education and "education" and love:

the risk of yesterday proved to be beneficial and worthwhile and happy-making. :)

i have put the piece away again but it will be back one day. thank you. (((HUG)))

and last night before bed, i thought of Anne Sexton. opened The Complete Poems at random and read "Suicide Note". then this morning, another random ruffling of pages, and i read "That Day". and so caught by her, her story, her persona (?), the cape that swirls around her, i read the introduction by Maxine Kumin, with my coffee, aloud on the floor of the bathroom.

i knew the neighbor kids could hear me as they walked off giggling to school.

but i read the entire thing out loud, unembarrassed, and by the time i got to the end where Maxine - a friend to Anne, so close a friend that maybe, if we ignore ideas about tradition and location and gender, their friendship could be described more accurately as Marriage - speaks of Anne's threat to never send a telegram of her death plan ever again and then succeeds in her attempt just 6 months after making that assertion. and my eyes teared. teared so badly, i couldn't make out the text. i felt overcome with loss and gratitude and awe and just plain ol' love...


she did not start writing poetry (in terms of words on a page, at least) until she was 28.


Maxine writes: Untrammeled by a traditional education in Donne, Milton, Yeats, Eliot, and Pound, Anne was able to strike out alone, like Conrad's secret sharer, for a new destiny. She was grim about her lost years, her lack of a college degree; she read omnivorously and quite innocently whatever came to hand and enticed her, forming her own independent, quirky, and incisive judgments.


and this passage caught my eye and heart. more and more, i think of the education i am receiving right now, currently, today, this minute, all the minutes stacked one on top of the other, self-governed, fueled by private loves, private interests, private fears - my self and body and history as the manual for such a nebulous, hungry, fiery education - and how lucky i am to have it. to have a site, no matter how small or humble, of fearlessness. to read what i want, to not apologise for my attractions, to think, and breathe, and give myself over to an entire day of reading if need be and not feel bad about it. to play and struggle and dance and sing and yell and cry and cry and cry sometimes...

and that it is a gift too, for as embarrassing or strange as it may seem to some, to tear up in the bathroom over the death of a person i never knew some 30 years ago.

and if empathy is an acquired "skill", should that not be one of the pursuits of education, traditional or un?

and i think of the amazing WAVE of hatred for education that seems to be sweeping through the U.S. lately. a tide that continues to rise and rise and rise. and the false definitions and call for "credentials" that come along for the ride, in this, the Land of the Free. this, in a place that looooooves stories of triumph and beating the odds and rooting for the underdog. and this wave spills on to Art too. the definitions and rejection of lived experience as if LIFE has no relevance. really? then what are you making Art for? what are you reading for?

education only "counts" in this country if it is "formal". and the "formality" of an education is decided by whether or not one might be able to win a paycheck of substance once said education is complete (by that defintion, my BFA is NOT a formal education). but the notions of "completion" and "education", to me, seem completely inharmonious. to the point of sad ridiculousness. when does education complete itself? is there really a day when learning ends? i mean, other than death? doctors, surgeons, lawyers, whomevers continue to study their areas of interests. they write and research and explore. at least the good ones do. the ones whom i would trust to cut me open if i needed to be.

and so too, it should be with Art. and the "best" artists and writers have a wide open definition of what art is, how to make it, what tools can be used. the answer is : EVERYTHING. including your life. especially your life. because perspective, perception, ideas are reality. and so why this limit placed on which education is valuable and which is not? look at the work. the work signifies who has wrestled and who has not. who cares and who doesn't. who is blowing steam and who is a steam engine.

i love critical discourse. it is an area in which art is really wrestled with. explored and fought with and cried over and yelled about. it's exciting! the excitement is infectious and wild and important. but critical discourse is an aid to education, not an end.

