woa. " That your mother urged you "to search for my own patterns, to find what I needed". I think it is about wanting and a pattern? Hmmm. When I embroidered lizards and snakes on my clothes I absolutely knew what I wanted. Usually I made a line drawing, but it was never detailed. Here are the first few sentences of a bit to try to describe what my memoir is "about": Even before my mother gave birth to me when she was 15 years old, she knew that she wanted to be an artist. From her, I learned the importance of a primal passion. Mine is lizards. When I was seven years old and my mother moved us from rural Indiana to New York City, I found iguanas in pet shops who got me through a fraught adolescence and the grittiness of lower Manhattan. I made silver lizard earrings and embroidered lizards and snakes all over my jeans and jackets to show my identity.
Thank you for this wonderful piece, Martha. There's much more in it that resonates with me.
Thanks, Wendy, you know I love that passion for lizards. I have all sorts of passions, but for me the ongoing creative project is to not close down my ideas too fast - to sit with that scary uncertainty until the pattern I really want emerges. Having a mother who’s an artist is a powerful thing, but I also had to fight the feeling of being overshadowed by all her primal passion - that’s still the internal battle for me.
Yes. I have to include my fight with feeling overshadowed by my mother's passion. My grandparents praised her for striving to be an artist, and I could not compete --my lizard passion was a hobby I ought to trade in for boys, they said... (Their opinion mattered.)
Still pondering, so this isn't complete. Thinking about image and idea. Seems like with writing, certainty can be the kiss of death, at least until you've had enough time to sit with idea and image. But it's uncomfortable until you have a sense of what you're writing toward. What if you can't get there. You're wanting to see it on the page and to know that the viewer/reader will see what you mean. I am so eager to be understood. When I was a kid embroidering the lizard, it rarely came out the way I envisioned, but it didn't matter to me back then, I was just eager to wear that lizard to school right away. If I had time(!) to embroider a lizard now, I'd draw a detailed pattern. I'd probably be certain about it. I wonder if it would be as raw, or interesting. Maybe I should try.
You went to Portland for a break and came down with Covid, which put you into isolation, and reminded you of the isolation of a couple of years ago. Back then you picked up a project to create something physical representing "How you Learn".
I am supposing that such project suggestions were meant to help people get through restrictions on their habitual movement. Your habitual movement might have been at a keyboard, as a writer. So the project was a break from writing. Maybe it could be used as a break from "writer's-block". I don't say that was the case, but if you were hot on the trail of finishing off that last chapter, I don't think it would be time to take a break.
I also take breaks from writing. I guess you can call them projects, if not on how I learn, then maybe on what I am capable of. Our property is next to a wooded area. For years I used to keep the growth cut down, in maybe 4 days every six months. (A patch about 25 meters by 50 meters). Now I have let it go for several years and the far trees are up to 5 or 6 meters in height. It would take me 40 days to clear it out now, (all by hand, but it is not needle point.)
So two months ago I went in and started cutting out a band, maybe 10 - 15 meters from our wall. I did about 1/3 of it. It is a perfect project, because I can only handle it a couple of hours in the morning, and then back to writing in the afternoon. It means something because I intend to arrive with the bushes and trees farther away from my property, (I don't really know why, mosquitos and such?)
I have to cross an agricultural drainage canal to get to the woods. I threw a log across it. At a certain point I registered it was full of leaves. That won't help the water flow, so let's get them out of there. Then I noticed in the absence of rain the canal was dry, but full of dirt, I could walk on it. I drove my shovel into it and it was about 14 inches of dirt, probably a 10 year accumulation and pretty hard. Now the project shifted; I want that dirt out of there. It is not my canal, but our village dumps its rainwater into it, further down. Only now it is a race, at the first rain the project is finished. I have 25 meters to clear out, but I have to work at full capacity, (wow, I got tired.) I could do about 2 and a half meters each morning. Still I could write, and keep up my substacks in the afternoon.
On the day that I was approaching the last bit, and then I had to rest. I had only 2 more meters to go, so I had to go back in that afternoon. Whoopee, I finished, (a pattern of feeling), survey the result, looks good. TWO HOURS after I put up my shovel, the RAINS HIT. The canal had a foot of water in it. Lucky guy huh? I got my result. I arrived.
