Next session in Week 12-Being Very Free and Landing

Well I totally relate to this session and many times at that..

In order to make our art, we expand and contract. Expand and contract: big ideas and the minute, painstaking work of getting them down in finer and finer detail. As we concentrate like this, we are first big and then single-pointed. In the heat of the creative moment, our thought-or flow-is hot, thick, dense, fast, and light, like good ink. We are skywriting for a path..

Ebb and flow, tide is in and the tide is out..that has always been noticed in the homestead through nature and in relationships. I've shared many times with a friend before she moved to Georgia that our marriages even go through that...and boy do we know it when the tide is out...a bit dry and when the tide is in...very moist. 

Resemblance to a jelly fish and a parachute. But like a parachute when you land is it always safe...sometimes you get a bit bruised and battered and as Julia shares..you might even feel claustrophobic as our creative chute collapses and our normal life threatens to smother us.

When we are making things, we sometimes get very very big. Or simply very very free. In the height of the creative moment, we are not constricted and downsized by our daily rigmarole our age, our family tensions, our feelings of being a cog in the wheel. It is hard to come back to our normal size after such a heady expansion-and often, we don't at first.

Creative flight is exactly that-flight. We "see" the big picture and such a vision can leave our ordinary perception shattered. We are staggered by the magnitude of what we have seen, and our own size feels foreign. 

As we try to land back into our life, we may shoot past our real size and feel like someone very small. This is why Astronauts undergo debriefing, and why veteran artists, over time learn specific skills to help themselves re acclimate to their lives and families. You many need to hide out and and sleep for a couple of days. Or we many feel pinched and can't quite wedge ourselves back into the show we normally walk in. It's not so much that our head is too big but that it's still full of very big ideas.

OK this is too funny as I read this next session I totally relate to it...Julia shares.. A famous novelist I know often forgets to put in his teeth...You know yesterday I had a book club meeting and it's the day after getting back from presenting a two day workshop...feeling very joyous and grateful and slipping back in to the homestead routine I thought  smoothly but then when I got home from the book club, it hit me I had brushed my teeth but I had forgot to put my partial in....I laughed at myself...me talking, sharing laughing, feeling oh so good and smiling big with my gaps....what can you do but laugh and not take it to seriously...and let it slip off and go on... no biggie..

Comfort is the key during creative flight. ...Intuitively, we try to ground our selves by a sudden binge of cleaning, etc.  Reentry is a volatile process. Some might say I'm still in the chute and hope to emerge next week.

As a sober alcoholic, Julia shares, she is wary of anything too high and too fast. Euphoric is more of a memory than  a sought - after state.  and yet, when she goes and gets a sudden rush of voltage, she find it's a little thrilling as well as daunting. she knows it's dangerous and she must remember that she will need to land carefully.  

If you don't land with grace, perhaps, we can learn to land more and more safely.

This is where I say knowing thyself is a big issue...as I've learned what tools to work with and ground myself. When I come back from an art fair, workshop or anything that takes me away from the home base..or homestead...my grounding station...I use to complain that the house was in a mess and why doesn't everyone pick up and then I created this dreaded things of thinking I could leave cause the house would fall apart...how crazy is that...that I"m all that important...just the house manager that's all.  Well when I came back in to the grounding station or the homestead I would be all mad and crabby and start cleaning things up right away...not a happy camper but just in the last year or so I've learned to cut out the middle stuff when I come home.  And that middle stuff is the crabbing and complaining and I start to unpack my bag and at lest get them to the rooms then need...The cleaning up has become my reentry in to the homestead and grounding station I need so badly in my life..back to the great things and action step of doing the " mundane to keep me sane"  and it works along with walking get back to the woods where I can exhale and inhale fresh air...

Julia shares... from a season novelist, "I know that when I have finished a big piece of work I am a little weird an so I try to give myself enough space to be weird in private."  Again I can't help but think about how important it is to know thyself and be a bit selfish at this time and tend to your needs of grounding.. Julia shares herself there...For me, that's a few days' transition, and when I try to skip it, I act pretty strange and people do notice. I like to let the dust settle now..

as some task work with this section one is asked what makes you feel grounded?  and what I like to ask myself is what work for me? what keeps me centered?

Make a list of 10 activities, ex: baking a pie, waxing a car, cleaning out the refrigerator. calling a friend.   with out realizing it, I love rolling out the flour dough for homemade tortilla for soft shelled taco's that I make and the whole family like them too...they like them better then the store bought ones cause they can taste the plastic from being in the bag...so it ends up being a win win for all...I ground myself in the grounding centering station of my homestead and family and get read for the next class, workshop, demo or exhibit..

Next Age and time...