Finishing up Week Three

The last two segments of Week Three deals with Anger and Cartography... Again to sum up the weeks readings and introspective works...I refer back to the opening statement, Detxofiying your thinking regarding the arts and your place as an artist in our society...Heavy stuff again...Oh I so love to talk about all this instead of gossip...there's more meat on things like this then what someone else is doing...

So before I go to deep I'm going to share a bit about Juila's esasys on Anger, from past reading and studying Anger was fuel a way to turn this feeling around and make it a positive in your life. I so get that...been using that for a long time and it works great.  But now she has one looking at Anger related to perspective, our personal perspective. I love this part from her book- The problem here is our perspective. When we are angry "out of all proportion,"  that is a very accurate phrase.  

 Here's a experiment or lets say research...next time some you know or don't know is angry...step back and see if you can see where they are out of proportion.

Julia goes on...We have lost a sense of our true size adn power, and the intensiety of our feelings make us feel "hopping mad," another telling phase, as our mental image of our selves becomes-or can become-very cartooned.   The size of our anger has dwarfed our perspective and our pesonality. This is because we do not realize that the power we are perceiving is within us as the power for change. 

The odds are against us until we are "for" ourselves. 

We do not need to shout, but we do need to act and to speak our truth. A word about that order. Actions do speak louder than words, and so we must take actions that articulate our creative value...

"Heck, we need to take action on lives for ourselves, not just creative one" ...with the New Year Knocking on my door, I have to admit there are areas that stir up a bit of angry and taking some action on my part really brings it to the right size for me... Here's an example:  all around my home there are places that ever time I open a door I get a surprise and then I just stuff that surprise back in and it makes me mad that some one should clean this out...I've done it for so long someone else should it....well this past week right after the Christmas Holiday I did just that I cleaned out cabinets and area that really got me mad...Hopping mad...Does this anything do with my art and creating art?  Sure does..My thinking is if I can tackle this then I can tackle other areas too, that anger just became fuel...instead of stumbling on or over it, I took action on my part or my proportion of my life...I stepped up to the plate and took action...I have to admit it feels so damn good...does anyone in the house care...yes but not as much as it make me feel good about it all...Might I add a Self-Esteemable act on my part...which then keeps me in check with my perspective and size in life...crazy ?  No for me it's understanding making a positive connection that will work well later when I don't even realize it...

Some added stuff from Julia on Anger.. Anger is not comfortable. The focused use of it to create art requires emotional maturity we must often reach for to muster-and yet we can. When we do our world changes by a jot. Anger sometimes signals not our immaturity but our maturity, our seasoned judgement, and outraged temper into form for the sake of healthy change...
So the task work was to write what makes you angry...and I have to say I've silently writing in my head about all the stuff behind the cabinet doors in the house...Yes I've taken a mature action and cleaned up my act, in that area at lest..

And to pull from a statement made in the first book of the Artists Way...
"If you want to work on your Art, work on your life"

OK now the last section... to comprehend, for me at lest...Cartography.
"All Art is an attempt to map the territory of the Heart" I truly love that statement...I know for myself that when I'm creating with knowing or not it's coming from a place of the heart...be it the heart is joyous, hurt, scared or excited. And pretty much it stems from a personal place that want to speck to a larger audience.

As Artists, we explore the territory of the human heart, braving the dark woods to report to our human tribe that a trail can be found, and we will survive. As artists, we are scouts of consciousness, trailblazer for community and culture.  As artists, we must muster self-respect and compassion for the difficulty of our own calling.  The great adventure of the creative life lies not only in the territory seen but in the fact that much of what we see has not been seen before. Human stories are as old as the earth, but human consciousness is always the edge of the known world, like fine telescopes focused on deep space.

As an Artist matures, so does his skill at encompassing such pitched emotion.  Look at it this way, the artist say s, and shows the world what his inner world has revealed to him.  Each of us carries an internal lens through which we view the world. The willingness to reveal what that lens sees is what determines an artist. And an artist must continually open that lens to take in new and wider realities...Here's where I would like to share all human being in my book if giving the chance to do open the lens could benefit.  

After reading this,  the nudge or small portion of a map are begin to be revealed to me...I'm feeling the calling to make paper, explore some printing, combine the different voice I speak with in my work into a new series of  work...so before I realize it the lens is widening and I'm sensing a area of expantion...could this be why I was cleaning out my cabinets and draws and closet...to prepare for something else.? Only some good orderly direction and an open mind will tell.