Here are the important words for the summer: the words I tried out to express what was going on as it happened, the words that allowed me to reach for something newly true.
Struggle
Endlessly useful since I stumbled on to it at Arvo's House this spring, with two basic uses: articulating internal struggle, and respectfully, positively discussing "negative" feelings about other people's choices and creative endeavors. I am trying the experiment of replacing "dislike" with "struggle with" as often as possible, though a good deal of the time I find the resulting statements very scary, and can't say that they're true. This seems to reveal what about myself and the world I'm unwilling to look at, unwilling to change.
Agency
generally used in discussion of adulthood. I started thinking about this at Buck's Rock, trying to describe the look of panic in the teenager's eyes as they left camp, and the immense sense of relief it brought on in me, to no longer be at their moment in life. A useful term for describing the exciting and terrifying possibilities of being an adult (see below). Also seems to be useful in articulating parts of the creative process. Still looking for a good definition of the term, though. I feel like I'm wielding it around experimentally.
Transcendent
Almost by definition, there's no way to pin down how I've been trying to use this word. It emerged first in the phrase transcendent friendship, something I came to while grappling for language to describe the experience of being with Zander and Jonah this summer. Entirely unique but not catagorically different: the intensity of my two months of sharing with them allowed me to articulate the catagory of relationships that become their own internal world, and that yeilds some something that feels huge. The idea of transcendence is not entirely secular, but somehow I'm sensing that the word itself is farmiliar enough that I can get away with using it in a secular context, or at least that it doesn't feel too far out of my realm of experience to use it to authentically describe my own experiences.
Adult
This is a messy one. At 23, I feel bashful about speaking of myself as an adult, but also it feels true. I might be a new adult, a young one, but what I and all my peers are really doing right now is definitely getting a handle on adulthood. Priorities, careers, ambitions, money, bodies, families, relationships: these are the things we stumble in to discussing and then look wide-eyed in fear at each other (not unlike the look of teenagers getting their agency taken away: the "oh shit, this is real" look) I am struggling a lot with the relationship between partnership and adulthood. I feel that the realities and challenges of being partnered with Kerry are helping me grow up: be a better listener, more open minded (okay, just slightly....), more patient, more giving. I know I am tapping in to this ability in how I deal with other people, but Kerry is really the site of this slow learning. I balk at myself, attempting to define the process of maturing through such a conventional standard. And I reassure myself: this is by no means the only way to adulthood, or the only path in my life that is growing me up. But real, committed acts of sharing between people- labels aside- is a positive avenue of growing. As I feel myself becoming both more willing and more able to enact sharing, I find myself thinking that I am becoming more adult.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Start Where I am Comfortable, Move to Where I struggle
after all of those fliers for healing circles around Portland, I can't use the word 'healing' without grimacing, and so instead I say about my summer, that it undid, unravelled, reset, restarted. As I left, the thoughts lingering were: gratitude, comfort, ease, transcendence, readiness and and fulfillment of ideals.
Buck's Rock is a city of tiny wooden cabins, hundreds of them, probably, 500 or so people bustling through their days, Working in small nooks, living in tiny enclaves. The young people, or rather their caretakers, pay a tremendous amount of money to be there, and the slightly-less young, the anyone-over-roughly-17, are themselves paid-if very little- to be the surrogate caretakers. Their jobs are very specific. They live with the young people, or they cook their food, they direct their plays, or sew their costumes, or instruct them in painting or video editing or sports. My job was to teach yarn crafts to whoever wandered up the hill to the weaving studio wanting to know. Some days I taught 15 crochet lessons, some days I waited and made hats for my friends.
This is by no means some Ultimate place, but like any other small and isolated community it takes on an other worldliness that makes it so important for those who stumble in to it and for whom it resonates. Returning to work there was accepting, if sheepishly, all the privilege that allowed me to be one of those people- my parents attentiveness and affluence that bought me a place of belonging in my 6 summers there.
If not healed than reset, restarted: my two month's returning did so much to make me feel composed and okay.
Some of this was no surprise: At Buck's Rock I felt like a good teacher. Because I was teaching skills I am well versed in, my days were filled with small revelations in how to teach better. Because of the ease with which I could navigate this strange institution, the ways rules and routines resurfaced from embedded teenage memory, I had strong opinions and the comfort to articulate them. Because many people already knew my name, it didn't take long for them to stop and wish to talk with me. I felt again like the world was interested in what I have to say.
Some ways I could not have anticipated, or two of them. Or one of them. I am filled with so much gratitude for the company of two new and old good friends. Zander, who came back to camp with me, and who I knew I was setting off to recharge a friendship with, and Jonah, who I had not even seen in 6 years, maybe, but who I knew immediately. within 12 hours. would be important to the journey I was about to go on for the summer. When people ask about my summer, there is no language that feels serious and real enough to explain how important they were to me. Maybe this will come to me with time. It doesn't feel sufficient to say that they were just really good friends.
