– Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way Every Day

I don’t think I’m yet in the process of recovering my creative self, but I’ll get there soon. I do still write, have been writing, but it’s been very sporadic, only about once a week lately. But I’m feeling something bubbling beneath the surface, and i’m hoping that I can bring it up soon. I believe I can.

It’s been a season of change. End of a relationship, end of an era.

I’m in my early 40s and wondering where did it all go, and where am I going from here?

I’ve been feeling like I’m learning to walk and talk again. Or going through puberty. Awkward, insecure, doubtful, emotional. I rescued a lost dog a few weeks ago and can’t get it out of my mind, but someone told me recently that I’m projecting, synthesizing the dog and myself (not that I didn’t know this, but to hear it from someone else stung and, of course, made more sense).

My teaching semester is coming to an end, and i’m partly relieved. It’s been a trying semester. But also partly sad. I love my Creative Nonfiction class. The students there are gifted, talkative (for the most part), opinionated. I love the energy of our workshops, the excitement in their faces upon hearing that your essay moved someone, the disagreeing, the challenging,  that we are dissecting and explicating and encouraging someone’s piece of writing– scary and exhilarating. I’m recalling my own days in workshops in undergrad and grad school–the nervous lump in your throat when you go up for workshop. The relief after. The walking out of the classroom into the cool night. The putting away of the piece for a few days then returning to it.

I want to take each of the writers in my class and shake them and tell them to not give up, to keep writing, to be serious, to try new things, to read read read, to write every day, to trust their creativity. I want someone to shake me up too. To tell me all of these things. To get unstuck. To pull me free.

Anyway, I’ve never ‘officially’ learned to sew though I’ve tried it and I even have a little Kenmore Beginner Sewing Machine but I only used it once– it intimidated me! All those knobs and bobbins and things.

My mother was an avid sewer. She spent hours in dim light, slouched over her machine. Her foot on the peddle like she was Speed Racer. Making everything from placemats to dresses to hats to shirts made of terrycloth (for me–yes, I was a trend-setter).

The rattle of the sewing machine is right up there with the dishwasher and clothes dryer when it comes to nostalgic sounds of my youth.

She also cussed like a sailor when she sewed. She’d rip seams apart like a serial killer and throw whole bolts of fabric across the room. But when she really got into the groove of her sewing she was lost for hours, cigarette in the corner of her mouth.  I remember watching the Playboy Channel through the lines, the volume down, while she sewed, her back to the television.

One time she sewed through her finger and the needle broke off–still in her finger. It had just nudged the bone. She called the doctor and he told her to pull it out with a pair of pliers! So she did. Then she downed a glass of White Zin and went back to the prairie dress she was making.

Anyway, this class I’m taking is called “Getting to Know Your Machine” and that’s what I intend to do. Oh, and we are making a tote-bag! Could it be any gayer? What I’d really like to do is use my sewing machine for my collages– I’d like to sew/put stitches on paper (<—like this cool blogger). For those of you who sponsored me in the Blazing Laptops Write-a-Thon, you might get your collage or postcard with some fresh stitching on it!

I wonder if, tonight at the class, when all of the sewing machines around me are buzzing, I’ll get that sensory perception? Might need to stop by the Station Bar after for a glass of White Zin!

I have just one more day of giving final exams– next Wednesday– and then my summer begins.

Summer, for me, equals:

finishing current draft of novel (updates to come)

reading (my book list to come)

movies (what’s a summer without movies?)

making stuff (did I mention I’m going to take a class on how to use your sewing machine?)

travel (maybe?)

work– oops, nope! no work/teaching for me this summer! (good or bad thing?)

Here’s a good thing: poem, Summer Trips, by Jonathan Greene

Summer Trips

As a child sequestered in
the back seat on a long journey,
exiled in one’s own world,
a refuge. Deep sleep naps.
Ice-cream stand oases after
a long stretch of highway.

A whole year of work
brings us this week at the beach.
The Devil’s bargain parents made,
a contract that renews every time,
weary after the nine-to-fives,
they unlock the front door.

“Summer Trips” by Jonathan Greene, from Distillations and Siphonings. (c) Broadstone Books, 2010. From The Writer’s Almanac.

I’ve been wanting to post more about my recent fascination with Zines and about how I’d like to produce some in the near future.

Here’s a cool Zine I found online a couple of months ago and then it took me a while to order it and now it’s finally come!

The publisher is Elk Zine and they have such terrific zines, and films.

