December 30, 2014 – My edge – exquisite softness for myself

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In 1998, when the movie “Saving Private Ryan” came out, Joe and I went to see it in the theater.  It was getting rave reviews, it was Spielberg, a great cast – everyone was seeing it, so we did too.  About ten minutes into the beach-landing scene I found myself sitting in my seat barely able to breathe.  I was so overwhelmed with the horror of what those men had experienced, it impacted my physical body. I had to leave the theater, remind myself where I was and that I was ok.  I waited a while, until the loud explosions coming from the theater died down and went back in to join Joe.  When it was over, walking out, driving home, we didn’t speak to each other. Not until the next morning were we able to talk about it.  Even though it’s an incredible story and film, I was sorry that I put myself through watching it.  I vowed to myself to never go see a violent  movie – especially a war movie – again.

I know that war is part of life on earth.  Humans are terribly violent and destructive to one another and there must be some value in telling these stories. (Though doing so hasn’t seemed to stop it from happening.)  But I lack the filter to keep energy out of my being – not just my mental and emotional being, but my physical being too.  I remember as a teenager passing out in the Kaiser Hospital elevator after having visited my grandma. There was no blood or anything gruesome, she was just in a lot of pain.  My psyche couldn’t handle her suffering and away went my consciousness.

Last night I stayed up until 12:30 on the computer, getting all the online store and credit card transactions from this month’s sales entered into QuickBooks.  The deposits were a puzzle to figure out, but I really wanted to get it done before year end.  I did this knowing that being up that late, looking into an electronic screen (two, actually) with my brain engaged with numbers would impact my sleep.  Sure enough, I had a hard time falling asleep and then woke up just three hours later.  I’ve got a little head cold, so depriving myself of sleep is so not what I needed.

All of this is to say that I’m coming to terms, 53 years into this life, that I am a really sensitive person.  Having been raised around a bunch of boys – my three brothers and all their friends – I didn’t have much in the way of an example or a reflection for my kind of sensibilities.  I climbed trees and did a lot of “boy stuff” not fully knowing how girly I really was inside.  I’ve been called a “trouper” all my life, for my capacity to dig in and work hard, even physically hard – like that tile work I did in college.  We keep doing what we are praised for – it’s a well-worn groove.

Becoming an artist and teacher in mid-life has brought to me praise of another sort entirely.  I am not just sensitive to violence, pain and working my brain too hard late at night, but also to how beauty is everywhere, how unique and precious each act of creation is, each attempt at making a watercolor painting.  I am grateful for my capacity to hold people in a particular way in their process of learning to paint, for my ability to see color, for the instrument that lives in the center of my chest that responds to inspiring visions – hearing them say “paint me.”

Tomorrow is the last day of 2014. Though it’s rather arbitrary, the calendar is a structure that we live around.  As such, we look at endings and beginnings. I’ve been shying away from New Year’s resolutions for several years. I’m so susceptible to the “bright-shiny”-ness of the hope for a “whole new me.”  Though it’s still useful to reflect and envision.  Looking back on this year, much of what I was so eager and hopeful for at the start has not come to be.  But what I do see is a profound deepening of my understanding and appreciation for who I am and what I’m here to do and offer.

I’m an artist and I am a teacher/guide/companion, particularly to others drawn to make the kind of art I do.  And the capacity to hold the possibility of  transforming their lives as I have mine.  These are gifts that are intertwined with my sensitivity. Gifts I did nothing to gain, other than to answer the call from outside me to bring them forth.  What I see this morning, is that in order to most fully serve, in the particular way only I can, I can’t live like I did when I set tile, or wrote computer code in the corporate world.  I can’t “do it all” in my little business either.

Life unfolds and reveals us to ourselves and each other in its own time and way.  It’s not new that I need to care for myself differently – I’ve even just shared this with you!  But my experience is that it keeps landing more deeply and clearly.  I can only go so far, watching myself live in a way that goes against my soul before my choices change.  It can be slow, but I stake my life and future on the knowledge that it is steady.

Looking into 2015, with a tender heart, I wish for Life in Full Color to expand, to find its way to bring life, light, color, inspiration to other hearts that resonate with it.  I wish for whatever is needed in me, for me to understand that Life in Full Color is so much more than me, and that bringing it more fully into being will take much more than me.  And I trust that at the end of December 2015, I will look back and see that something has moved and changed and grown.  It’s the nature of the universe.

Thank you, once again, for being there in my world, for having drawn this art, this teaching out of me, for giving me my life’s work.  Sending you my love and blessings for all you wish for in the coming days and months of the new year.

