Deferred Dreams

This. has been marinating. for awhile. You might say I've been "deferring" it. I've tossed it in some oil, let it soak in some herbs, been afraid I'd burn it if I threw it on the stove. I'll cook it up now, I guess. You'll forgive me if it's dry, if you come down with a little readers' salmonella. I'm a quasi-vegetarian--never really figured out the chemistry of meat.

It started, I think, back in the middle of the school year. An email from a former student, C. If you knew C, I think you'd figure out immediately why we get along. I'll sum it up like this: One of my old lit professors said to me when I ran into her about 7 years out of college, "I hope you've taken some time out of the heavy reading for a little bit of fun stuff." My reply: "The heavy reading IS the fun stuff, Maude. I actually enjoy it." C is like that, and she and I often end up in some deep conversational territory in circumstances where others might just stick with "How's it goin'?" Our emails are no exception. We talk about what we're reading, the deep thoughts the reading brings to the surface, and not much else. (At this point, you'll want to remember that I sometimes get so caught up in work during the school year that I forget to have fun (i.e., read), and you'll also want to remember that I am NOT editing these blog posts, so just ignore the typos). So C emailed me when I was "in it," and told me she'd recently been to a production of "A Raisin in the Sun" and attended a post-show conversation with the actors. C closed her email with a question: "Mrs. C, what do you think happens to a dream deferred?" If you're lost here, read the footnote at the bottom for a (painless) mini-lit lesson and link. Here's the thing--this email from opened a wormhole that hasn't yet closed. Since it's still marinating and I have more questions than answers, let's just follow the trail.

1. Well, "1" is the above. So...

2. I was deferring dreams all over the place when C's email reached me, and I knew it. Specifically, a trip to Europe and a trip to Indonesia. On one hand, I knew there would never be another summer where my kids were 6 and 2. On the other, I was having trouble convincing myself that the opportunities would still be there when my kids were old enough to come along or understand what it is that sent me to that small Indonesian town so different from what we're used to here in our air conditioned bubbles.

3. and 4. (Willa Cather and M and Anchorage) A few days after C's email, I assigned Willa Cather's "Wagner Matinee" story to the class without re-reading it. I had never taught the story before, in fact had not read it since college. I wanted to add some Cather to the class, though, and the story was in the lit book, and I remembered that I liked it, but not much else. The night before the story was due, I sat down to review it and come up with some ideas about things to talk about. I started reading and lost. my. breath. A story about a woman who gives. up. her. dreams of performing music to follow her husband to the prairie. The next day, the students shared thoughts on the story: "It doesn't make sense." "Why did she give up everything she loved to move to the boring prairie?" "Why would she completely stop playing the piano and listening to music?" "People just don't DO that." While they reacted, I thought about my friend M and realized this wormhole had started maybe, instead of when C emailed me, when I reunited with my friend M a few months prior. We were spending a weekend in Michigan, hadn't seen each other in about 8 years, and one of the first things I asked her was, "Where's your guitar?" Her response: "Oh, I haven't played in years."

There are many, many wonderful and interesting things about my very kind, well-rounded, intelligent friend M, so I don't want you to pity her as I tell this story. It's not as though she set down her life and her joy when she set down that guitar, but you have to understand that when M plays the guitar and sings, the entire room will stop and listen, even if there's a DJ with people-sized speakers three feet away or someone's doing handstands in the corner. So as I'm hearing my students' responses to the Cather story, as I'm hearing them say this never happens, I take a minute to tell them about M, and they listen. Then I ask them, raise your hand if you can think of something your parents loved when they were young, but then gave up. The room. was filled. with hands: "Painting." "Violin." "Water polo." More. And (I don't think I imagined this), there was this shared moment of understanding. This is what literature is supposed to do for us, right? Make us see how human we are, how similar? And without M and her guitar, without C's email and Langston Hughes, without the wormhole, would we ever have found ourselves there?

