So, 2013 has started off with a bang, a sort of creative hit-the-ground-running.
I am looking into a couple writer-artist residency programs, feeling STRONGLY that being somewhere I don't have the responsibilities I have here on the farm may allow me the creative energy to attack both my book, "Forespoken" as well as further explore the endless possibilities painting affords me. Tasks like shoveling snow, indoor winter plant care, photographing anything that catches my eye, the continued interior design refurbishing of my cottage, just answering the durned phone & talking to family-friends are all activities I mightily enjoy, but they also tend to steal alot of hours out of my day.
The photo below is of one side of my dear living room I enjoy so much, see the new Mac my son Nick gave me for Christmas ?! :) I sit here on the daybed ( only partly showing) sipping my freshly ground & brewed coffee to write. (Excuse the blue heating pad, joint disease demands I keep it nearby, not glam, I know )
I need to radically draw in my focus and intensify my efforts to get something of substance done with the 300 or so pages of notes on my book getting translated into actual text as well as furthering my oil painting self-study program.
I often find myself happily distracted from work by re-arranging rooms/flow/energy, refurbishing a piece of furniture, fine cooking, being with my animals, geneaology research,studying foreign languages, taking iTunes courses from Harvard, Oxford and Cambridge in Creative Writing, Fine Art, Anthropology, Law and more. Reading is a HUGE need, I must feed the brain and I love the wordy anesthesia books are. This is of course, lovely, but doesn't get my book written does it ? Below is a shot of my farm from the last big storm of 2012, happened last wk. LOVE the blue bias snow has~ You see, of course, how easily I am distracted. *sigh*
I think sometimes people think I'm kidding when I say I am a recluse. I really, truly am, you know. I love and cherish my solitude, I get SO much done within it's precious confines ! I think my personal motto is that phrase from Wordsworth about "the world is too much with us/me". There are times it feels so....heavy...to have to talk to another human being, especially when I'm loading-feeing the brain with images,words, sensory input like the long blue shadows in the snow on my farm, the way the trees softly roar in the winter winds, the flash of a glittering whirlwind of snow that trails the train as it whizzes by the end of my property...these things arrest my attention but also demand my quiet and fixed contemplation. Sometimes, it is too much work for me to speak because my brain is so joyously busy, caught in it's own rapture from the marvels of Nature and Literature and Art.
( that doesn't sound too awfully crazy, does it ? :)
I suspect I am hugely ADD because I don't tolerate distractions well, and there are SO damned many of them ! :) The smallest things cause me a paroxysms of solitary delight, like frozen drops hanging from a winter-black tree branch...and I feel it is only fitting to worship that moment, to galvanize it in my image catalogue. That takes time, peace, quiet in order to process it. I often feel my relationship with Nature is intimate, ardently private, as if I am the only one seeing these wondrous sights, and that too demands time.
The image below is of a corner of my bedroom; this is what I awaken to each morning, and I find it glorious. I adore the dappled light, the shadows, the reflection the items on the dresser have in it's lacquered finish. You see how a person can get caught up in this, yes ? :)
I have "x" amount of days-wks-months-years to get my work done before, as my ancestor Valentin Sasla Pfost said, "God takes me from time". The pressure of this is very real, very urgent. I realize many people don't get that, either because they're not at the stage of life I am or perhaps do not have the To-Do List I have, not saying that's a bad thing, mind you. I likely put more pressure on myself to get projects completed than anyone else would ever assign me.
It feels very important to complete this work. I have so much to do and get such intense satisfaction & fulfillment from the doing & completion of it.
Having said all this, I'm hoping you'll be able to forgive me if I don't answer the phone as often, don't respond to emails right away and maybe lay off the frequency of social networking for a while.
Yes, a residency program, so I am not pulled away from work by all the beauty I am so blessed by & besotted with here at Al Di La.
Happy 2013 .
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