photos with the hashtag #Listening4SecretMessages. Also please include a caption on your photo to help me get the word out about my new Secret Message Society Zine.

Here is a sample message you could use:

@MessyCanvas is fond of #Listening4SecretMessages. She collects them in a monthly zine which you can subscribe to on her blog www.messycanvas.com.

Each properly tagged photo counts as one entry. Enter as many times as you like.

Drawing will be held June 1. Winner will need to disclose their mailing address to me.

Thank you!

Circling

May 6, 2013 in Art Journal, Personal Narrative, Visual Art, Words with Comments Off

I had a picnic on a mountain. We go to this mountain at least once every Spring so Tony can ride his bicycle up it. It always feels so surreal being there so high in the sky on a big rock next to lots of other big rocks, some more dangerously close to the edge than others.

And when I’m there, with my four kids, I can never fully relax. Close, but not fully. There is always one smidge of me saying, “Be careful.”

This time we were mesmerized by the birds, which we initially thought must be hawks. We talked about how it must feel to stand on the side of the mountain and then just walk off. To have faith that those long feathered things at your side would actually spread out, would actually cup the wind, would actually make you glide on the thermal, that rising column of air.

They were masters of the winds. But me? My palms get sweaty just thinking about it. My palms were sweaty that day, winding our car up the side of that mountain and carrying a lunch and a quilt out onto the rocks.

As we ate, the birds started swooping a little closer, at one point so close that one managed to cast a shadow over us. It was then I saw the red heads. These were not hawks. These were some sort of vulture. Their presence felt a little less beautiful. These were the dirty birds.

So we talked about vultures. Someone mentioned the vulture in Horton Hear’s a Who, named Vlad Vladikoff. Someone else mentioned the vulture we had seen at the zoo. “These are wild ones,” I said. “And I think they’re looking for something dead to eat.”

For a little bit in our conversation the buzzards got termed as the bullies of the Animal Kingdom. But then I said, “Actually, I don’t think they kill animals. I think they wait for them to be dead. So they are more like the clean-up crew than the murderers. They pick meat off of bones. They help with decomposition. They too are part of the cycle.”

I enjoyed watching the conversation take a turn. The animals went from “bad” to “good.” My son mentioned how good their eyesight must be, to spot something dead from so high in the sky. And I thought about how patient they must be to wait, to fly and wait and trust that their food will show up. Death always comes.

Vulture comes from the Latin word vulturus which means tearer. So these birds, why, they tear into death to find life. Now that’s something!

Our entire lunch was spent discussing the birds gliding above our heads. And in the discussion the birds felt less ominous. They felt like they belonged, even them, always on the lookout for death. No matter how careful a mother of four perched on the side of a mountain is, I can’t make the birds circling for death go away. They are always there, doing what they were made to do. And so it is my choice to marvel despite it all or to brace, always brace, against that which I can not control.

I had a picnic on the side of a mountain, and the vultures spoke my language.

★ As a community project, The Art Journaler Community subscribers are posting our discoveries and ponderings — and we are linking Taking Flight themed blog posts on a weekly basis using Mister Linky HERE. We’d love to have you join us. You can subscribe HERE.