5. Re: that song M plays. Well, M plays/played/is going to play again MANY songs, but the one my friend K and I loved, the one we wrung out of M's fingers and vocal chords anytime there were six strings and a wooden box in the room, was Michelle Shocked's song "Anchorage." Lyrics here: http://www.lyricsondemand.com/m/michelleshockedlyrics/anchoragelyrics.html
If you don't know this song, read the lyrics. This is a song about...deferred dreams. A woman gets married and moves to Anchorage, then writes a letter, in the form of a song, to her friend who didn't get married and who pursued her dreams to become a musician. When this first started marinating, I told my friend E about all of the above, and she knew the song. The next day, she called me from a coffee shop: the song was playing on the stereo in the coffee shop. I have never before heard that song on any stereo. I have only heard it from M's smiling mouth. And I'm writing this blog entry because of a promise to M: I will pick up my pen and she will pick up her guitar.

6. Really, this wormhole is why I applied for the grant, why I'm doing all of this art in my garage. Most people who get these grants travel somewhere exotic, send postcards to the people back home, but I'd rather pursue the art here, with those other dreams, the living, breathing people who live with me physically and emotionally. Some days, the juggling is tough, but I'm beginning to see that the problem is that I should be blending instead of juggling, right? A smoothie instead of a sideshow.


7. I didn't respond to C's email (still haven't), because I don't have any answers. How many letters to how many people have I written in my head and never sent? I'll send her this entry and hope she'll forgive my several months' radio silence. It's a tough question, and the teacher in me wants to offer some brilliant answer. At the IB conference this week, though, one of the speakers reminded me that my role as a writer is not to answer the questions, but to ASK them. So I'm asking C back, and I'm asking M, and asking all of you, and it's the same question Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry and even Robert Frost rolled around on their tongues: What does happen to those dreams we set aside? If we choose to set them aside, do they cease to be dreams? Do they come back and haunt us? Do they grow into something else entirely? "Crust over like sugar(y) sweet(s)?"









Note for the non-lit-nerd people: A Raisin in the Sun is Lorraine Hansberry's play about the squashed dreams of African Americans before the Civil Rights movement. It finds inspiration (and its title) in the following poem by Langston Hughes, which was written decades before the play: http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/index.asp?document=640

Artist-ry

The other day it was a very busy day. I met an artist, though, and realized something about myself. When a student brought the artist to my office and introduced us to each other, we realized we were wearing necklaces designed and made by the same person. Mine had a bird on it, and I had bought it at Silver in the City. Hers had a plus sign on it, and she had bought it in Delaware. We started talking--she wondered if she might come by my class to ask the students to select their favorite words from a list as feedback for a project she was working on. I asked her what kind of work she did, and she said she liked to go around to old farms and abandoned barns and take pictures of what was there--just as I did in Tennessee last month. I told her about my project, and she said, "You know, you should probably display in more than one place--I'll bet there are lots of spaces that would be interested in that kind of work." The thought that snuck into my brain at that moment surprised me: 'Oh, but they wouldn't want my work. I'm not an artist.'


So I'm just letting that marinate a bit, that "I'm not an artist" thought. I'll let you know what comes of it, if anything.

Coming up for air, taking a few breaths, then diving right back in.

The school year and IB testing season are simultaneously coming to a close, and this means I'm starting to give myself permission to think about the project again, well as much as one can when 140 research papers will be turned in for grading tomorrow, one's house is coated in a thin layer of dust and snack crumbs, and the two-year-old sitting next to one keeps breaking the Hungry Hungry Hippos game then asking one to repair it. She just won't play when only three of the four hippos are operative.

Before the project, though, a digression. I like to follow the little wormholes to see where they take me, and during some parts of the year I'm just to "in it" to see any patterns at all. Mostly, April is a whole month of being "in it." But now I know I'm coming "out of it." I know this because 1: I was actually IN my office for an hour today. Granted, during that hour two alumni came to visit, one student brought his research paper by for a writing conference, two colleagues called for information, and another colleague came to hear the follow-up from yesterday's meeting, but all of these were pleasures of the job and I was IN MY OFFICE FOR A WHOLE HOUR! And 2: Yesterday I saw a wormhole and followed it.

