Expository

His voice booms.  He puts a stake in the ground when everyone around him hesitates to weigh in. He asks the kinds of questions we’re all thinking; the ones we’re wishing we had the courage to pose, and he leaves them hanging thick in that painful, interring silence, the dead air where our minds are furiously whirling for a reply to somehow justify and validate all the effort we’re putting forth debating the “how”.  He’s simply asking why.

It’s a question we’re familiar with as parents, prompted by the innocence and curiosity of our toddlers and young children; an incessant game of escalating proportions, often culminating in a completely exasperated “because” when we can no longer find a plausible response to the chain plummeting to hadopelagic depths. If only “because” was an acceptable response in the life of a grown adult.

 

It’s easy to get caught up in continuing to deliver on the rote commitments we think our work and life demand because we’ve always done them or because they show up on the calendar or because we somehow feel obligated.  What if you were brave enough to ask yourself why?  And what if the response to the question pointed toward not doing that which you are programmed to do?  Could you actually stop?  Could you say no?

“Why?” can make us uncomfortable.  “Why?” can force us to look within, to not only understand but articulate an opinion or our purpose.  Conflict, dissention, hesitation, and debate:  These are the queues to hit the pause button and ask why.  This is how lives change; this is how the world changes.

I aspire to be him, to put my questions on the table for discussion, knowing I may occasionally need to eat my words.  When we challenge the group to think differently, we shape our organization into the place we want it to be; when we challenge ourselves to live life differently, we shape ourselves into who we are meant to be.  

Umbilical

I find this hardware attached to a silky, blue ribbon in a basket near the cash register at a little vintage clothing shop along Newport Avenue in Ocean Beach called Girls on the Park.  I’m enthralled with the rustic beauty of this tiny, working padlock.  It feels heart-shaped to me, although most would have to look hard for this interpretation. I love its precision and delicacy, the idea that something so practical and mechanical can be so intricately miniaturized; that so much power can be so pretty. 

The key; however, isn’t nearly as exquisite as the mechanism it opens, it’s flat, constructed of flimsy metal that doesn’t match the impeccable detail of the lock.  And so when I decide this is a pendant, placing it on the chain I wear around my neck, the key is left behind, tossed in a drawer somewhere or maybe, I can’t remember now, just tossed.

The connotations around keys are a study in dichotomy.  Keys symbolize exclusion and inclusion, imprisonment and freedom, possession and release.  They’re about fear and trust, hesitation and certainty, vulnerability and safety, boundaries and what is boundless.

We all lock some part of ourselves away from the rest of the world, it’s inevitable.  There are few on this earth earning the right to be offered the key.  We hesitate, and rightly so, before putting it out there; we expect to celebrate its acceptance.

We use keys as a form of control; we use them not only to control who has access to what is precious to us, but ultimately who has access to us. We put up barriers around ourselves to gird against the hurt we fear will ensue when we let others see and come to know those flaws and imperfections within us.  We try to hide from others all the parts of us we find disappointing, what we strive to change but find most challenging to change. How will another accept us if we cannot accept ourselves?  We realize we’re works in progress yet can never quite reconcile opening ourselves up before we’re fully satisfied the masterpiece that is us is complete.

So when is the right time to put the key out there?  What do we need to think about to understand when we’re truly ready to relinquish it to or accept it from another?   The key isn’t meant to be given with restrictions around its use.  The key shouldn’t create convenience that replaces commitment.  The key should never limit the freedom of one in order to expand the freedom of the other. The key is about integration.  It symbolizes a willingness to open up to another everything that is inside whether we love it or loathe it. The key is about being available anytime, all the time. The key is the ultimate symbol of respect, confidence and trust.

What I find fascinating about the key is that we use it thinking we’re somehow creating safety by keeping others out, but the reality is in order to feel truly safe in this world, we need to use the key to let another in.  When we put the key in the lock we don’t want to walk into an empty house, what we really want is to find somebody home.

Bottega

For as long as I can remember, he’s always carved out a workshop of some kind, his own little slice of heaven amid our chaos on earth.  Adjacent to the utility sink in the basement where mom used to wash my long, blonde hair and brush the tangles out with “Tame” he claimed space for gadgets of all shapes and sizes.  Peg board covered the wall above his workbench guaranteeing every tool imaginable knew its rightful place.  As kids we mercilessly squeezed a myriad of objects within the clutches of his red vice.

He marked his territory in the garage as well, an old refrigerator housing all that’s necessary to repair the assortment of old jalopies he kept running for my siblings and I to drive.  At the time I couldn’t appreciate his métier, instead seething at the corner of Burlington and Route 53 on frigid winter mornings when prayers for a green light went unanswered, the engine of our 1975 Cutlass Supreme dying in the intersection. He siphoned gasoline with his mouth.

He has an affinity for the vintage; salvaging the metal cabinet from Grandma’s kitchen in the Rogers Park apartment, cigar boxes from a past era repurposed storing screws, bolts and nuts labeled accordingly in draftsman’s block lettering.  There’s even a pair of blue jean cut-offs tacked to the wall, back pockets exposed, pouches ready to take in stray implements.  Nothing goes to waste.