Love,

Cara

December 23, 2014 – Blessed by Black Labs

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Joe and I have had three black Labradors – all boys.  Well the first one, Bud, was really Joe’s dog. He was nine when Joe and I started dating – when I lived in a house that had white carpet and a white sofa.  It was my girly-girl house.  My dad called it my little “bijoux.”  After my divorce, I just knew that I’d share my life with another husband and I wanted a period of time when I could live in a more feminine and refined house than would be comfortable for the kind of guy’s-guy I’m attracted to!  The first time he came over with Bud, I put blankets down on the carpets and instructed them that he had to stay right over there, with all his black dog hair.

Joe was diagnosed with lymphoma six days after our first date.  So within a few weeks, we not only knew that he was going to become very sick from the chemotherapy treatments prescribed for him, but also that we were “the one” for each other.  So he, and his black dog moved in with me in my white house.  Joe had to stay overnight in the hospital for the second chemo treatment, leaving me at home with Bud, the black dog.  I’d never had a dog in my thirty-something life and I was actually a bit scared of him.  Poor guy, he must have been pretty uneasy with me too!

In the morning I had to leave him in the house to go to work in the city (San Francisco).  Since Joe’s dad was picking him up and bringing home about 8am, I thought Bud wouldn’t be there alone long.  Timing is NEVER as expected in the hospital though, and they were several hours late getting home. In the meantime, Bud had to pee. I’d shut all the doors to the bedrooms and bathroom in the hallway wanting to keep him as corralled as possible. He tried to get in to each room by chewing all of the door jambs, as well as scratching at the French door to the backyard before finally relieving himself on the white carpet in the living room. Joe came home to his girlfriend-of-one-month’s perfect white house with shredded door jambs and a big pee spot on the white rug.  Oh… no.

I guess I passed some kind of test when I didn’t completely freak out when he called me at work to tell me. Oh, well. What were we to do? He’s in the construction industry and got someone to repair the wood work and we had the carpet cleaned.  I had no idea I should have made him go for a pee before leaving!

About a year and a half after old Bud died, we got BJ (Buddy Junior). BJ and I were pals – we walked every day together and we played “stair-ball”- a game where he dropped the ball down the stairs and I threw it back up to him. He died suddenly in an accident when he was 5 and a half years old.  I watched it happen.  It was an awful experience.  I couldn’t sleep for a couple of nights, for the flashes of memory that kept coming up.  We missed our BJ-boy so much, it was a very difficult time. Was there ever going to be another dog who would play stair-ball?  Was I ever going to love another dog like I did him? Joe asked me, what if I could love another dog even more?  (Yes, he’s a pretty amazing guy.)

For anyone who doesn’t know, Labs shed. They shed a lot. All the time.  Fur goes everywhere. The furniture, our clothes – I find it in my food sometimes – and fur even sticks to the moist paint in my palette.  I mean everywhere. If we don’t sweep the hardwood floors for several days, dust bunnies of black dog hair form in the corners.  Pretty serious shedding.

There came a day after BJ died, a few weeks had passed, when I swept the hardwood floors and there was no dog hair.  I was not relieved for the lack of mess. My grief welled up anew. No dog hair meant no BJ.

Our dogs bring such great energy to our house and to our marriage.  They are family – so easy to love. As Valerie, a student of mine, puts it, there is a special chamber in our hearts for our love of them. But it’s still easy to get annoyed by the fur, the mess, the inconvenience.

We now have Bo (short for BoJangles). We got him four months after BJ died, at seven weeks old (I first held him at 3 weeks).  He’s now 4 and a half.  And I believe they share the same spirit – but that’s another post.  I can honestly say, that I have a completely transformed relationship with the dog hair that is all over our world. We have this pup, we have his fur.  It’s a great way to look at a lot of things:  a friend one day expressed her exasperation at her son’s finger prints all over the refrigerator – I gently reminded her she has a son!  Even though he never means to, my hubby tracks dirt in the house with his running shoes – and I have an awesome husband.  Our big oak tree out front drops leaves all over our yard, 365 days a year.  Yesterday Joe was bemoaning how he’d just cleaned up the side patio and the wind covered it again with leaves. I said “one day we won’t live under this tree.”  Joe said “and when we don’t, I will miss it.”

There’s another way of looking at this that helps my perfectionism take a step back.  Who says that the one who is “messy” is the one with the problem?  What if the problem is mine, needing everything to be so neat all the time?

I’m all about creating freedom – including for myself.  I can help myself free from my perfectionism by reminding myself that what I love will always come with something that will challenge me.  Everything in life is a mixed bag, as my God-mother Donna tells me.  I want to be free to enjoy the blessing part of the mix.