Here's what I mean: The night before last, I (and here's another sign that the schedule is relaxing) read...part...of...a...bookandgotthrough30pagesbeforeIfellasleep! It was a book about physics. I've been reading about physics off and on for a few years now, trying to give it the attention I just couldn't spare for Mr. Tappan's 10th grade simple harmonic motion lessons, even when he started walking around with his foot in the trash can just to get our attention. Soooo...(and I'm going to change tense here, but don't tell the students who are at this moment writing those tense-consistent research papers for tomorrow)...here I am reading my physics book, learning about quantum physics, specifically, and the idea that the simple act of observation can change the outcome of something else in an entirely different location. And I think to myself, "Huh, wouldn't it be interesting if science and religion would just get together and talk about this? Now, there's a group I'd like to discuss some things with." And then I update my Facebook status and promptly go to sleep. And get up in the morning to fall back into being "in it" for another day. And I see the little physics pattern emerging in the day, little thoughts, little mentions, and come home to pick up the Oprah magazine I'd thrown on the couch the day before. And open it up to a story and start reading and the story is about creating vision boards, visualizing what we want to happen, forgetting about it, and experiencing the serendipity when it actually comes to be. I know I'm sounding really Fruit-Loopy here, but bear with me. In the story, the author actually talks about quantum physics and that new "board game" that allows you to move a little ball with your mind (I'm not making this up). And then and then and then, my mom calls and mentions the website meetup.com, which allows one to meet up with people with like interests who live nearby. Her cousin told her about it, and I wondered what kinds of groups were meeting in my area (not that I have any time while "in it" to go to any group meetings of any sort). But there is a group on meetup.com within 5 miles of my house that...wait for it...is dedicated to exploring the links between physics and religion. So I realize that a: I have just gone through the visualizing process in the article with some success (1. visualize that a group about religion and physics should exist. 2. forget about it. 3. Watch as it magically appears) and b: in some wacko hippie-dippie sort of way, well, PROVEN quantum physics? Thoughts?

Okay, now that the crazy cosmos lesson is over, I can update about the project. There's a lot to say. (If someone writes a really long blog entry and no one reads the whole thing, does it make a sound? Does it matter?)
1. The workshop is pretty much finished. It looks good.
2. I put my camera on the strap incorrectly and it fell off. Now the shutter catches for a millisecond after I take a picture. Ugh. I am going to have to send it in for a repair. I hope I can afford this.
3. I have begun a sketchbook with pages devoted to the birds and plants that might just make it into the final show. Next to them, I've begun writing memories which involve them. Some of these memories I turned into poems and submitted to the Indiana Writers Conference as two series: Dendrology and Ornithology.
4. Shrinky dinks are fun and I have missed them. Munchkin 1 and I had fun dabbling with them last week, and I am going to include Shrinky Dink as an official "medium" in the show. Heh.
5. I've been experimenting with stamping silver. I'm disappointed that the letter set I bought has two Os and no E. Back to the store it shall go. (Munchkin 2 is now playing with my iPhone. I apologize if she's calling you.)
6. I've convinced the 3D art teacher to give me some mini-lessons in pottery before the class at the Art Center starts.
7. The Broad Ripple Art Fair provided some inspiration and whatnot.
8. Child care is arranged! Thanks to G's mom for agreeing to watch the girls while I'm at the writers conference and two days a week during the summer so I can work on the wheel, etc.
9. B and I learned yesterday that both of us scored SCHOLARSHIPS to the writers conference, so it will cost less than expected.
10. Tennessee. I plan to do some more creative writing about this for the show, but I'll include a bit about it here. When I was little and spent every summer in Sharps Chapel, it seemed wild and removed to me, and I thought of the wooded areas as untouched and untamed. Going back, though, I realized that the pastures have been pastures for hundreds of years, and B's comment that it reminded her of Ireland sent me towards some epiphany that's not quite ready for articulation. We climbed up the hill to the barn, took a turn toward the pasture, drank from a spring, encountered terrapins and wild turkeys, braved a few storms, ate at the Tomato Head and wandered the Puccini festival in Knoxville, and met the woman who lives on top of the mountain where my grandmother grew up. She invited us up and gave us wine made from the plants that have grown there for generations. Munchkin 2 came down with strep throat, and everyone slept poorly. I collected wood from the decaying treehouse my brother built in the early 80s. I'll make frames of it. I'm pleased as can be that a few dear friends came along, brought food, carried and played with my children, failed to complain about the lack of sleep and bad weather, and listened to my stories. Even broken, the camera took lots of nice pictures. I need to figure out how to post them on this blog. And I need to remember to go to Tennessee sometimes. Especially when it's Dogwood Festival time in Knoxville. (Munchkin 2 keeps putting Altoids in my mouth while I write this. I am not paying enough attention--there were three in my mouth before I realized. Bleck.)