When it comes right down to it, his space is kindred to the art studio I now call home; inspiration strewn about the areas where we work in the form of the glimmering tools of our trades.   We gleam in involuntary delight when we happen upon that perfect something to add to the ever-growing collection.  We can never have enough.

I truly believe each one of us is an artist in our own right.  The finished work may represent us to the outside world, but the tools we invoke in the process honor the inner journey we’re on to create. I’m pretty sure he doesn’t call himself an artist, but I see the signs everywhere I look.  I hone my own craft in the shadow of his. This apple didn’t fall far from the tree.  

Upend

“Hello?  Hello?  Is this thing on?”  It’s her Twitter profile, and it’s so her.  It’s also me, a little over two years and two hundred blog posts ago, hesitating every time I hover over the “publish” button, wondering if I can handle how the universe may choose to react to my voice should it actually be heard.

It’s not easy, going back in time, to my once upon a time as a writer. I cringe at the roughness of my style, the prescriptive tone of my words.   But he’s asking to go through each Windlass post in chronological order, together, in an attempt for me to get my arms around the construct of the book it’s finally time to write, and for him to get his arms around me.

 

I think about what it means to be safe, to deliver the innocuous message, the one that won’t rock any boats, but certainly won’t rock any worlds either.  And I wonder, just for a second, which is better?  Do I censor, in an attempt to protect myself and my loved ones, watering down my emotions so as not to rile?  Or do I put my true feelings out there knowing that for every individual drinking in their resonance, there’s another who thirsts to scoff? 

I believe implicitly if you’re going to speak, you should speak up. Your message might be controversial; it might be misunderstood.  The person who hears it may not be capable of getting it, and may choose in her own ignorance or insecurity to dislike you because of it.  But it doesn’t mean you’re wrong, and it doesn’t mean you shouldn’t say it.

In today’s world, it’s so easy for your microphone to be on.  What’s hard is finding the courage to say what needs to be said. 

Recondite

When she says I should bring anything I’m interested in selling I’m not sure what exactly that means.  My portfolio is in the backseat, loaded with the inventory of artwork I start building several years ago on the advisement of my friend Sara who so wisely suggests that when the stars align I’ll want to be ready.  She couldn’t have been more right.

As I pour over the collection of work this university is building I decide “artists’ books” is a broad category, representative of any way an artisan chooses to present her words to the world.  There is a spool wound with ribbon, the story unfurling as the reader unwinds.  Boxes lined in prose unfolding to reveal treasures inside, exquisite bindings of all shapes and sizes housing handmade papers, watercolors and words so much bigger than me.

She wants to buy anything I can bear to part with.  In this statement I glean her understanding of the soul of every artist, aching to share our passion with the world, yet reluctant to strand our humanity in such a harsh and unforgiving place. We contain our creativity within the boundaries of ourselves, conflicted in the knowledge that the very rawness fueling our enormous talent also marks us targets for judgment and criticism we fear we may not be strong enough to endure.   And so we’re tempted to shroud our work in a protective cloak of ambiguity, a deliberate attempt to ensure only those vital few who can see the world through our eyes, respect our truth, are able to interpret the message we’re so desperate to release.

On this day I sell a collection of postcards created in a time and place when I wasn’t quite ready yet to completely put my work out there.  She wants to establish an on-going relationship; she encourages me to finish the sketchbook in progress; she’ll purchase it from me when I’m done. My work will be catalogued, recommended reading, perhaps, by professors looking to inspire and educate on the endless possibilities of artistic expression. I vow to put more of me in this next piece.

There’s a part of me that believes wholeheartedly an artist’s work truly resonates when she’s able to distill it to the exact level of abstruseness which allows every observer to see herself in the words and images.  And so maybe it’s not only the artist who needs to be brave enough to reveal herself in her work, but the viewer brave enough to interpret and face her own truth in that of another.

Profusion

Shirt over my head, shorts cinched at my waist, shoe laces double-knotted, I’m out the door at dawn inhaling the intoxicating scent of blooming lilacs on a warm, damp morning.  It’s been months since I’ve pounded the pavement with any sort of regularity; I need to ease in.  I’m only going two miles, I tell myself, enough to get my soul-feeding fix, but not so much to risk irritating a capricious knee.

There was a time in my life when a two-mile run would have been unacceptable.  I would need to tell myself that this gig is only temporary, determined to work back up to 4-5 mile stints as part of a measured plan.  It’s different this time, though.  My world is expanding again, and as I’m running this morning I’m thinking about balance and making room for all I want to invest in with this one wild and precious life.

Those of us in first-world countries, we live in a bubble of abundance:  Plenty of food on our tables, money in the bank.  So much so that we’ve become a little too comfortable with waste.  If we don’t get around to consuming the produce in the crisper, we’re generally not too bothered to toss it in the garbage.  When it comes to money, there is talk about phasing out the penny. Seems we’re all too rich to be bothered by the hassle of copper.  And so I consider time in a similar context questioning whether we’re cavalier about this commodity as well.  Does it make sense to apply some judiciousness in this realm, even when the time we’re spending liberally is going toward what we enjoy? 

