Megzie

Julia Cameron has come up a lot for me lately. She's shown up in book recommendations from designers on Instagram, been an interviewee on Russell Brand's YouTube channel (which I recently stumbled upon), etc. I've had "The Artist's Way" on hold at the library for a while now, and today I finally bit the bullet and downloaded the eBook version. Here are some quotes I want to store here for safe-keeping. "Just as blood is a fact of your physical body and nothing you invented, creativity is a fact of your spiritual body and nothing you must invent." "What we are talking about is an induced - or invited - spiritual experience. I refer to this process as spiritual chiropractic . We undertake certain spiritual exercises to achieve alignment with the creative energy of the universe." "The heart of creativity is an experience of the mystical union; the heart of the mystical union is an experience of creativity. Those who speak in spiritual ter...

Jotting these here so I don't forget: Seven Pillars of Wisdom Remembrance of Things Past The Tale of Genji The Rings of Saturn My Struggle . "Why? Because they are all great books, books that are impossible to read without total immersion; I felt when I read them as if I had emigrated to another country, or lived in another time. What I have done is entered the mind of another, and found it fascinating, and wanted to stay there as long as I could." - Mary Ruefle in the Washington Square Review

 "Y es, writers are mysteriously attracted to objects that seem to speak to them, either these objects have entered one’s life by association with an event or a person, or they have entered by their own powers of persuasion, as when you find something lying on the street which you can never again part with—I have a terribly chewed-up pencil in my study that entered my life that way. And my entire home is full of such objects, altars full of them, arrangements of them everywhere, and by the time you are my age, things are out of control! I think this speaks to the power of the image, as well as the power of an object to contain a world, not to mention the power of an object to communicate." - Mary Ruefle in a Washington Square Interview I immediately thought of Lynda Barry's note, "What are toys? Outfits for inner space creatures."  There are so many artists I've come across (I'm thinking of Maira Kalman here as one example) who are collectors of seeming...

I started this book yesterday and finished it today, which tells you that it was both a really enjoyable read and very short. The only thing I knew about this book was that it was written in prose by an intriguing Vermont poet (which was enough to convince me to read it). It was really good.  Some favorite vignettes: The Woman Who Couldn't Describe A Thing If She Could Pause My Private Property (about shrunken heads) Wild Forest Blood Towards A Carefree World  Some favorite quotes: "A dead body in a box can be lowered into the ground using heavy equipment, but we do not consider it trash. When the dead are not in boxes and there is a man-made mountain of them we use heavy equipment to bury them together, like trash. It is estimated that everywhere we are walking on a piece of trash and the hard, insoluble remains of the dead. Whatever the case, the dead and the garbage are together in the ground where we cannot see them, for we do not relish the sight or smell of them. If we d...

 "Writing is practicing a physical activity with a state of mind" (pg. 175, What It Is ) Do not read over what you write for at least a week ("The part of you that is reading it over is not the same as the part of you that wrote it. All the part of you that is reading it over wants to know is is it any good.  Wait one week and you will have a different experience. P.S. It will be a better one") pg. 156). Keep your pen moving even if you get stuck. Write the alphabet! Draw a swirl!

  We get so much junk mail. It's also difficult to recycle here, so it makes the abundant junk mail even more depressing. On my way to the mailbox a few days ago, a solution came to me: junk mail collages. I've been wanting to make more collages anyway, so it was a perfect plan. I've made a few already and am hoping to make this a regular habit. A few things I've been thinking about regarding collage and why I am so drawn to this medium: You are forced to work within the limits of what you find in the materials before you. You can start with a great vision, but if the words and images aren't in the pages, you have to find something else. I like this obligatory surrender of my design.  The final piece is in front of you, you just have to find it and arrange it. To me this is more like sculpting - it is about removing excess to make way for what you want to keep. You have to keep going back to the materials, and the potential you see in them changes as your design evo...

Lately I've been struck by the thought that I need to use my time better. And by time I mean this period of time where I have so much flexibility in my schedule. I'm home, Evan's home, and despite having pretty regular weekly engagements, we have more flexible time than the average person. I feel like I need (and want) to actively work on becoming my healthiest self so I'm in a better place to give back to others who aren't.  Today Evan and I decided to do the daily Church readings together. We're trying to get back on a better schedule of getting to bed earlier and waking by six. I'm trying to make sure I prioritize reading each day and time for sewing and creating on the weekends. I'm interested in seeing if I can follow some semblance of the "hours," at least by maybe reading a Psalm at noon each day. I know it's not all about doing more, but still I know that routines have an impact on how you think and see, and I want to at least get a...

I picked up Lynda Barry's delightful "What It is" book at the library yesterday and read the first half this morning. Evan and I got up at 6 am and it was invigorating to be gently woken up to Barry's many questions and musings. I haven't read a book that mostly asks questions before and I'm intrigued. Here are some of the ideas that caught my eye: "I believe [images] are the soul's immune system and transit system." How much of what we see/notice is what we expect? "Memory: an image which travels through time." "We don't create a fantasy world to escape reality, we create it to be able to stay." "What makes something a chore?" "Sometimes we are not in the mood to play. Why?" "What are toys? Outfits for inner space creatures." "What is the difference between being awake and asleep?" "What is a mood?" "Can you have thoughts without language?" "Is imagination a...

Mom, Erin, Evan, and I walked around the Nisqually Nature Preserve a few days ago. A fact on one of the informational signs caught my attention. While other goose populations have declined in recent years, the Western Canadian Goose population is growing. This population boom is thanks to parks, golf courses, and other areas that provide green grass year-round. The access to grass makes it so the geese don't have to migrate as far and can lay and care for more eggs. It seems like most human-animal interactions result in devastation to the animal in question, so it is interesting to learn about examples where human activity actually allows for a species to flourish.

  Francis Mallmann, photo from here   We watched a Chef's Table tonight about Francis Mallmann, a chef from Patagonia who cooks primarily over an open fire outdoors. He is a romantic and a pleasure-seeker, taking 4-5 flights a week to visit his various passion projects. While there is undeniable selfishness in his way of life, there is also undeniable virtue. Some takeaways: - Having cooking fulfill other desires/"needs" (e.g. beauty, community, movement) so that it can take over a larger chunk of your time without feeling like a burden  - Fire is such a powerful element and adds flavor to food - Eating and cooking outside  - How do you learn a craft from others but go in your own direction? It seems that you have to be really attuned to your own motivations/energy/passions. - Do we need change to grow? Is travel the best way to encourage this change? photo from  here   " Many attribute to Mallmann the predictable strain of machismo that goes along with ste...

 " The ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the  quantity  of work they produced, all those on the right solely on its  quality . His procedure was simple: on the final day of class he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the “quantity” group: fifty pound of pots rated an “A”, forty pounds a “B”, and so on. Those being graded on “quality”, however, needed to produce only one pot — albeit a perfect one — to get an “A”. Well, came grading time and a curious fact emerged: the works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the “quantity” group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes — the “quality” group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of de...