Retreat

A friend sent me an email about a writer's retreat that includes months of isolated solitude...always something I have thought I would love. I try every winter to create that kind of artistic space in my life. This year it has seemed to be about cleaning.

Cleaning is a control fantasy and although it is necessary to do it periodically for health reasons and for maintenance reasons and for social reasons and for comfort, I still find it mostly boring and time-consuming and haven't really succumbed to expectations (I don't know whose...some Fifties mom like Donna Reed? She never sees my kitchen.)

The layers of dust in the kitchen and bathroom had to go, though, so I did all the shelves and objects I love and have forgotten, and re-organized some clutter and boxed up a few items to get rid of. I cleared out the living room rather thoroughly and even got rid of the futon which was essentially an upholstered shelf since it wasn't comfortable to sit or lie on and only the cat really used it. It freed up too much space really so I brought in a card table to work on and now the room is filling up with the various projects that keep me busy when I watch stupid TV at night.

I know it is part of my creative process to make space that is clean and open but I tend to get anxious if I am not actually creating something, and I tend to fill open space with work. I have heard myself telling me to work more even when I am in the middle of physically working. It's just a drive and a form of self-discipline that the self-employed learn to weather. But I always feel great when I have a clear to-do list and the next steps of whatever project are lined out. Not there yet. The isolation deepens and I get quiet.

The Occupy part of the Jell-O Art Show theme is making me think a lot. Will I occupy my soul like I did last year? Last year the making of the piece was a grief process and I put in a ton of time on it. I don't really want to do that kind of thing, but am reflecting on the life process that is involved in working for political change.

Observing the occupiers online has let me see the passion and joy lots of them are bringing to the task...perfect to express in Jell-O. I've seen many of them appear just like they are in love, tender and full of emotion and inspiration and obsession...they're in love with the possibilities that open in life when we feel powerful. It's hard to see the fog of dejection and discouragement that covers our society when we all feel hopeless about the direction of things to more repression and less freedom and less soul and more empty sex-as-distraction. Being bad is part of the new sexuality, if you haven't noticed, because being bad is much more fun than being good. Or so we think.

I hate Valentine's Day, by the way, because I am a single human who is not in a duo and it is such a reproach to be bombarded with the way the world tries to make us all conform to consume. Of course I want a heart-shaped box of chocolates and all that it symbolizes! I've tried many years making all kinds of valentine homage with paper and gelatin and doilies and whatnot but the fact is that I don't have a love interest and my behaviors indicate that I don't even really want one. I long for one in that romantic way that is not realistic, as I set my life up to deny that possibility. The chocolate just gathers in my meno-pouch, which the advertising tells me is really the reason I am not finding my love. I have to lose weight while eating more sugar. Spin around again. Get dizzy.

It's all advertising! A box of candy does not really speak about intimacy and dedication to others. It's just something to learn from. And the Occupy movement does not escape the advertising and other forms of marketing that pervert and change the drive for power over one's own life into the widely misunderstood political forces that create actual change.

Actual change is what happens when people go home from the demonstration and are kinder to each other, more helpful, more forgiving and compassionate. Each action and thought and statement they make shifts subtly to one more positive, uplifting, progressive. They then dedicate their life to continuing this process of change, often with little visible result.

And then, shift happens! We can see in this movement many of the people who have been dedicated to change since they were young, and in fact we see them all around both in and out of the movement. We see them take the boundless energy of the young people who are newly introduced to the possibilities and channel it, make it palatable, integrate it into the lifework so many are doing. This can feel like co-opting (remember never trust anyone over 30) but it brings it all into the glacier of infinitesimal movement that is social change.

Everybody got to fall in love again this winter. It was fun, it was sexy, it was heartbreaking and it was full of emotion. I think it will be a productive relationship, this one between the people of the world and the structures that control and direct them, this one where the people try to not be such a submissive partner and get a little help with the housework for a change.

I think the advertisers and marketers will use it if they can, and part of the struggle will be to expose them too. There is no doubt that strategy is a tool of the "government" or power structure that is well in place and will be ruthless in protecting the status quo. But the true power of the people is that we can't be fully controlled.

We will do what we can see that needs to be done. People will throw themselves against the fences and walls and open up the hidden doors. No one thought the Berlin Wall would be dismantled and no one thought the parks would be filled with people becoming suddenly visible. We can't go back. It might not be comfortable and safe but change is in progress as it always is, and it just got a major energy infusion.

So yeah, I am trying to Occupy my soul. This is not a new endeavor, just some new framework for it and some new people and some new ways to encounter them. New kinds of chocolate with chili peppers and spice.

New ways lead to new projects and new ideas and more fun. It can't all be good. Some of it is boring housework and some of it brilliant flashes of intuition. Some is longing and desire and some real affection and dedication. Some is heard and some will be left in the roadside dust.

My job is simple, to keep observing and thinking and doing and then manage to express it all in Jell-O by March 31st. Sometimes I think I should have ignored the revolution and become a medical technologist as I had planned. Then my task would have been to fill dishes with agar-agar instead of Jell-O, and grow organisms instead of primroses and violets. Maybe I would have gone to medical school and maybe I would be a whole different person with a whole different life, opening a two-pound box of See's next week. Or maybe not.

It's all speculation. All interpretation. All selection of possibilities, and it seems that choosing the most life-affirming option at each turning point has been a good choice. Practicing peace leads to peace. Practicing art is a never-ending joy. I think I have a soul to occupy. Now I just have to spin up a message that won't make everyone too dizzy.