Right now, Bo-Doggy is lying flat on his side on his dog blanket on the bed with me as I write, occasionally taking a deep breath and letting it out with a sigh.  Yes, there’s dog fur on the blanket, and he’s an enormous blessing in our lives.  He’s also great at playing stair-ball. Even better than when he was BJ.   In this moment, his presence feels pretty miraculous. I’ll take that over a fur-free life any day.

May the magic of believing in miracles bring you joy and delight too.  I wish you a Merry Christmas, a Happy Channukah, a blessed Solstice or whatever you celebrate this time of year.  And a happy and healthy 2015.  I am so very grateful for you in my life.

Love,

Cara

December 16, 2014 – Let it shine

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This past week my coach, Lissa Boles, suggested I share with you why I now write a journal post every week.   In thinking about this, I reflected on how, as much as I love to write and am told how much people appreciate it, it was SO not that way for much of my life.  In high school I loved Math, Physics, Chemistry and French. Proving geometric theorems was fun!  Give me any math word problem – I ate ‘em up!  But, I got through English. Blue books were not my friends.  This carried into college. I remember reading Voltaire for a Humanities class and being required to write an essay about character motivation in light of the era or something like that – and being totally, thoroughly flummoxed!  I had not a clue!  My brain just does NOT work that way!

My degree is in Computer Science and all my electives were natural sciences, classes about the natural world:  Oceanography, Geography, Geology, Meteorology.  I love maps and categorizing things.  I have a brain that loves to find order in disorder. But writing?  I subscribed to something I heard my dad say:  “writing is easy, all you have to do is stare at a piece of paper until your forehead bleeds!”  That is, until it was about something I cared about – writing stories of my experiences.  When I was going to a church that occasionally invited members of the community to offer reflections as part of the Sunday services, I started writing stories to share.  But, I really got going when preparing for my first Open Studios.  I was inspired to write a little story for each painting and put together an “Art Journal.”  I remember sitting outside on the patio with my laptop on my lap, just tapping away, one painting after the other.  I have continued for each new painting I’ve done since.  And all these stories are on my website, helping to further illuminate the images I paint.

What comes to me now is that the impetus to write has sprung from these places:

• I am a seeker and have been following a path of self-development for decades, demonstrating my tendency to “look under the rock.”
• Witnessing others making art for the past three years in my painting groups, has caused me to consciously observe, and start to see patterns in the creative process.
• I’m a connecter – I see patterns, similarities, parallels (there’s that logic brain, who knew?!) And it seems useful to share the connections I see.
• What I write, like the well of paintings, is in me – there’s that quote from the Gospel of St. Thomas I included in a post in November – and I do not want to be destroyed!

For at least a few years I’ve had the sense that I had something to write, to share, beyond writing about my art.  When I started regularly posting at the beginning of October, it was in spite of the fear that I’d not keep it up – that I’d get pulled away and peter out.  This remains a risk and a possibility, but I’m into my third month and writing a post for Tuesday is becoming what I do.  The discipline is good for me. It’s growing me to do this.  At first, I thought I would need lots of feedback and response in order to keep doing it. Even though I’m getting very little, it’s ok, I’m still writing!

I appreciate very much when I hear that you read what I write and tell me that it was worthwhile for you to read it.  It definitely fuels me to keep this up. And what I didn’t expect would happen as I have continued this practice, is that I am sticking with it even if you don’t.  I am doing this because it is in me, just as I paint because the paintings are in me.  At the same time, I do need you. I didn’t start to paint with much regularity until I had an audience. Until there were people who might be wondering – and even wanting – what I might paint next.  So as it is with this journal.  If I didn’t post these online, available for you to read them, I wouldn’t feel compelled to write them.  It sounds like I’m contradicting myself.  It’s subtle, but there is a distinction.  I write because it’s in me, and I keep writing because you are there to receive it.

Sharing what comes of me – of us – is risky. We are revealed, exposed and open to judgment. And we have to face the voices inside that might say “who are you to do this?”  But the seeker in me wins out.  I write – and paint – because I am fully on the bandwagon that we are all invited on – to let our light shine.  Who doesn’t feel more alive singing “This Little Light of Mine”? (Don’t believe me, watch/hear Bruce Springsteen lead it here. I dare you to sing along!)

This piece from Maryanne Williamson is so often quoted, but it is so worth including here:

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us; it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

I write – and I paint – for us, which in my experience is where God lives most powerfully – in our connection. In these darkest days, this darkest season here in the northern hemisphere, when we celebrate the light, I invite you to join me, in whatever way you are called to – to let it shine.