Well, I suppose that's about enough for today. Some follow-up items to document...
1. I need to clear some shelf space for ceramics, so I might have to find a cheap, small storage unit for the totes that are currently taking up that space. Or I need to build some shelves.
2. Still need to paint the workbenches.
3. Still need to build the wedging board.
4. After that, I think I'm ready for some full-time art.

Iceberg Tips

One day left of Spring Break and I'm not quite ready to go back, I think. That's strange for me: usually, I'm ready. Maybe it's all of the work to be done and rabbit holes to be explored. The workshop is mostly set up, even though there's still quite a bit of extra STUFF in the garage. I need to Craigslist much of it, but that's just another overwhelming item on the to-do list. The tool chest is stocked (the top half full of ceramic, jewelry, and knitting supplies, along with leftovers from every other crafty endeavor I've undertaken in this life). Things I learned while setting up the workshop:
1. I have enough empty plastic totes to start a container store, or fill a landfill.
2. Stowing craft supplies all over the house for 8 years makes you forget what you have. Putting the supplies all together in one place reminds you precisely how many hot glue guns you own: 5. Anyone need a hot glue gun?
3. Using a torch is easier than it appears. Acetylene is hotter than MAPP gas.
4. No matter how many storage racks, bike hangers, and shop lights you buy, things will not become more organized unless and until you actually HANG THEM UP.
5. Dad's garage is a more affordable and more accommodating home improvement store than Home Depot, Lowe's or Harbor Freight. Thanks to Dad for a soldering iron, a magnifying light, a Dremel tool, a vise on a stand, a small torch, an antique parking meter (okay, not really a tool, but a nice piece of kitschy decor), and some other handy tools.

As for the artistic elements, I tried a few things out and noticed a little learning pattern I'm falling into. It's a cycle of read, do, read, do, read, do. I learn more if I layer things this way. In pot throwing and glass torching, it's hard to stop in between steps to read through a book chapter. Instead, I read, implement what I remember, clean up the wheel or the heat-resistant mat, and hit the books again to learn how to fix what I've messed up. The results of these first pottery and bead-making experiments are not beautiful, but there is promise in them.

Re: The Throwing of Pots. It is both easier and more difficult than I imagined. Through books and YouTube, I figured out how to wedge and center the clay. I also figured out how to open up the clay and consequently decided that I really need to trim my fingernails. I am going to need to seek some advice from an expert about how to figure out just how soft the clay should be, and I'd like to run through all of the steps with a potter now that I've had some preliminary practice.

Re: The Torching of Beads. I've decided to throw a few more media into the mix: glass beads, sterling silver, and glass pendants. These are things I've always thought I would do, and this little art show seems as a good a time as any to incorporate them. The bead torching was calming, as was the pot throwing. It's yoga, realizing your breath in glowing glass or the clay on your pants.

