On Creating (Blog #584)

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Yesterday I picked my laptop up from the repair store. And whereas we originally thought the liquid-damage repair would involve replacing the keyboard and cost $250, they were able to fix it with a simple cleaning, which cost $65. Woowho! Thank you, Peter, Paul, and Mary!

Sometimes life throws you a bone.

Last week I blogged about The Unexpected, an annual mural-painting project in downtown Fort Smith. Well, one of the muralists, Alexis Diaz, had to leave before completing his project. (It was raining, and paint doesn’t dry well in the rain.) Anyway, he’s been back in Fort Smith this weekend, and I stopped by yesterday after picking up my laptop to take a look. Check it out.

Here’s a picture slightly closer up that includes the artist (on the lift). I can’t wait to go by this week to see his finished product.

After viewing the mural, I went to a brand-spanking new venue for local artists called Eleventh Street. It’s on Eleventh Street (duh), and two of my friends opened it so local teachers, students, and other artists can have a place to create, display, and even sell their work. I think it’s such a great idea. Anyway, this is where I spent the rest of the evening, getting a tour from my friends, talking about their ideas for the place, and hanging out.

And by hanging out I mean, drinking wine out of a box.

Check out these cool masks. I think (?) they were done by local high school students. (How many more times can you say local, Marcus?) My favorite is on the top row, the next to last one on the right, the one with its mouth sewn (or stapled) shut. I guess I like it because it’s how I felt for most of my life–speechless, voiceless, unable to communicate my truth. Of course, all that’s changed now (and continues to change), so even better that the mask is pale white, the color of a ghost or that which is past.

Here’s a picture of a cool mural painted on one of the building’s walls. It was done by a–uh–nearby artist. Make up your own life lesson. (Be sure to share it in the comments).

This afternoon I worked more on my photo-organizing project and got really hung up when I couldn’t decide if one particular roll of film was taken in the summer of 2000 or the summer of 2001. Finally, I said, “Fuck it,” labeled it with a question mark, and moved on with my life. I mean, who really cares? That was almost twenty years ago.

Tomato, tomato.

After working on the project for a couple hours, I thought about pushing myself and finishing another storage bin of pictures. (I’m working on one Rubbermaid storage bin at a time). But that sounded like work, and since the project has so far been fun, I decided to wait. What’s my hurry? As long as I finish by the beginning of spring I will have met my goal, and chances are I’ll finish before Thanksgiving at my current rate. Maybe sooner.

This evening my parents sent me on a Walmart run, which was fine. It’s always good to have an excuse to shower and get out of the house. Plus, they bought dinner–Subway. Afterwards I’d intended to blog–like, knock it out–then watch a movie. It’s one of those days. But then I realized I have bills due tomorrow, so spent nearly two hours paying bills, cleaning up old emails, and getting my laptop back in order.

Sometimes I get on a roll.

Now it’s 10:30, and I’m ready for that movie. I don’t have a “deep thought” to close with. (Some days you just show up and go through the motions.) I do, however, have something to ponder that’s perhaps fitting considering all the art I looked at yesterday and even the photo-project I’ve been working on lately. My therapist told me once that if you’re NOT challenging your mind by learning something new or otherwise growing yourself, you WILL create drama by calling your friends to gossip or otherwise stirring up trouble–like, online. In other words, since humans are naturally creative beings, if you’re NOT creating something positive in your life, you WILL create something negative.

So that’s the question I’ve been asking myself lately–Exactly what do I WANT to create?

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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If you want to become who you were meant to be, it's absolutely necessary to shed your old skin. Sure it might be sad to say goodbye--to your old phone, to your old beliefs, anything that helped get you this far--but you've got to let go in order to make room for something new.

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don’t put a bird on it (blog #9)

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I spent the day with two of my friends from high school, Kara and Amber. The three of us live in different cities, but we make a point to get together and catch up several times a year. (We all love a good plan.) Our conversations always last a long time, but today I’m pretty sure we broke our personal record–we talked for nine hours. We laughed, we cried, it was better than Cats.

We started our reunion this afternoon at a coffee shop, but five hours later went to a restaurant called Mockingbird Kitchen. Appropriately, there were birds on everything, which immediately made me think of PUT A BIRD ON IT. If you don’t know, PUT A BIRD ON IT is a phrase made popular by the television show Portlandia. It has to do with the idea that you can take something unspectacular (like a simple tote bag) and dress it up and make it prettier than it actually is if you–well–PUT A BIRD ON IT.

I mean, just imagine how boring this coffee cup would be WITHOUT a bird on it:

For whatever reason, PUT A BIRD ON IT always makes me laugh. I like the way it rolls off my tongue. Plus, I have a dear friend who LOVES birds–like absolutely can not get enough of birds–and he’s always rearranging his decorations and knick knacks, so I love visiting his house and going on a bird hunt, seeing if I can spot a bird on a spring throw pillow, or maybe find a new statue of a fat bird he’s put on the back of his toilet. (Since this is my idea of fun, I should probably consider getting out more.)

Anyway, Kara and Amber and I spent a lot of time today talking about authenticity, this goal we all share to be open and honest and real and vulnerable, not only with each other, but also with the world. This goal, of course, is not an easy one. At least for me, I know that it comes in fits and starts. I’ve spent so much time feeling like I wasn’t complete, that a lot of my energy has gone into things like people pleasing and putting forth an acceptable social image, rather than simply being myself.

Whenever my therapist talks about Facebook, she always uses the word “presentation.” Like, it’s so easy to look at pictures of someone online and think that their life is perfect and that they have it all figured out. But the truth is, you’re only seeing what they want you to see, and as Paul Laurence Dunbar says, “We wear the mask that grins and lies.” That may sound a bit harsh, but I think it’s fair to say that few of us present a complete picture of ourselves to those around us, especially on social media. I know I don’t, at least until this blog started.

It’s not that I consider putting your best foot forward to be a bad thing. Most the time, I think what’s actually happening is that we take something we consider unspectacular and PUT A BIRD ON IT. We dress things up and make them look prettier than they actually are. But the problem is that we end up smiling when we’re actually falling apart. We say things like, “I’m fine,” when the truth sounds more like, “I’m fucking pissed.”

Close to ten years ago, I got obsessed with handwriting analysis, and I bought a lot of books on the subject. The theory is you can tell a lot about a person’s personality by studying their handwriting–how it slants, how big or small it is, how large the margins are. Well, one easy thing that anyone can do is look at a person’s signature and compare it to the rest of their writing. Ideally, they should look the same, but often they don’t. The explanation is that a person’s handwriting shows their true personality, but the signature shows the image they present to the world. The signature shows the mask they wear. The signature shows whether or not they’ve put a bird–on themselves.

When I first started therapy, I talked about how great it was. I mean, my therapist is hilarious, and we laughed a lot, and I saw immediate improvement in my life. “Everyone should go to therapy,” I said. Even now, I’m constantly saying, “My therapist says this,” or “My therapist says that.” Hell, I even have a blog about my therapist. But somewhere along the way, I started telling people, “I’m just kidding. Don’t go to therapy. It sucks.” What I mean by that is that productive therapy is difficult. It’s not easy to live an authentic life, to do things like be vulnerable, honor your emotions, set boundaries, and initiate confrontations. It’s much easier to PUT A BIRD ON IT.

All that being said, I think authenticity is worth all the hard work and being real is its own reward. There’s something beautiful, after all, about a simple tote bag that requires nothing but itself in order to be complete.

Quotes from CoCo (Marcus)

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A break is no small thing to give yourself.

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