Love,

Cara

December 2, 2014 – Practice and devotion

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I am part of a coaching group.  We are a remarkable group of women who are bringing our purposeful work into the world, with the support of each other and our gifted teacher and mentor, Lissa Boles.  One of my sister-coachees, Lyn offered to me a self-study experience of a program she created called Nine Days to Peace.  Doesn’t that sound wonderful? Nine days and I have peace?  I have never easily created structure for myself and for a while I have had been living with this desire to re-commit to a daily spiritual practice, so I said a big “yes” to her offer.

I started my nine days on November 22, the new moon.  Farmers have been planting seeds under the new moon for eons. The energies of the dark night are good for beginnings.  We all start in the dark of our mother’s bodies.  Newness emerges from the darkness.  On the first day I spent a few hours puttering in my “pink room,” a second sleeping room in our house, where I sleep often.  There’s a bay window and my grandmother’s old sewing machine on the side of the bed where I set up an extended altar space with meaningful objects from my mothers, grandmothers, teachers, dear friends, Paris – and my Joseph – so they all would accompany me each day as I practiced.  I added candles and hung “Full Circle” – a painting with a lot of my journey in it – above everything.

Then I faithfully started the nine-days, lighting candles, creating my intentions, writing in my journal, having sweet time connected to myself, my deepest longings – and the God of my heart.  I played sacred music, I listened the recordings of Lyn’s guidance she provided me. Even as I write this, I slip into the soft, lovely feeling of the space I created.  For several mornings I continued. It was just what I was hungering for.

And then, Thanksgiving happened – we hosted 14 for dinner.  I got pulled right out of my morning rhythm by all the to-do’s.  I managed to circle back in the evening to light a quick candle and read my intentions before bed – absolutely exhausted from all the do-ing.  The day after, I stayed in bed until 10:45. I can’t remember the last time I’d been in bed that late!  I’d slept and rested through the time I’d sit and be focused on my practice.  And, though I didn’t do much on Friday, I didn’t circle back – until the end of the day again to quickly read my intentions before bed.  The spell had been broken – I’d drifted away from my practice after six days.  I had to drag myself back to it on Saturday morning to finish the last two days. I did finish the nine days, at the very least reading my intentions to myself every day. But at the end I was left feeling like I’d not done it “right.”

I started the process with a bright, shiny optimism about what was to come of the nine days.  I know this about me – and it’s a sweet part of me.  But there is a naiveté to it.  I forget about the long haul.  The long haul is where it all happens.  Mastery comes out of time with butt in the chair.  This is still a muscle I work – I maybe always will.  I have no problem getting wholly enthused about a new exercise class or avoiding sweets for a while, or a renewed plan to paint every single day.  And then life happens. I get off track and things get loosey-goosey.  And…I remember I’m a feminine being, and we feminine beings are most naturally oriented by what happens outside of us.  This is how it’s meant to be.  Our babies need us to care for them in the moment they need it, not when we are ready to come out of ourselves.  But even after the babies are grown, it’s work, real work to follow our inner selves consistently.

I am a big believer that whatever is revealed is perfectly ordered.  My prevailing intention about myself and my process is to refrain from making anything about me “wrong.”  Of course I got off track because of Thanksgiving! Of course it was hard to come back when I was exhausted!  The fruit of the nine days is this: a deeper level of acceptance of this aspect of my nature.  Accepting that this is how I am gives me a new way to engage with staying on track.  There is a part of me that is quite idealistic; it so wants for my dreams to unfold smoothly and effortlessly. When I lose focus, that part makes stuff up about how I’ll never be, never have… whatever my intention is.

I see this dyamic in myself and others in our painting journeys.  One not-insignificant aspect of joining one of my weekly groups is the structure of – at least once a week – actually sitting down to paint.  There’s no laundry to fold, no email to respond to, it’s time to paint. Otherwise (and I know this intimately) it can be so hard brush off the distractions.  Painting is a spiritual practice to me.  It’s a devotion.  I just looked up the word devotion. There are several meanings. Two are “deep love and commitment” and “great dedication and loyalty.”  These things don’t mean anything if it’s easy all the time.  Devotions are inherently not-easy.  We bring ourselves to them in the face of what pulls us away.

Today, I sit with these guideposts:

• I am devoted – to my inner life, to painting and teaching, to write to you once a week, to be-ing love as much as I can be.
• I know that these devotions are bumped into by my life, inner and outer, pulling me away.
• And, I endeavor to gently accept myself as I watch the rhythms, the seasons of my practice.

My experience is this acceptance creates space for whatever it is that brings me back.  Which is completely mysterious to me – what does bring us back?  What comes to me in this moment is…  that which brings us back is Grace.

Wishing you the space for Grace to seep in.