And a million little ways: Thin walls that let the rain and wind through, so you are never quite inside. Grass and trees everywhere, sunshine for picnics for lunch. Endless arrangements of hundreds of colors of yarn, access to clay and glass and sewing machines and a million other arts I didn't have time to try. People to cook for me and do my laundry, so much free time and safety. Kind of being a kid again, but now I yearned for purpose and not for freedom, could fill my time with purpose because I'm some adult now, freedom is a given. I felt affirmed that I am not a child any longer.
Start where I am comfortable.
Move to where I struggle.
Two months was a luxurious chunk of time to revel, to accept all the affirmations available at buck's rock and to store it up, holes of doubt filled with resevoirs of confidence for the future when it will not be so easy.
I am moving to new york city, the week after next. I will run an after school art program at a magnet school on the lower east side. I am filled with doubt about these choices, but choosing to see them as imperfect and correct. What isn't easy also isn't wrong. Moving to the place I struggle wth most, moving towards actions and ideas that challenge me, making space for the friendships there with all of their non-idealness, incompletion, moving forward together with kerry committed to the space between him as a person and the unattainable ideal partnership, moving closer to my family and all the discomfort and challenge the details of each other brings up, moving towards art-making because ultimately there is no other option.
I couldn't stay at Buck's Rock forever, even if I wanted to, and yet/but also I happy that it is time to move on. There is no time I'll be more ready.
Buck's Rock is a city of tiny wooden cabins, hundreds of them, probably, 500 or so people bustling through their days, Working in small nooks, living in tiny enclaves. The young people, or rather their caretakers, pay a tremendous amount of money to be there, and the slightly-less young, the anyone-over-roughly-17, are themselves paid-if very little- to be the surrogate caretakers. Their jobs are very specific. They live with the young people, or they cook their food, they direct their plays, or sew their costumes, or instruct them in painting or video editing or sports. My job was to teach yarn crafts to whoever wandered up the hill to the weaving studio wanting to know. Some days I taught 15 crochet lessons, some days I waited and made hats for my friends.
This is by no means some Ultimate place, but like any other small and isolated community it takes on an other worldliness that makes it so important for those who stumble in to it and for whom it resonates. Returning to work there was accepting, if sheepishly, all the privilege that allowed me to be one of those people- my parents attentiveness and affluence that bought me a place of belonging in my 6 summers there.
If not healed than reset, restarted: my two month's returning did so much to make me feel composed and okay.
Some of this was no surprise: At Buck's Rock I felt like a good teacher. Because I was teaching skills I am well versed in, my days were filled with small revelations in how to teach better. Because of the ease with which I could navigate this strange institution, the ways rules and routines resurfaced from embedded teenage memory, I had strong opinions and the comfort to articulate them. Because many people already knew my name, it didn't take long for them to stop and wish to talk with me. I felt again like the world was interested in what I have to say.
Some ways I could not have anticipated, or two of them. Or one of them. I am filled with so much gratitude for the company of two new and old good friends. Zander, who came back to camp with me, and who I knew I was setting off to recharge a friendship with, and Jonah, who I had not even seen in 6 years, maybe, but who I knew immediately. within 12 hours. would be important to the journey I was about to go on for the summer. When people ask about my summer, there is no language that feels serious and real enough to explain how important they were to me. Maybe this will come to me with time. It doesn't feel sufficient to say that they were just really good friends.
And a million little ways: Thin walls that let the rain and wind through, so you are never quite inside. Grass and trees everywhere, sunshine for picnics for lunch. Endless arrangements of hundreds of colors of yarn, access to clay and glass and sewing machines and a million other arts I didn't have time to try. People to cook for me and do my laundry, so much free time and safety. Kind of being a kid again, but now I yearned for purpose and not for freedom, could fill my time with purpose because I'm some adult now, freedom is a given. I felt affirmed that I am not a child any longer.
Start where I am comfortable.
Move to where I struggle.
Two months was a luxurious chunk of time to revel, to accept all the affirmations available at buck's rock and to store it up, holes of doubt filled with resevoirs of confidence for the future when it will not be so easy.
I am moving to new york city, the week after next. I will run an after school art program at a magnet school on the lower east side. I am filled with doubt about these choices, but choosing to see them as imperfect and correct. What isn't easy also isn't wrong. Moving to the place I struggle wth most, moving towards actions and ideas that challenge me, making space for the friendships there with all of their non-idealness, incompletion, moving forward together with kerry committed to the space between him as a person and the unattainable ideal partnership, moving closer to my family and all the discomfort and challenge the details of each other brings up, moving towards art-making because ultimately there is no other option.
I couldn't stay at Buck's Rock forever, even if I wanted to, and yet/but also I happy that it is time to move on. There is no time I'll be more ready.
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