Susanne's Two Cents

Did you ever have someone in your life for whom you had great affection, perhaps even love, and who, on occasion,  reacted to you in a totally mystifying way…at first? I mean that you were completely mystified by the fact that the person seemed to be angry or hurt or affronted in some way. And perhaps, not always, but perhaps now and then, just seemed to come off at you in a way that hit you like a lightning bolt, out of the blue, and left you wondering, “What the HECK was that about???” And then, perhaps, if you pursue and pester and persist in asking this person what is wrong, they finally, with great reluctance, relate to you some (to you) seemingly irrelevant remark or action of yours that greatly wounded them. And you, in your fuzzy, foggy little world, are suddenly blasted out of your comfortable little place by the fact that you have, somehow, however inadvertently, inflicted a mortal emotional wound on someone that you value above pretty much everyone else in the known universe. How does that feel?

Mind-boggling? Disorienting? Like you’ve been blind-sided when you thought everything was fine? Asking yourself: How long has THIS been stewing without a word while I was thinking everything was fine???

I hate that.

I have a domain name again through WordPress as of today. I must say, I love the WordPress tools. When I was creating my own pages, they were….well…okay, but not wonderful. WordPress makes it so easy to have a great-looking blog page!

Here is my feeble attempt to connect my blog page with my art shop. Still under construction here…http://www.etsy.com/shop/msmouce

I have to say that a very nice person looked at my art shop recently and was very complimentary. It made me feel good to know that someone had looked at my work and liked it. And then, a week or so later, I mentioned to the same person that I am a teacher. The next comment has stayed with me ever since, and it replays in my mind from time to time: “Oh! So art is just your hobby. I thought you were an artist” (or words to that effect). I think that the comment stung a bit because I am an artist. I am a teacher. I am also a mother, a wife, a grandmother, a friend, a colleague, a writer, a gardener, any number of other things. The comment made me think about how many roles I play in my life, and how many roles we all play, and how very convenient and very simplistic it would be if we could simply label and slot people.

Was I insulted? Perhaps. However, I understand the tendency. We all do it. It makes our lives simpler to be able to classify others. If we can do that, we can know (at least we think we can know) how to deal with them without having the bother and work of actually taking time to know who they really are.

We are all multidimensional beings. I am an artist, and I am many other things as well, just as we all are. We don’t pour our passions into every single thing we do, but those parts of us that receive the greater portion of our love or hate or intensity say the most about us. It may be a good thing to explore our various dimensions and discover who we are for ourselves and decide how much we wish to share.

I am an artist.

Let’s see if I can sustain a longer-term attempt at blogging. It will surprise me, absolutely, if I continue….

Art and Me: I’ve been producing, apparently,  a large number of art objects. However, they have all been created within the context of the counseling I have been involved in. I don’t know if they will ever see the light of day, and I am trying very hard not to focus in on that. But I have a sense that this plethora of paintings and drawings all hang together somehow. I will update soon, not that anyone knows or cares about what I am going through. I think this is almost like my journal, unread by anyone but me, and that’s okay. The important thing, to me, as that I am willing to share… That’s new…

So much has happened over the last couple of years, that I don’t even know where to begin. The most significant occurrences to me have been the tribulations my poor children have been going through. It’s so strange to me that, while I have been moving into new territory with my own “growth” in self-discovery as an artist and as a person, my children have been in turmoil. As any parent who loves their children will understand, I would do anything to save them from these things. And as any parent with two brain cells will know, they have to move through them in order to grow in their own lives. Pain is good, I guess, in some ways. It’s not very comfortable when you stand back and watch your children go (and grow) through it, however. Most of us who love our kids would find it waaaaayyyy easier to do it for them. The sad fact is that we can’t. It’s how we learned. It’s how they’ll learn. What’s that old addage? The burned hand teaches best?

In any event, I am, as an individual myself, been outside of things over the last year and a half or so, largely because I have been on my own path of “growth,” for lack of a better word. My art has changed, mostly because it has become a tool in therapy for discovering and healing. My thoughts and attitudes on many things have also changed, for the most part because of my own changes. However, all that is abstract to anyone who might, by some odd chance, actually read this. Change, I guess, is the byword here. So much is changing…

I am clinging to the fact that my tomatoes have produced better this season than at any time since I moved to Virginia. I have peeled, stewed, and frozen about 15  pounds of tomatoes so far, and I hope that they will offer up their summery sweetness in the cold, dark days of winter. I am making refrigerator pickles with my cucumbers, which seems to be a “hit” with most of us. I am trying to look on the sunny side, so to speak, without “benefit” of anti-depressants or other pharmaceuticals. I am here, alone psychically for the most part, and without benefit of medication, although I’m not so sure that chemicals always constitute beneficial effects. I believe we are all spiritual beings primarily, so I am trying to tap into that as well.

I am trying to start again, putting my confused but hopefully healing thoughts out there into the world. One of the songs that sticks in my mind right now is the Eagles song,
“Learn to Be Still.” How appropriate right now:

“Learn To Be Still”

It’s just another day in paradise
As you stumble to your bed
You’d give anything to silence
Those voices ringing in your head
You thought you could find happiness
Just over that green hill
You thought you would be satisfied
But you never will-
Learn to be still

We are like sheep without a shepherd
We don’t know how to be alone
So we wander ’round this desert
And wind up following the wrong gods home
But the flock cries out for another
And they keep answering that bell
And one more starry-eyed messiah
Meets a violent farewell-
Learn to be still
Learn to be still

Now the flowers in your garden
They don’t smell so sweet
Maybe you’ve forgotten
The heaven lying at your feet

[Solo]

There are so many contridictions
In all these messages we send
(We keep asking)
How do I get out of here
Where do I fit in?
Though the world is torn and shaken
Even if your heart is breakin’
It’s waiting for you to awaken
And someday you will-
Learn to be still
Learn to be still

You just keep on runnin’
Keep on runnin’

Sadly, I believe people are basically evil, not good. Our characters are usually “me first” in nature. Our first inclinations do not tend toward “the other”; our inclinations tend towards “the me.” If you doubt me, look around. We even tend to judge all things outside ourselves by how we feel or by our own opinions and reject standards that do not originate from “within.” (Think spooky, Twilight Zone-ish music in the background here.) How egocentric is that? We believe in ourselves to the point that, in some sense, we are our own little gods, relying on ourselves, our thoughts, and our feelings to tell us what reality is.

If this were not true, and people were basically good, then there would be no killing, no torture, no sociopathic murders, no child abuse, no wars (the list is endless). How blissfully ignorant it is to think that we are basically good! Bad, evil behavior does not just happen because people are sick or victims. It happens because people like to hurt other people. If that’s not evil, I don’t know what is.

I love the rain. I guess I’m in a minority here. I’ve always found rainy days to be sort of magical. That may be because I’m from the southern California desert area, and rain was a big deal out there. I would go out barefoot and dance around, stomp through the puddles, tilt my head back and open my mouth and try to catch the raindrops on my tongue. I would sit by the window and watch the raindrops slide down the glass, sniff the air and savor the fresh smells, revel in the feel of the soft, moist air on my skin. Now I live in Virginia where it rains much more often, but I still love the rain. I guess I’m the only one…