Love,

Cara

November 25, 2014 – The matter of mattering

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When I was in college, I worked summers setting tile – on kitchen counters, around bathtubs, floors, even the stalls of an office building restroom.  My biggest job was laying heavy 12”x12” pavers on the floors of a home in Paradise Cay in Tiburon.  It took many days to work my way from the family room, down a hallway, into the breakfast room, around a kitchen island and back to the family room.  It wasn’t until I met back up with the tiles I’d set at the start, and found that my layout worked – the grout lines actually lined up in both directions!  I was brave in the undertaking – and lucky! If the grout lines had been off, it would have been a huge problem!  As a tile setter I learned to work with a water-cooled tile saw.  It was fun to run my finger right on the blade, showing off how it wouldn’t cut skin. It was also fun doing something that is done by mostly guys.  Oh, how far I have come!

Though I cannot imagine ever being able to work that physically hard again (the boxes of the pavers I lifted and carried were 75 lbs each!), it is useful to know how to work a tile saw.  Today I used my (contractor) brother Joe’s tile saw to cut a few tiles for our kitchen backsplash where we took out a microwave and put in an exhaust hood. Here they are ready to be grouted tomorrow.  I also cut the broken handles off a whole bunch of mugs that were damaged in the first shipment.  It’s so hard to toss things that could be useful – Mom and I thought they might make good pencil holders to give away. After I was done, I realized that I really, really should have been using ear plugs – the saw has a sharp, grinding sound and my ears were ringing.  At least I did think to put on a pair of sunglasses to protect my eyes!  When I was 19 and 20, I never protected either!

Taking good care of myself – physical and otherwise – has never been natural or come easily to me.  It’s always been a struggle to tend to my own needs – drink enough water, get enough rest, or say “I don’t think so” when I ought to.  My orientation, my focus is always “out there,” before it is “in here.”  It’s automatic for me to get what you are feeling before I know where I am.  What this means is that my feelings can get really big before I notice them. Having the capacity to intuit others’ feelings has served me – it allows me to provide a special kind of attention. But, unless I care for me, it’s not sustainable and eventually, I can get pretty ugly when I go on tilt.

There’s a connection here to the quest I’ve been on for what seems like forever – to grow and understand myself.  I’m looking to either transcend this way of being, or find a way to be at peace with it (most likely a combination of both). In this quest, I’ve come back over and over to my deepest, darkest shadow belief:  “I don’t matter.”  Today, in my current circumstances, I so know I matter.  I matter tremendously – not just to those who love me, but I matter to me.  And yet – that belief persists largely unconsciously.  It is at the root of how hard it is to care for myself.

Lately I’ve been living in the question, “what would it take to live my life, make choices, with the deep belief, “I matter”?  So what actually matters?  I am both a physical being living in a body in the manifest world, and I am non-physical – a spirit, a soul that is eternal, not bound by the start and end of physical life.

This past week, Joe and I had an interaction that led me to an awakening about this idea of my mattering.  In part of our conversation, I operated from what felt like my higher self, able to see beyond the circumstances, able to bring an element of spirit to the present moment.  And in the next moment, I did just the opposite. I operated from my fear that I didn’t matter, that what I wanted was again not going to come to be. It went badly.  The contrast in that conversation woke me up.  I realized where I’d gone, I found my center again and apologized to him.

Right afterwards, on my walk with Bo, it sifted in:  my eternal self is beyond the realm of mattering or not mattering, there’s no not-mattering in the eternal, mattering is implicit.  But, as a human being living an earthly life, I matter – I have very real needs.  And, if I don’t tend to those needs, it’s nearly impossible for me to access my eternal self, to be the source of love in the situations I find myself in.  There’s no more worthwhile way to spend this life than to be love as much as I can.  As I write this, it seems like a “well, duh” kind of thing. Nevertheless, the way it sifted in felt fresh and potent.

I am consciously avoiding the temptation to feel like a “whole new me” about this.  And I deeply believe that the shadow (including my shadow) is an intrinsic element of manifest life.  There’s no ridding ourselves of it. I will have shadow beliefs until “I” am no longer in this body.  The tender hope that I live in today, even as I forget to put in ear plugs when running a loud machine, is that the dawning I had a few days ago continues to resonate, ripple, bubble up in my consciousness progressively more. I so want that, if it’s like a muscle being exercised, it strengthens.

