MILK for the fridge....

I just saw the new movie MILK... excellent. There was a scene that is stuck in my mind that lead to deep and important thoughts... I thought I'd share...

Harvey Milk (Sean Penn), on his first run for office, gets a hostile letter in the mail. It is a death threat written on lined notebook paper with stick figures detailing the wounds the author intends to inflict.... quite amateur looking, but a death threat none the less. When it arrives, his partner sees it and has a normal, fearful reaction wants to throw it away or show it to the authorities. But Harvey is unimpressed. His reaction is what stays with me...
He puts it on the fridge, like child's art. He says, "Don't lock it away in a drawer where it gets bigger and scarier, put it out where we can see it everyday, it can't scare us then."

I'm paraphrasing of course, but you get the gist.

I have been mulling over that for a few days. What is it in my life that is stuffed in a drawer that is getting bigger and scarier by the day? (The list, oh, the list!!! it could go on for days...) What is in my "scary drawer" that if I just too it out and looked at it would shrink back down to real size, not real x 16?

So I am setting out on a journey... to clean out the 'junk drawer' of my mind. With any luck this will have the effect of sunlight on a vampire... here's hoping. So for all of the scary things that I find, I intend to give each the appropriate accompanying juvenile drawing, each fit for the fridge. I want them all out, visible, silly and small ... not big and scary.

I'll keep you posted.

*gratitude

collage by: chasing after dear

I used to make resolutions. This year I just can't seem to find the courage or the energy to make a list of things that will be forgotten by Valentine's Day. But one thing that I do every year, that does stay with me (and at times eerily so) is chose a word. A mantra, if you will...

Its about choosing something to aspire to or to learn about or to experience. I pick a word that seems to be everywhere, one with deep meaning for me at that time in my life. This year, I have chosen (drum roll please): Gratitude. Being happy and joyus in the smallest of things, and choosing to carry that with me and be light instead of taking on the weight of negativity.

I have been feeling overwhelmed by the past of late. My current beside read has identified what I am feeling as grieving. Nice thought to go into a new year with, lemme tell ya. The definition being: anytime that you feel loss (whether real or perceived) you go through a grieving period. The longer you wait before allowing that to happen, the longer and bigger the process. With that word of warning I have chosen to allow it now, because I don't know what will happen if it gets any bigger...

I took a look at some of my old journals the other day. I was looking back to see how much I had grown, spirituality, emotionally from then to now. But all I managed to do was to walk away shaking my head and needing an appointment for an hour on a couch!
My journals have been my spilling over place, the place that I dumped all of the garbage of my mind so that I could clear some space out for normal functioning. The safe haven for my confusion and anger - which is healthier than letting it boil and fester... eewww. But all that laves me with is a residue of anger and resentment and spite... It makes all of life taste like I have just eaten a zinc losenge... it all tastes like ten-penny nails.

So this year I am following Patti Digh's advice, I will write what I want to remember... and I want to remember all the glorious, wondrous things about my life.

It's no wonder that I feel crippled by my past, when all I have left of it is a detailed record of every disaster, large or small that I have ever encountered! Recounting crippling details is no longer my objective... I am writing the history that I want to read. Selective memory in the best possible way. All the juicy, sticky, messy, laugh til you fall down stuff that life is made of. Living life like eating a peach... That's what I want to find the next time I am feeling a bit nostalgic.

Heres to a life of peaches and cream.

*an ode to my camera

I've been thinking a lot about creativity lately. I am interested in the idea that we can hone our view... we can take what life deals us and color it.

We are creative beings... all of us. It is uniquely human to create; that is to express what is within us in a way unique to our perspective. We are innately drawn to a form or style of art that expresses each one of us. And renissance men and women are there to make us all feel inadequate... haha

I use many mediums for my creative outlet, but my favorite perhaps is photography, because of how beautiful and selective it is. You can choose what you wish to see, first in camera and then you get a second shot at it in editing.

First, choose your subject, check your settings, and then SNAP! you have an image. Now, the fun begins. You have already chosen what you wish to see...with or without the messiness that is life. And in the process you have chosen your tone. Your voice is primary to all other elements(true in all forms of art). Is it your intention to show your world as one filled with beautiful things and butterfly wings, or is it your desire to temper that sweetness with the sobering reality of truth. A camera cannot lie. It only records what you show it. As a journalist of life (if that is what you have chosen) it is your job to show life in all of its complicated ugliness, the beauty of a single small flower growning in the midst of a war zone or a mother loving her child in a time of famine. But as an artist (if that is what you have chosen), you get to choose to manipulate what you see until it speaks with your voice.

In fact, it is your job as a photographer is to control the chaos. Your pictures tell your story, and you must be very clear about the details of that story because, as you know... a picture is worth a thousand words, and if you leave too much ambiguity then who knows which thousand someone else will impose on your story. Be clear - edit. Be nothing if not intentional.

My favorite part of photography is perhaps the editing process. You have a beautiful image and a world of possibilities for what you can achieve with it. You can brighten it up and make it warmer and fuzzier or cool it down... it's all up to you. You can create your reality - only prettier (or softer, sharper or in black & white...)!

Life is full of ugly, messy, crude and rough details. When the ugliness of life threatens to overwhelm me, I am comforted by the thought that I can create what I choose to focus on. (literally and metephorically) I am the artist of my life... I am at once documenting it and manipulating it, but always creating. Forming what it is that I will choose to remember from this moment in time.

Beauty helps me to move forward, beyond the messy events and rough patches. With creativity we can take out all of the messy details and highlight the interesting and funny parts or embrace the ugly,the harmful and the injust- so as to not recreate it.

We are always choosing our focus. Constantly editing.

It is only when we have set our intention that we can make sense of what we see.

Then we have something we can build on.