My body was too wrecked to go back to tree cutting.
But then the next project was forced. Over the years we rescue dogs and cats, now we are up to 4 of each. Eight years ago with our first kitten, I put plastic netting on all of our open fencing, the sliding gates and such. I didn't want him to go wandering. Of course in very few months he could jump onto the wall, up and over. Point being that plastic kept our dogs in all last year. Now that they are bigger, they have taken to ripping the plastic off of the gates. They can wiggle through the openings.
That's an emergency in that one of our gates leads out to the entrance of our village, and our dogs have ZERO training on playing in traffic. So I had to swing into fence building. I could only find a metal mesh too fine, so I had to put a double layer. So far it has held.
This comment is pure Deborah Tannen. I assumed your piece is not about needle point, but about side projects from writing, (when you are tired of staring into that screen). I have other side projects too, in that I painted full time for 5 years and have some technical ability, and I can site-read classical music and often play every day, many hundreds of pieces. I could also talk about Covid as we experienced it. But I am not writing my life story.
This is just an exercise in connection, taken from Tannen. You have side projects, and so do I, with a different tilt. Actually I think I wouldn't post such on WhyNotThink. So thanks for the opportunity. Is that my male Communication Style? Well, WNT has a bit of a different philosophy on what to consider. Usually I don't tell stories (unless they are relevant), and say very little about myself. There is no "I" that is the subject there. That is said without any ulterior motive.
I like personal stories, so I enjoyed yours. I'm not sure I'd label your style as "male communication" — again, I don't view gender that way; I think there are idiosyncratic elements to anyone's experience of the world and how they express themselves. For me, the value of personal storytelling is not just as a form of connection or part of female style. It is a means to engage readers with the topics I want to talk about. Here, there are my explicit circumstances in getting sick and the project I tried, but the point of the essay is not that I have side projects. It's that my best work comes out of the tension between planning in advance and what evolves in the moment.
woa. " That your mother urged you "to search for my own patterns, to find what I needed". I think it is about wanting and a pattern? Hmmm. When I embroidered lizards and snakes on my clothes I absolutely knew what I wanted. Usually I made a line drawing, but it was never detailed. Here are the first few sentences of a bit to try to describe what my memoir is "about": Even before my mother gave birth to me when she was 15 years old, she knew that she wanted to be an artist. From her, I learned the importance of a primal passion. Mine is lizards. When I was seven years old and my mother moved us from rural Indiana to New York City, I found iguanas in pet shops who got me through a fraught adolescence and the grittiness of lower Manhattan. I made silver lizard earrings and embroidered lizards and snakes all over my jeans and jackets to show my identity.
Thank you for this wonderful piece, Martha. There's much more in it that resonates with me.
Thanks, Wendy, you know I love that passion for lizards. I have all sorts of passions, but for me the ongoing creative project is to not close down my ideas too fast - to sit with that scary uncertainty until the pattern I really want emerges. Having a mother who’s an artist is a powerful thing, but I also had to fight the feeling of being overshadowed by all her primal passion - that’s still the internal battle for me.
Yes. I have to include my fight with feeling overshadowed by my mother's passion. My grandparents praised her for striving to be an artist, and I could not compete --my lizard passion was a hobby I ought to trade in for boys, they said... (Their opinion mattered.)
...and "scary uncertainty" --I understand the heart of this better. I need to ponder.
Still pondering, so this isn't complete. Thinking about image and idea. Seems like with writing, certainty can be the kiss of death, at least until you've had enough time to sit with idea and image. But it's uncomfortable until you have a sense of what you're writing toward. What if you can't get there. You're wanting to see it on the page and to know that the viewer/reader will see what you mean. I am so eager to be understood. When I was a kid embroidering the lizard, it rarely came out the way I envisioned, but it didn't matter to me back then, I was just eager to wear that lizard to school right away. If I had time(!) to embroider a lizard now, I'd draw a detailed pattern. I'd probably be certain about it. I wonder if it would be as raw, or interesting. Maybe I should try.
