Jean soon learned that at Ewa's parties there was always a project on. Huge rolls of brown paper were unfurled and everyone painted a mural; a sheet was tacked to the wall and a film projected while the Dogs played, sewing together a melody out of silence and the whirring of the projector. Actors gathered in the middle of the living room and, with nothing more than a spoon or a dishtowel, transformed reality - having a Sunday row on a pond or floating in a lifeboat on the North Sea; suddenly they were lovers on a picnic blanket, or thieves, or children on a swing. Jean knew these actors had worked together for a long time, a bodily history among them. She had seen Avery perform loaves and fishes with objects, with stones on the beach, with rulers and wooden blocks, creating bridges, castles, entire cities. But his magic was solitary and intellectual compared with the instantly complex communication between these bodies, the moment continually changing, deepening into humour or sorrow. And sometimes this pathos was intense, and a hole opened, and everyone watching from the edges of the room found their own sorrow pouring into it. Crack! the earth of the scene split open and down everyone tumbled together into the wreckage of memory. And then the actors melted back into the party, and the food and the bottles were passed around again.
-- Anne Michaels, The Winter Vault
Some day, I would love to host gatherings like the one that Michaels describes in this passage.
I was fortunate enough to spend quite a bit of time over the long weekend at low-key gatherings with dear friends. It was a pretty delightful way to celebrate the start of summer, if you ask me.
I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes.
Because if you are making mistakes, then you are making new things, trying new things, learning, living, pushing yourself, changing yourself, changing your world. You're doing things you've never done before, and more importantly, you're Doing Something.
So that's my wish for you, and all of us, and my wish for myself. Make New Mistakes. Make glorious, amazing mistakes. Make mistakes nobody's ever made before. Don't freeze, don't stop, don't worry that it isn't good enough, or it isn't perfect, whatever it is: art, or love, or work or family or life.
Whatever it is you're scared of doing, Do it.
Make your mistakes, next year and forever.
-- Neil Gaiman, from his New Year's blog post
If you have been reading this blog for any length of time, you probably already know that I have a fondness for a good quote. These often become guideposts in my life, and this Neil Gaiman quote is one such marker. This man is wise. Really, really wise. It is rare for me to come across something he has written or said and not latch onto it. This New Year's wish really struck home for me. What a wonderful way to live 2012. So for the next 12 months, I am going to fearlessly make mistakes. Maybe this means my life will look a little bit messy to people on the outside. This most certainly goes against my perfectionist tendencies. But these are going to become some of the words I live by this year.
- This morning I am at low ebb. I did not sleep well last night, waking, tossing, and dreaming sordid, incoherent little dreams. I awoke, my head heavy, feeling as if I had just emerged from a swim in a pool of warm polluted water. My skin was greasy, my hair stiff, oily, and my hands as if I had touched something slimy and unclean. The thick August air does not help. I sit here lumpishly, an ache at the back of my neck. I feel that even if I washed myself all day in cold clear water, I could not rinse the sticky, untidy film away; nor could I rid my mouth of the furry unpleasant taste of unbrushed teeth. -
(from The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath)
This morning was one of those mornings. One of the ones where you haven't slept well the night before and you wake up feeling absolutely disgusting, certain that the day will be horrible and you will feel like a creature that has crawled out of a mucky bog all day long no matter whether you shower or put on your nicest clothes. Fortunately the day turned around significantly and I ended up feeling pretty good.
I am a huge fan of Sylvia Plath (as discussed here, here and here). I kid you not. One of my most treasured books is a copy of Sylvia Plath: The Complete Poems, which I hunted high and low for and finally found in Victoria. I can recite several of her poems from memory and often quote them (for example, the title of yesterday's post is a line from a Plath poem). I wrote a paper on her poem "Daddy" and last year and ended up using it as my writing sample to submit to grad schools. The Bell Jar probably makes it onto my top-ten list of books and I may own a The Bell Jar tshirt from Out of Print clothing. I really loved the movie Sylvia. I am not exactly sure what this says about me as a person, but I try not to worry about it. Anyway, for a while now I have been wanting a copy of The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath and the other week I had to renew my irewards membership so while I was doing that I decided to treat myself to a copy. It just arrived in the mail yesterday and it is all I can do to keep myself from reading it and only it. He writing is so raw, so powerful, so emotional. She was so in touch with the intensity of life. Her every sentence pulses with power and emotion. It's amazing.
A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving in a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore, but to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not "work the lake out." It is an experience beyond thought. (John Keats, Bright Star)
I love the sensation of being fully immersed in literature. The feeling of breathing poetry. Of sliding between words. Of existing in spaces, in the pauses created by punctuation. Of rolling a word around in my mouth to see how it tastes. Of weighing a turn of phrase in my hands, allowing my fingers to brush against the edges of words, to catch on the corners and glide along the curves. I love it when I feel as if my pores ooze literature. When my first response to any situation, anything I am told, is to quote a poem or cite a novel. This is when I feel most alive. This is when I feel the most like me.
I know I must honour Athos's lessons, especially one: to make love necessary. -- Fugitive Pieces, Anne Michaels
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrung, and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in a casket or coffin of your own selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable. -- C.S. Lewis
Every so often I find that there is a topic that comes up in my life over and over again. This semester one of the topics we discussed in Psyc-Lit was the connection between vulnerability and love. It came up in at least three of the texts we discussed, including Fugitive Pieces which I adore, and I wrote two papers on this idea. It's something that has been popping up in my personal life too. I've been doing some serious thinking about the state of my heart and how I treat it. Then awhile ago one of my friends posted some lyrics from The Frozen Ocean's "In the Garden" as his Facebook status. This reminded me how much I really like The Frozen Ocean and sent me searching through my iTunes for their music and then listening to it over and over again. One of their songs, "Lost at Sea", starts with a reading of this quote from C.S. Lewis. I've been having some deep conversations with a girl who is quickly becoming one of my dearest friends, the kind of conversations that require trust from both parties. One of the things that she pointed out to me not so long ago is that one of the themes that seems to be emerging in my life is "make love necessary". It's true too. If I had to choose some touchstone words for my life as I head into 2011 I think they would be "love", "balance", "vulnerability" and "beauty". I like to think that when something keeps popping up in your life over and over again it is something you should probably do some serious thinking about. So I am. Just thought I would let you know that.