This one is by writer and photographer Vince Aletti (he was one of the first critics to write about Disco music) and has a gorgeous photo of Rebel Without a Cause actor Sal Mineo on the cover and inside it’s made up of beefcake photos mostly only of guys from the shoulders up, which I find is kind of charming.

There’s a cool write-up about it at Book Du Jour with more photos.

Ah Sal Mineo. I imagine that so many young gay men who saw Rebel Without a Cause in the theater must have felt such a connection and recognition with him.

How the heart aches when Plato (Sal Mineo) says to Jim (James Dean):

If only you could’a been my dad. We could have breakfast in the morning.

I bought this original snapshot for about six dollars in a Chelsea antique store when I lived in NYC in about 2001.

It’s perfect. The eyes closed, lids heavy with lavender eye shadow. The Burton diamond on her hand, the huge earring, the curl on the side of her head.

Her majesty’s hand, waving goodbye.

Finished Cleopatra by Stacy Schiff. I loved the information about Egypt and Cleo and Mark Antony, but I was missing dialogue (the book is serious nonfiction). Still, Schiff impressed me with her knowledge and Cleo impressed me with her sheer tenacity.

My office at home is looking like one of those NYC apartments where the reclusive tenant saves every newspaper, magazine, letter,  leaflet and flyer. I’m too embarrassed to post a picture of it.

I cut the tip of my middle finger off and it hurt. Ok, it wasn’t really the tip, more like the corner of the tip. But it still hurt. For a couple of days I had to wear one of those splint-thingies so that I wouldn’t bump it on anything, but it definitely made it seem pretty drastic (but if you know me, you know how melodramatic I get with just the sniffles). And then I had to learn how to type without using that finger, which a couple of days ago I finally mastered. But now the finger is healing better and I can pretty much use it, only I have to re-learn how to type with it. Arghh!

While I was in the Emergency room Ted brought me Nicole Krauss’ Great House to read. I absolutely loved The History of Love and have been wanting to read this. It doesn’t disappoint. I read about 50 pages in, but I’m also reading another book so I may have to put the Great House aside until then.

Speaking of books…though I’m not finding, or rather making, the time to write as much as I should (I think that I somehow didn’t get the gene for discipline…), the little bits, spurts of writing that I’m doing I’m pretty pleased with. I’m loving working on two characters that I’d only been sketching out, or had only been on the periphery so far– the young female English High School Teacher with the secret stash of lipsticks in her desk drawer at school and the Shivwit Indian boy, Limpie, whose POV is told entirely through an essay he’s writing. It’s funny how developing these characters more and letting them lead me on this journey has sparked such new energy in me.

Ted‘s out of town for a week visiting his mom and then our new niece, and the cats, Betsy and Jack, are so neurotic (i’m fine though, thanks for asking)! They are completely underfoot. Betsy sits with me while watching TV, her head resting in my lap.

On another note, I’m obsessed with this website Instructables–have you seen it?– from which you can learn how to do anything from how to tie a tie, how to kiss, to other more craft-oriented tips such as  book-making, how to knit, make mosaics, origami, and my recent obsession: how to make linocuts.

I really really would love to have a letterpress machine, but this linocut thing looks a bit simpler (and less expensive). See the samples of what you can do below.

Many of the how-to’s have step-by-step photos and videos. Check them out, search for how to make or do just about anything.

Watched the last episode of TCM’s Moguls and Moviestars– the epic documentary series about the rise and fall of the movie studio system. It was completely fascinating. I couldn’t help but feel for the movie stars and studio heads when the studios started crumbling around them; not to mention the footage of the old studio land that was sold off.

Went to a fantastic reading Friday night at The Ink Spot. James Meetze (in the picture) read from his book of poems DAYGLO of which Rae Armantrout says “James Meetze is, in some sense, a ‘landscape poet,’ except his landscape includes ‘FA-18 Hornets’ that ‘boom above the freeway / as eucalyptus leaves rustle.’ He has a feel for his hometown, which is also mine. In fact, San Diego, with its ahistorical ‘Dayglo’ pastels, best glimpsed in passing from a freeway, is where we all live now, somehow, or soon will.”

Ryan Murphy (a friend from grad school!) says “Dayglo is a conscious artifact…”

Indeed, his poems took me back to my days growing up here. The beaches, the sunsets, the valleys and malls. But also they look at Southern California, and San Diego especially, through the eyes of someone who left here and then came back. They speak about beauty and warmth, of Eucalyptus trees, freeways and fluorescent lights, but also separation, isolation, regret, disappointment.

I’m particularly taken with the first two lines of the poem “To Make You Surfer”:

In all the movies about California youth,

we are made to believe in gold everywhere.

