« And All This Time, I Thought It Was Me | Main | My Dorky Valentine »

July 28, 2006

Where Is My Place?

I haven’t posted for the past couple of days in part because I’ve been out, but mostly because I’ve been struggling with this issue. Whether to address it online, how to address it online, what I really feel/want to say about it.

It’s something that I’ve mentioned numerous times. I mentioned it in one of my jury papers to my MFA Committee. (It wasn’t well-received. A couple of my committee members took it as an insult, which was not my intent. It wasn’t about them, it was about me, but they didn’t see it that way.) One of my very first blog entries was about it, and it’s something I’ve wrestled with even more since I graduated. But I never had a way to ask the universe for it until this week.

A couple of days ago, I was doing a visualization exercise. The one where you stuff all your demons, all the shit that’s bugging you and you want to just get rid of into a box. Then you close the box and physically blow it away with your breath.

That part rocks. My box of troubles exploded. Like the Death Star. All shiny sparks and glimmerings of now-vaporized troubles.

The next part of the exercise is to call to yourself the things you need. (Because whatever you ask for, whether it be helpful or harmful, God’s answer is always, “Yes.” Remember that the next time you say something like, “My life sucks. I always get screwed over.” Or “This guy’s going to break my heart too, isn’t he?” God's gonna answer yes to those.)

I started calling for the things I need to be fulfilled and happy. I need… A community of fellow artists. Artists who get my specific yen. I need a theatre where I can be and work and play and study and grow and learn and explore. I need a school where I can teach. I need a set of friends I can spend time with locally. I need—

A place.

I need a place. That’s it in a nutshell. I need to find My Place. The trouble is, all I know about the location of my place is that it isn’t here.

The weird thing is how quickly I flashed on a similar moment from my friend Kate’s class. (She used to teach a 13-week course based on The Artist’s Way.) There was a moment, around Week Seven, I think, when she had us make two numbered lists. I dutifully wrote two sets of:

1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
on a piece of paper. Then she gave the topic for List Number One. “List five projects you’ve never finished.”
Boy. That was easy. I could have come up with fifteen.
“Now. List the reasons you never finished those projects.”
Okay. #1 was because I was afraid of _____
I never finished project 2 because I was afraid I’d _________
#3. I was afraid—
Hold on.
It’s all the same.
It’s all fear.
It’s all about the fucking fear.
You have no idea how disgusted I was to discover that fear was what had been holding me back for so long as an artist.

That became my mantra for a while. “It’s all about the fear.” It’s one reason I duck my head and charge through things. Because of the fear. Because I don’t want to give in to it. But you can develop protective armor after a while.

Lately, battered and damaged as I have been by events in my artistic life, I’ve been letting the fear win. I’ve been not finishing things again. I think in part because I don’t feel grounded. And I don’t feel safe. I don’t have a home.Yes, I have a home I share with Dave and the cats, and it’s a safe and lovely place, but my house, my oasis of peace and security, is only 1600 square feet. And that includes the icky unfinished basement. Outside lies pain. Because I don’t belong here. Because this is not My Place.

I have spent the past year trying to figure out how to undo the damage done by some other suffering artists, both here and in Portland. Slowly but surely, I think I’m beginning to heal. (Interestingly, my horoscope zeroed in on the whole damage/healing thing this week as well.) In order to really be able to stretch my wings and try again, though, I need to find a community where I am truly at home. I need to find My Place. And it’s an awfully big world to go looking in.

If any of you out there have suggestions on how to find it (not where to go looking, but how to begin), I’d be forever grateful. Because I don’t even know how to begin to start the search.

Oh yeah. It needs to be Dave’s Place too. Or at least a place in close proximity to Dave’s Place. In some ways, now that he’s a working playwright, one space that has places for both of us will be easier to find. On the other hand, now that both of us are finally working artists, we have to make sure it’s somewhere that does have a place for each of us. (That doesn’t mean Dave’s leaving his day job, Mom, Dad, co-workers of Dave who read this blog. It simply means that he’s finally admitted he’s an artist and is feeding that part of himself. I don’t want him to lose it again, so we have to find Dave’s Place as well as My Place.)

Any thoughts?

Suggestions?

Job Offers?

Posted by sally at July 28, 2006 05:27 PM

©2006 - All content copyright Sally Eames-Harlan unless otherwise noted