Re: The Design Process. I'm falling into this twofold approach--learn the basic skills while gathering inspiration and planning for more complicated pieces. Blind faith is a key element--I'm just going to believe I can do this. Like M said once of the marathon: "It's just a process, like anything else." So I started collecting thoughts about the birds and plants I remember from childhood and piecing together little memory poems from the experiences they stirred up.

Re: The Spindle. Okay, and I bought a spindle, some dye, and some wool. But really, really this is the last medium I'll add. Promise.

Re: The Camera. I guess I really am going to have to read the manual.

Re: The Kiln. Ummm. See above under "The Camera."

Re: Those Deferred Dreams. Avie has woken up crying. I guess I'll just have to...err...defer this one for another day?

It takes a village or something...

Busy, busy weekend with much accomplished on the grant front. So much go-go-go that I'm just finally sitting down now to process all of it (and write a Catcher in the Rye test and grade more essays). So, without further ado...

Friday - D built the work benches. They are lovely. I never imagined I would use the word "lovely" to describe some big, chunky plywood and 4x4 tables, but I am using it, nonetheless, and I discover that it is JUST the right word. While D worked, SB chased the kids around the yard, Ra and G videotaped the sweat on our brows, and I took an important step toward the future cleanliness of our garage by cutting the torn-out carpet from the flooring project into strips, rolling those strips into rolls, and tying them up so they're trash-pick-up-able. Also, I found some time to run out and purchase a downright gorgeous tool chest. I didn't know I could feel this way about a tool chest. Dad-O insists this phenomenon is inherited. The weather was fantastic, and SB and the munchkins had much fun pulling up the solar lights and using them to look for the lost piece of pyrite Munchkin 1 flung into the yard. Someday soon, I will go stick the solar lights back into the ground, but in the meantime they will rest on their sides all scattered around the landscaping, evidence of a night of much productivity and camaraderie.

Saturday - K squared were game for what turned out to be a 10-hour shopping and errand-running extravaganza. With all of this name abbreviating, I feel that I should draw a table of elements to serve as a key to friend abbreviations. The necessity of such a key is just more evidence of this life of abundance, not of the material sort, but of the "it takes a village" sort. Maybe it takes villages to raise grown-ups, too, Hilary. Anyway, we went to...
1. (Starbucks) and the home of a couple on the near northeast side who were Craigslisting a kiln and some molds. We dirtied our hands sorting through the molds, found about 20 or so we liked, and deferred to Ka's negotiating skills to score a most excellent deal. Then we loaded the molds into the Element and crossed our fingers that everything we had left to purchase would fit in there with them.
2. The credit union, where I waited in line behind 14 people to withdraw the kiln and wheel money.
3. Steak 'n Shake. No steaks; just shakes.
4. Broad Ripple. Another Craigslisting couple (apparently, I have figured out how this Craigslist thing works). A wheel, a kiln, some bats, some clay, a stool, and supplies, all gently used and costing less than half their original price. The kiln is small and uses a regular household electrical outlet. I will fire the bigger projects elsewhere. The wheel is a Brent Model B.
5. Taste. Girls have to eat lunch, right? And drink a glass of wine? And have a giant chocolate cupcake for lunch dessert? And El B walked up to the restaurant to join us, even though she was feeling under the weather. And she wore her overalls.
6. Home to empty the very full Element and pick up Munchkin 1 from the fellas, whose bellies were full of Five Guys Burgers and who were ready to podcast.
7. Menards to return some flooring and buy a storage cabinet, some bins, bike hangers (a wise suggestion from the Ks), some Sharpies, and some Blistex because, in the words of Napoleon Dynamite, "My lips hurt real bad!"
8. (Starbucks) and Ulta.
9. The Gap (sweater, Chuck Taylors, sunglasses, t-shirt--okay, so we got a little sidetracked at the end of the day and stopped making grant purchases, but I have some birthday money coming, and I've been getting comments from people about the state of my wardrobe.
10. Old Navy. Because when we go to the Gap, we always end up at Old Navy. And vice versa.
11. Home. Exhausted. And to bed.