Yes, try a new cross-stitch lizard, see where it takes you - ! I bet it will be beautiful, and let me know how detailed your starting pattern is 😉
You went to Portland for a break and came down with Covid, which put you into isolation, and reminded you of the isolation of a couple of years ago. Back then you picked up a project to create something physical representing "How you Learn".
I am supposing that such project suggestions were meant to help people get through restrictions on their habitual movement. Your habitual movement might have been at a keyboard, as a writer. So the project was a break from writing. Maybe it could be used as a break from "writer's-block". I don't say that was the case, but if you were hot on the trail of finishing off that last chapter, I don't think it would be time to take a break.
I also take breaks from writing. I guess you can call them projects, if not on how I learn, then maybe on what I am capable of. Our property is next to a wooded area. For years I used to keep the growth cut down, in maybe 4 days every six months. (A patch about 25 meters by 50 meters). Now I have let it go for several years and the far trees are up to 5 or 6 meters in height. It would take me 40 days to clear it out now, (all by hand, but it is not needle point.)
So two months ago I went in and started cutting out a band, maybe 10 - 15 meters from our wall. I did about 1/3 of it. It is a perfect project, because I can only handle it a couple of hours in the morning, and then back to writing in the afternoon. It means something because I intend to arrive with the bushes and trees farther away from my property, (I don't really know why, mosquitos and such?)
I have to cross an agricultural drainage canal to get to the woods. I threw a log across it. At a certain point I registered it was full of leaves. That won't help the water flow, so let's get them out of there. Then I noticed in the absence of rain the canal was dry, but full of dirt, I could walk on it. I drove my shovel into it and it was about 14 inches of dirt, probably a 10 year accumulation and pretty hard. Now the project shifted; I want that dirt out of there. It is not my canal, but our village dumps its rainwater into it, further down. Only now it is a race, at the first rain the project is finished. I have 25 meters to clear out, but I have to work at full capacity, (wow, I got tired.) I could do about 2 and a half meters each morning. Still I could write, and keep up my substacks in the afternoon.
On the day that I was approaching the last bit, and then I had to rest. I had only 2 more meters to go, so I had to go back in that afternoon. Whoopee, I finished, (a pattern of feeling), survey the result, looks good. TWO HOURS after I put up my shovel, the RAINS HIT. The canal had a foot of water in it. Lucky guy huh? I got my result. I arrived.
My body was too wrecked to go back to tree cutting.
But then the next project was forced. Over the years we rescue dogs and cats, now we are up to 4 of each. Eight years ago with our first kitten, I put plastic netting on all of our open fencing, the sliding gates and such. I didn't want him to go wandering. Of course in very few months he could jump onto the wall, up and over. Point being that plastic kept our dogs in all last year. Now that they are bigger, they have taken to ripping the plastic off of the gates. They can wiggle through the openings.
That's an emergency in that one of our gates leads out to the entrance of our village, and our dogs have ZERO training on playing in traffic. So I had to swing into fence building. I could only find a metal mesh too fine, so I had to put a double layer. So far it has held.
This comment is pure Deborah Tannen. I assumed your piece is not about needle point, but about side projects from writing, (when you are tired of staring into that screen). I have other side projects too, in that I painted full time for 5 years and have some technical ability, and I can site-read classical music and often play every day, many hundreds of pieces. I could also talk about Covid as we experienced it. But I am not writing my life story.
This is just an exercise in connection, taken from Tannen. You have side projects, and so do I, with a different tilt. Actually I think I wouldn't post such on WhyNotThink. So thanks for the opportunity. Is that my male Communication Style? Well, WNT has a bit of a different philosophy on what to consider. Usually I don't tell stories (unless they are relevant), and say very little about myself. There is no "I" that is the subject there. That is said without any ulterior motive.
HOW DID IT WORK? ARE WE MORE CONNECTED?
.
I like personal stories, so I enjoyed yours. I'm not sure I'd label your style as "male communication" — again, I don't view gender that way; I think there are idiosyncratic elements to anyone's experience of the world and how they express themselves. For me, the value of personal storytelling is not just as a form of connection or part of female style. It is a means to engage readers with the topics I want to talk about. Here, there are my explicit circumstances in getting sick and the project I tried, but the point of the essay is not that I have side projects. It's that my best work comes out of the tension between planning in advance and what evolves in the moment.