I recently heard the words come out of my mouth in support of someone else, “be gentle with yourself for not being good at taking care of yourself.” I’m directing these words to myself, taking me back to the statement I’ve said in these posts a few weeks running now, “if I could take better care of myself, I would.” You might say that’s a copout. But it’s a present moment thing. It doesn’t mean there isn’t an opportunity to do better down the path.  We are here to shine the light of presence, of consciousness into the darkness of the shadow – without the separating impact of sitting in judgment.  That includes me to me.  Work in progress.  Human.  Perfectly imperfect.  This is a nice place to rest this week.  To feel my gratitude for all that has been bestowed upon me in this life – light and shadow, as we in the U.S. gather to feast and offer our thanks for our blessings.

I thank you for being who you are to me.

Cara

November 18, 2014 – When in doubt, cook!

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My dad took over cooking our family dinners when I was in junior high. My mom started two businesses and he was teaching at a special high school, where the kids had a shorter than normal day.  He found himself with more time and picked up cooking dinner.   He shopped every day and came home. Then he and I made dinner together.  I learned how to handle knives, cut up a chicken, chop an onion and make a white sauce.  It seems to me, unless we eat out somewhere, I’ve been part of making dinner nearly every night of my life since.  In a lot of ways, cooking is much more natural and intuitive to me than painting.  Though I love to peruse cookbooks, I most often cook without a recipe. I have a sense of what’s in the house without looking in the cupboards and refrigerator.  When asked what my specialty is, I say it’s cooking a nice meal with what’s in the kitchen.

When I was 14, I baby-sat for a woman in Woodacre who had three kids.  I stayed overnight while she went on a yoga retreat – in the days when no one went on yoga retreats.  This included making dinner for the kids and me.  Seems she forgot to leave much food in the house. I remember scraping the last bits of chicken of a carcass for tacos and roasting raw cashews in a skillet with a bit of butter and salt for extra warm protein.  I was fourteen!  Though it’s inconceivable to me now that she left her kids with me overnight (did I mention the toilet was backed up, meaning we had to go next door to use the bathroom, and that I ended up with poison oak from having slept in her sheets?), it’s good story to tell – and I now look back and see the start of my “specialty.”

It’s become who I am. I cook. I find myself saying “when in doubt, cook” and I have a Penzey’s spices bumper sticker on my car that says “Love People. Cook them Tasty Food.”  I just love that it doesn’t say Penzey’s spices anywhere on it. They aren’t marketing themselves, they are marketing cooking!

I’ve recently been working with an amazing coach (everyone could use one!). Recently when we were talking about my cooking, she shared with me something she read in a book called “Built to Last.”  All the people profiled in the book, people who had built sustainable bodies of work that have endured – every one of them has a passion that seems unrelated to their main work. And if they didn’t devote time to this other passion, their work would suffer.  It’s not a hobby, it’s a necessity.  It’s not a luxury, It’s a foundational practice that makes the rest of their work possible.

For me, this is cooking.  The Tuesday after this year’s Sausalito Art Festival, I got all the art and festival gear put away, I checked in with my husband’s office. I came home about 3:00 and actually let myself have a little nap. I woke up at 3:30, went into the kitchen and cooked. I processed the mountain of tomatoes from my parents’ huge vegetable garden that had been accusing me of neglecting them, lest they get overripe and go bad. I made an eggplant Parmigiana with the two eggplants that had just started to shrivel.  I stuffed one of the gigantic zucchini with a ground chicken mixture and sauced it with some of the tomatoes.  I cooked for three hours, in bare feet, the house quiet, Bo lying on the floor waiting for goodies to fall.  I felt back inside myself again.  Cooking does that for me.

Late last week, I was headed home. Joe wasn’t going to be home for dinner. In the car at a stop light, I was thinking about what I’d make myself. I wanted something like spaghetti carbonara, but I wasn’t in the mood for meat (I often eat meatless when I’m on my own).  I immediately thought of the cremini mushrooms at home, fresh rosemary and garlic.  Mushrooms and eggs are wonderful together, so why not?  When I got home I did a quick web search for vegetarian carbonara and found one with tomato (?) and asparagus (not!) and another with zucchini, better, but not what I had in mind.  So I made it up. And it was delicious, warm, satisfying, savory, creamy but not too heavy or rich.  I’d absolutely make it again.  Here’s what I did, including my yet-untested improvements (basically more garlic and rosemary). Let me know if you make it and if so, if you changed it – made it your own – and how you liked it.  I learned the method of cooking the not-quite-done pasta with some of the pasta water in a sauté pan from Michael Chiraello.  The results are delicious. If you’ve never done so, give it a try.  Buon appetito!