  

When we think of tasks that drain our time, we seem to always look to chores we must do.  Of course it makes sense to want to cut down the time we spend on the mundane. But what I’m noticing is we can pour ourselves into activities we enjoy, consuming an enormous amount of time which we simply overlook when we’re attempting to assess opportunities for balance.  Can there ever be such thing as too much of a good thing?

I will argue yes.  Those of us who have found ourselves in the throes of challenging life-altering situations may be familiar with the protective mechanism called overindulgence.  We choose one activity where we feel most successful, valued and affirmed, and because we garner all of our worth here, we expend disproportionate energy in an attempt to leach every bit of mojo we can from this one source. We can couch our justification for this obsession around excuses like we’re spending all this time at work to earn a big bonus or secure a promotion.  Or, of course running 24/7 to train for a marathon is warranted because being fit is healthy.  But I wonder what happens when we really look hard at the gaps we’re attempting to fill with this single-minded focus? 

When I was all about logging miles I was also all about dealing with pain, filling the void of loneliness.  It’s entirely possible there are times we need to retreat into our obsessions in order to survive.  Our behaviors become rote, though, and we can wake up one morning wondering what happened to all of our precious time.  But maybe this is how we know we are healing, when we finally question our unilateral investment and yearn for more diversity.

And so as I bound happily toward the ever-growing opportunities in my life, I’m looking at where I may be overindulging and asking myself what exactly I need to be fulfilled.  I don’t need 5 mile runs or 90 minutes of yoga 5 days a week or business on the weekends.  I’m finding I can meet my needs and get time back. To me it’s all about the freedom to invest in the new and wonderful people and projects finding their way onto my path, any time, all the time.

Whelm

I leave the details of the trip in the hands of another, so when he pulls a vanishing act and I find myself with an airline ticket and time off I decide I need to get a plan together.  Where exactly am I going?    I call a colleague who calls Marco Island home, telling him exactly what I want:  A nice hotel on the beach with access to restaurants and shopping within walking distance.  I don’t want to mess with a car, just a driver to get me to and from the airport.  About two minutes later in my in-box sit links to two resorts and two car services meeting my exact specifications.  Done.

 

I walk away a little mesmerized, quite honestly; completely satisfied, excited about my trip, and delirious over how wonderful my friend is, how he makes everything easy for me.  He feels special in my eyes in the way he cares for me.  But wait a minute; I think I’ve somehow played a role in this success story, yet I’ve neglected to acknowledge me.

 

It’s not rocket science, this idea that giving good direction, asking for what we want increases greatly the likelihood we’ll get what we want, but why is it that so many of us have a hard time with it? 

As women, our role is to take care of everyone else.  We routinely put ourselves last, staving off inanition, cobbling together from the table scraps of others only what we need to sustain ourselves. With our bellies always hovering around empty, it’s no wonder we aren’t living full lives.

 

For those of us raising kids and holding down demanding jobs we’ve become conditioned to apologize for not having the free reign men do to prioritize their careers over their family lives.  We’re either concealing the need for flexibility for fear of losing our jobs if our employers know what it really takes to juggle all this, or for those of us with the luxury of flexibility we’re just so grateful we don’t dare rock the boat by asking for anything else like, say, equal pay.

For some of us there is a little bit of the “be careful what you wish for” element.  If we’re so bold as to ask specifically and directly for what we need, like a salary increase or a promotion, what happens if we can’t deliver?  Have we now created more pressure to continually over-perform in the role in a perpetual state of proving we’re truly worthy of what we’ve requested? 

  

For me I know it’s been about feeling like a burden.  I like to be easy and adaptable, not too much trouble for anyone, because I think it guarantees I’ll be loveable.  If I’m too hard, if I’m too rigid, if I’m flawed, if I have wants and needs that require a little work, well, no one’s going to support those.  Maybe it’s been a little about self-worth, too?

Lately I’m opening my eyes, noticing something special in the individuals surrounding me. The important people in my life want to get it right.  They wait patiently for me when I’m running late; they listen closely for my unspoken knell, asking how they can help; they value my contributions, and upon hearing exhaustion or frustration in my voice they ask what needs to happen to keep me motivated, to keep us on the right path.  They want to know what makes me happy so they can deliver it; but I need to enable them by defining what exactly that is.

He says he wants to fill his cupboards with food that won’t just sustain me, but will nourish me.  If I tell him only that I like yogurt, I do him a disservice.  The chances of opening the refrigerator door to discover nirvana are one in a million. And somehow, even though it’s unfair, the disappointment of finding anything less will color my feelings for him.  But if I tell him unequivocally that I like the Greek variety, specifically Chobani, in the exotic flavors like pomegranate or pear he gets to exactly meet my need, and becomes nothing short of amazing in my eyes.

We need to speak up, not just so we can go about fulfilling our own needs, but so the individuals in our lives who value what we have to offer can be extraordinary in the part they play in supporting our happiness. I’ve heard it best described very powerfully as this:  “Unstated expectations are premeditated disappointments.”  Seems like this is an easy one to head off at the pass. Are you brave enough to ask for what you want?