I love the movie– you know, massive tidal wave flips over a cruise ship and survivors, including Shelley Winters, Red Buttons, and Pamela Sue Martin, have to climb their way to the top, er, now bottom of the ship.

Great Fun!

In any case, I’m hoping 2011 will bring a full-time teaching job for me; a substantial draft of my book; much creative inspiration; new friends and stronger ties to current friends; travel; bigger things for the writing community in San Diego; even greater love, closeness and appreciation for my wonderful husband, Ted; a vintage letterpress (anyone know where I can get one?); more visits with family; more reading for pleasure (so many books, so little time); more time spent in NYC; patience and understanding; health and prosperity; peace.

Below are some of my favorite photos and memories from the year (especially the bloody Justin Bieber that I made with a faux-wood stamp! and Hermia, my cat, 1991-2010).

I’m almost finished reading the book I spoke about in my previous post (The Prince, The Showgirl, and Me) and I’m eying a stack of books by my bed. Which one next? The Pure Lover by David Plante? Model Home by Eric Pucher? A Case for God (got this last Christmas but still haven’t read it!) by Karen Armstrong? Great House by Nicole Krauss ? I absolutely loved The History of Love, her last book. I’m thinking I might start with A Case for God; every time I see it on my shelf I think about pulling it down and reading it. I’m compelled yet maybe intimidated by it. Time to do it!

In addition to reading, though, I’m finally getting back to the book I’m writing. It’s not a lot of time, three and a half weeks, but more than I usually have so I’m hoping to make some more progress. Lately I’ve been writing chapters involving a brand new character in the book–Limpie, a 17 year-old Shivwit Indian boy– well, he’s been in the book since the first chapter but I’m finally telling his story, as it were, in his chapters. His story actually comes through by means of an essay he’s writing in school, and so pieces from his essay, which read like letters to his teacher (he’s writing this essay as an extra credit assignment over the summer so he can graduate from high school), are in between the more traditional narrative. I’m finding so much heart and humor in Limpie who originally was going to just play a very minor part in the book.

Finally, I’m hoping to do some more creating–with my hands, but not just typing up my novel. I’ve got a few projects I’m working on or planning. Stuff to do in my little craft station out in the garage. One project involves these little freckled doll heads. I’m thinking of doing something like this. It involves plaster of paris! Unless someone out there has better ideas?

I’d also like to do something with these orange guns. Not sure what, though. Or maybe something with these cool old iron-on transfers from the 1940s (this one is of Van Johnson). And then I have all of those beautiful old window frames with the glass in them that I’d like to play around with.

Sigh.

I’m also going to get out more postcards– yes, I know, I still owe some of you your postcard, i’m sorry it’s so late!

I’m taking a writing workshop this Saturday for 4 weeks to get me back into my book– I need some butt-kicking that’s for sure.

Missing my Hermia, but I know she’s still around, in spirit, watching me, nuzzling next to me (or wait, was that Ted?).

I need to be busy again. Busy-ness makes me feel better. Having things to do, having places to be and responsibilities. I’d like to think it pushes me creatively, too. This summer was just a wash–too much time on my hands and not enough discipline. After the writing retreat in July which was both inspiring and stifling, I came back jazzed about my book but then  I lost the momentum. I need to get it back.

I’m going to sign up for a class at the writing school where I teach and where I do the programming. A really terrific (and prolific) writer named Tammy Greenwood, who also happens to be one of the sweetest most generous people, is teaching a 4 week workshop on prepping for Nanowrimo — National Novel Writing Month. I don’t know that I’ll officially participate in Nanowrimo, but we’ll see. The workshop is all about working on a personal strategy for actually getting it–your novel– done. I think it’s what I need. I’ve got nearly 100 pages of what I’m calling a draft which is so all over the place, fragmented, unstructured, that I need to really get into shape, not to mention I need to really just push forward and get the stuff out.

Of course, I did find some time to make things this summer. Again, trying out new types of postcard making. I made these two things (?), not sure what to call them, with the previously mentioned (in the previous blog) rubber stamps.

These are images taken from magazines that I then stamped with red paint (using the faux-wood-look rubber stamp). Can you guess who is in the first one (it’s from a recent Interview Magazine)? The second one is an ad from Photoplay Magazine from 1954.

Ok, i’m hoping to bring more people to my site, so the celebrity is: Justin Bieber! Bloody Justin Bieber! (no offense to JB, it’s just an artistic rendering; however, this will probably be the only time Mr. B will be on my website. Maybe).