Spaghetti Mushroom Carbonara

• ½ lb. spaghetti or thin spaghetti
• 2 T olive oil
• 4 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 ½ – 2 t. fresh rosemary, finely minced
• 12 or so (more is fine too) medium cremini (brown) mushrooms, thinly sliced
• 1 egg, beaten in a small bowl
• ½ c. freshly grated parmesan cheese, added to the egg, plus extra for serving
• Freshly grated black pepper
• Chopped parsley

Put a pot of amply-salted water to boil. Cook spaghetti until it’s just barely under-done.

In the meantime, heat the olive oil in a sauté pan large enough to hold all the cooked pasta.  Add the minced garlic and let it sizzle just a few seconds (unless you like flavor of toasted garlic).  Then toss in the sliced mushrooms, stir around just a bit to coat with oil and let them cook undisturbed over high/med-high heat until they start to lightly color – a few minutes.  Then stir/sauté until they are fully cooked and any liquid they have released has been cooked away.  Towards the end of the mushrooms cooking, add the rosemary.  If the pasta is not done yet, turn the heat off or down low.

When the pasta is barely done, save about a cup or so of the pasta cooking water before draining the pasta.  I actually don’t drain the pasta, I use my pronged pasta scoop to lift it out of the water and into the sauté pan, it only takes a few scoops.  Ladle in a bit of the pasta water, about a half a cup at a time. Cook over high heat, stirring constantly, sort of risotto-style, to finish cooking the pasta and adhere the flavors to it. Add more water as needed.  When the pasta is done and all the liquid has cooked away –  you want it still moist, but not swimming – off the heat, add the egg and cheese and quickly stir to evenly coat the pasta with the egg.  Season with ground black pepper if you wish.  Sprinkle chopped parsley on top and serve with extra grated cheese, to your taste.

Serves 2-3 depending upon appetite!

November 11, 2014 – Can we learn faster and easier?

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I wish I could go back to my 13 year old self to ask her why she decided, as a high school freshman, to take French.  I don’t remember if it was a lark, or if there was something deeper.  In any case, my teacher, Monsieur Terando sparked in me a love of languages, especially French. I took French all four years and two more in college. By my last year I had dreams in French. (Isn’t that weird how we know that we are dreaming in another language?)  But, I didn’t take it any further because I wasn’t into French literature; I wanted to communicate in French and was not at all literary!

As any of you who’ve read what I write about my paintings know, I still have this thing about France, Paris in particular – where I had a stay in my early 30’s and have visited many times since.  There is a glinty vein of Parisian-French that runs through me.  I also love Italy. There’s something captivating about the energy of Italy, the food, the style, the countryside, the art – it’s an entrancing place.  Since I have a solidly functional command of French, it’s been especially frustrating to me to be unable to communicate like that in Italy. I would love to speak Italian like I do French.  Besides being convenient, I feel different when I speak French. It’s as if that vein takes me over. I’m not just speaking French, my experience of the place is much more intimate and personal – it’s as if I am French.  I’d love to connect in that same way in Italy.

Fast-forward to last week:  I happened upon a neighbor and her new doggy on my morning hike with Bo. She had to turn off her Pimsleur Spanish lesson on her iPhone to talk to me.  This had me come home to look up language learning programs. Our family has been talking about a trip to Italy next year to celebrate our dad’s new knee and Italian has been calling to me.  Which was most effective?  Pimsleur has been around forever, I’d seen ads for Rosetta Stone in the airport… Poking around online, I ended up on a website called Fluent in 3 Months with Benny the Irish Polyglot.  He’s written a book by the same title and has taught himself a bunch of languages really quickly.  I love it!  Something outside the box.  I’m just a few days into his free email series and I am incredibly inspired by his philosophy.

He talks about learning – in his world, languages – in a way that can apply to learning in general. He says you can’t learn to speak a language without speaking! And speaking right from the start, even before you learn how!  We often (and I have so experienced this) are frozen, unable to say anything, for fear of making mistakes.  He suggests you adopt a confidence and just go for it.

The inspiration immediately had me translate his philosophy to what I teach – painting watercolor. Just as you can’t learn to speak a language without speaking, you can’t learn to paint without painting!  There is a proverb I read on Benny’s site that is telling – and hilarious – it goes:  “If skill could be gained by watching, every dog would become a butcher.” We’ve got to get messy!  There have been budding artists in my classes and groups who are quite afraid to paint. I often find myself saying “it’s just a piece of paper, it’s not your worthiness!”   Just last week, I was hearing one painter in the Friday group express disappointment in how a wash looked to her. I suggested she instead say to herself:  “huh?” in sort of a, “isn’t that curious?” tone.