Sunday
Out of bed and to Kokomo for lunch with the Cook portion of the family. I took the camera and started to get to know it. I can't figure out how to make it take multiple pictures in succession, though, so I'm going to have to research that. I found the setting, but for some reason it doesn't work when I set it. The girls wore their Chinese outfits, and we took some cute pics of them playing with D and S. Stopped by Harbor Freight on the way back in hopes of finding a cart and a tall stool--no luck. I think I'll look to Amazon for those. Once I find those, I'll be finished with the workshop set-up purchases. Now begins the work of setting up shop. But at the moment, I'm sitting here in the Smartwool socks Ka bought all of the ladies, watching DVRed TV from last week, grading essays, writing a test, and talking to the little people. Spring break soon...

What the heck kind of project IS this?

It occurs to me, thanks to Molly's response to an earlier post, that some people might be reading this and wonder, "What the heck kind of project has she gotten herself into NOW?" So...perhaps this would be a good time (or about 5 posts LATER than a good time) to talk a bit about what the project is, exactly. Much of it is still taking shape, but here is what I know...

I wrote a proposal for a Lilly Teacher Creativity/Renewal grant for $8,000, and the readers liked it enough to say "Sure." The project was originally called "Artist at Last: Pottery, Poetry, and the Power of the Human Spirit," but for the purposes of this blog and the event that will result from all of this work, I think I'll call it "Pottery. Poetry. Place." Many people view the Lilly Teacher Creativity grants as opportunities to travel the world, but I've been lucky enough to have many travel opportunities, and I'm not at a place in my life right now where I want to spend 6 weeks away from my children. Instead, I look at the grant as an opportunity to live the artist's life right here at home (with a few short excursions mixed in). I'll use the funds to set up a "room of my own" sort of pottery workshop in the garage, take pottery classes at the Indianapolis Art Center, go to a week-long poetry retreat/workshop, take photos of places that remind me of my childhood, use the plants of those places as inspiration for creating pottery and poetry, learn to build frames, learn to cut mats, frame and mat my poems, and display the resulting pottery and framed poems and photos at an event. Most of the work will take place this summer, but if you've been reading you can see that there are many preliminary tasks (setting up the workshop, going to Tennessee for pictures, applying for the writer's workshop, purchasing supplies, studying up on pottery, plants, birds, etc.) that I'm blissfully pursuing as the school year wraps up.

The best parts of this so far?

1. The way there are so few rules that I can follow my gut wherever it leads--go to Tennessee, too, for example? Well, why not?

2. The way these funds are "protected"--there's no option for using them to pay bills or keeping them in a savings account. It makes me feel worthy and free.

3. The way the creative endeavor brings people together--to take photos, travel, build, write, film, and learn.

4. That this project gives me an excuse to blog--while it might not be that interesting to everyone else, I am never at a loss for items to write about when it comes to this project.

Am I Craigslist Stupid?

I emailed someone 6 hours ago about a kiln and some pottery molds on Craigslist, and I haven't heard back from them. I also didn't hear back from the two other people I emailed about pottery wheels last week. Am I Craigslisting wrong? Is there a secret language I need to learn? Or am I expecting folks to respond too quickly and therefore a Craigslist stalker? Why don't the Craigslist posters want to be my friends?

In other news, D and I went to Lowe's today and spent a few hundred dollars on wood, bolts, nuts, washers, a shopvac, black paint, primer, and some five-gallon buckets. We're gonna make ourselves some work tables! We settled on two 6' x 2' x 44" tables with shelves underneath. I also scoped out storage cabinets but didn't make a decision about that yet.

Tomorrow, there will be no work on the project--instead I will go to St. Elmo's to meet with a lobbyist because, yes, that is the jetsetting sort of life I lead.

I'll make it a goal to write some things less practical on the next post, but I am a pragmatist today.