You see, in whatever we do, if we could do better we would.  We could look at missing the mark along the way as simply information, feedback about what that particular way of doing it resulted in.  Huh?  is freedom to swing out and see what happens.  Just like speaking to someone in a language I don’t yet know, even before I can come up with the correct words.  Benny says it speeds up learning languages, what if it also speeds up learning how to work with watercolor?   I’m going to keep following Benny’s pointers to learn Italian (we’ll see about the 3 months), and I’m going to apply this philosophy even more with the artists my groups. I bet that second-guessing ourselves slows us down.  As I read in a recent Seth Godin post “Taking delight in the journey takes confidence. It pushes the envelope of design. And it’s fun.”  So where do we get the confidence if we don’t have it?  We get it from each other, by risking together, it’s way more safe to make mistakes.  I say:  Andiamo!   Let’s have some fun!

October 28, 2014 – On the way to hallelujah

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Walking through our neighborhood for the past 13 years with our black Labradors, I’ve gotten to know many of our neighbors – especially the other doggy people.  It’s lovely how our pups connect us. 

The other morning, as Bo and I were bounding back down Marinda Dr to our street, we saw a neighbor out in his driveway.  He’s a tall, slender guy with a playful humor who loves Labs – we’ve heard his stories about his Labs growing up – the one who played catch with herself on their sloped driveway, and the one whose tail was broken when his brothers and he used him as a tugboat in the lake! Yikes!  He called us over and said “hey, I’m so sorry about the other day –  I had grandkids around and lots going on and I couldn’t really say hi.”  His apology was so heart-felt – as if he’d been thinking about it and was glad to repair things with me.  I had a only a wisp of a memory of the time he was talking about – but without any sense of any slight on his part.  I had no idea what he was apologizing for!

His apology left me with a feeling of appreciation for his concern for Bo and me – he really cares to give us his time of day.   And it had me recall so many times I’d felt badly because of things a voice inside told me I’d done to wrong others. One time was this past summer.  I twisted myself up in the terrible feeling that my choice of words in an email to a friend had been insensitive.  When I didn’t hear back from her, I was convinced that was why.  I wasn’t able to release myself until I heard from her that she hadn’t given it a second thought. She hadn’t gotten back to me right  away because she was busy!

As much as I find this feeling incredibly uncomfortable, I have come to honor this part of our inner critic.  We are beings who need to belong within our circles of humans in order to survive, not just physically but emotionally and spiritually.  If we aren’t checking ourselves at all, we can erode the natural instinct in others to care for us.  I lived with someone who never said “I’m sorry” in fourteen years.  I am not with him anymore for good reason!  This capacity carries with it a kind of sweetness which holds us together.

Of course our inner critics can go too far. There is so much written and spoken about dealing with our inner critics for a good reason.  Being too hard on ourselves is crippling.  That said, I have this penchant for looking for the light in the dark – there is good reason healthy people have a functioning critic.

It certainly seems to be well-installed for the art-making process!  I’ve not met anyone who has worked their way out of it.  I see it in myself and, in varying degrees, in every painter who joins our groups or comes to my workshops.  There are a few who paint for the pure joy of it, where it seems their critic is not at play as much. Even these people have doubts about their work at times.

I’ve come to see the critical voice not as something that we overcome in order to live the lives we yearn for, but rather to work with and around.  In the creative process, it often goes by the name “resistance.” In physical exercise, we are strengthened by resistance – our muscles grow if we ask them to lift more weight.  It seems it functions similarly when we create.  I cannot imagine how I could have painted “Hallelujah” until I’d grown my capacities by painting and painting, working around the voice that told me I couldn’t paint that big and bold.

Then there’s the outer critic!  I listened to an interesting interview of Tara Sophia Mohr in which she says that feedback is 100% about the giver of it and not about our work. Huh.  She says she now writes for herself and considers feedback as information about her audience.  The problem is that many of our creator muscles have been weakened or even paralized by negative feedback/criticism.  She says we look for praise in places where we doubt ourselves and/or in line with what we want to be true about us. Of course!  Any form of genuine expression is inherently vulnerable – making it risky, especially at first. This makes it incredibly important to have a safe environment in which to create. If the desire to create is strong enough, it will overcome the voices of resistance.  But we can set it up to help it along.  My experience is that safety allows us to risk and praise is amazingly encouraging, fueling the desire to continue to create.

At our best, we are relational beings who need each other to feed and support our efforts – our lives.  I love the idea that we can develop the capacity to see feedback as all about “them,” watching the parts in us that respond to it – in all the various ways they do – revealing ourselves to us.  After all, we don’t choose the art we make, it chooses us, and we paint/write/create with the skill level we have in this moment. If we could do better, we would!   It follows then, that there’s nothing “wrong” with anything we create. Feedback is just information and the invitation to respond to that information.  For me that’s a formula for creative freedom. Hallelujah!