Anne Sexton's work was loved and hated in equal measure. it still is today, hated and loved. who's right? will that debate really be won by taking a look at credentials? and what credentials does one need to become an artist, to be an artist, other than the extreme hunger and love of the thing? Mr. Wonderful (our lovely Roland Barthes) knew this. he wrote an entire book, all in fragments, about love... what it is to love. an emotion that, at every turn, shatters reason, thwarts logic, and compels the lover to continue beyond the event of heart-break and humiliation. a critic and philosopher shouting PRAISE for the human spirit. and NO ONE, no critic, has yet to say a word back against that book.

because it cannot be refuted.

because the love of knowledge, of ideas, of exploration, of continuing to learn and grow, is LOVE in action. it is a necessary ingredient to becoming "educated", regardless of how one might define that word or go about attaining it.

it is my love that pushes me. and it is my love that quickens me, spurs me on to learn as much as i can, where i am, with the tools available to me. that allow me to see the circumstances of my own life and history as a rich, valuable site of learning and exploration in and of itself. that the books i read, the images that flash in front of my face, provide a new mirror, a new pick-axe with which i can excavate my own experiences and hopefully, maybe, at least try, to provide that same moment of self-recognition in another human being. that unexpected scorch. that moment that throttles my heart and brain and allows me to dig deeper this time, this time, next time, and to create meaning within my own life. that is what artists do. that is what art is good for. that is what an education truly supplies: the ability to make meaning.

and i really cannot emphasize enough what a wonderful education i am acquiring right now! there are so so so many exciting, dedicated, passionate people from all walks of life maintaining such exciting, driven, forward-moving blogs right now. i have a book list that spans pages and pages in my sketch book that is completely derived from reading other artist's and writer's blogs. the discussions that take place in this electronic landscape, in the comment box, are so fertile and interesting! and it's open to anyone and everyone that has an inclination to learn and a computer to borrow! it's amazing! and then, running through a wide vineyard and drawing pictures and making silly little paper dolls, paintings of icebergs and x-rays, trips to the used book store, walking around in the sun and mosquitoes, listening to music, writing my own weirdo poetry, day dreaming and thinking and embracing all that results- the shine and the sour, the whole shebang.

and speaking of the whole shebang, please please PLEASE read Dodie Bellamy's "Barf Manifesto". two lectures transcibed about what writing and art can do and be, the furious "vomit" that may transpire- the aesthetic of the 'good' and the 'bad' swirling together in the same bowl, the multiple temporalities of memory, how they get all mixed-up and overlap, past experience and right-now-this-minute all mixed up, and what a wonderful, insightful, necessary enterprise to allow the "messiness" of human existence to come in to view. it is benevolent. and expands the definition of art, of education, of skill, craft, and knowledge. it gives "permission" to view one's life as valuable, full of meaning, full of spark; and encourages bravery... risk taking, the flowering of one's own mind and life.

poem to fit the day...

.


GHOSTS



Some ghosts are women,
neither abstract nor pale,
their breasts as limp as killed fish.
Not witches, but ghosts
who come, moving their useless arms
like forsaken servants.

Not all ghosts are women,
I have seen others;
fat, white-bellied men,
wearing their genitals like old rags.
Not devils, but ghosts.
This one thumps barefoot, lurching
above my bed.

But that isn't all.
Some ghosts are children.
Not angels, but ghosts;
curling like pink teacups
on any pillow, or kicking,
showing their innocent bottoms, wailing
for Lucifer.




-Anne Sexton

a conundrum, a take-back, and good art...

coffee in hand and a near notebook.
a sleeping rottweiler on the big red chair.
and flipping through Ariel this morning
with my two elsie's governing the whole house from the top of the big bookcase:

i notice the love she had for horse hooves and poppies and the color green... what do you do with such things? how to honor them? a dead hero...

and anne sexton was jealous over it which makes me cringe and pisses me off. why talk shit like that over a friend's suicide? why make it about YOU? when there are two babies without a mother and a man crying in his sleep...

maybe they weren't friends after all.

she wrote a horrible, spiteful essay about sylvia's life and work in a collection of literary criticism called 'The Art of Sylvia Plath" published in 1971, 8 years after sylvia's death. in it, she talks about herself and casts herself as sylvia... speaks of the suicide as if it were her own, like property, and infested with jealousy. tacky and rude and it makes me want to read anne's work less and less.

it is a loss.

i have loved her work but anne sexton seems like a mean person to me today. i don't know what to do with that. is it possible to go on admiring a person's artistic capabilities once they've offended your core morality?

must you like the artist in order to go on appreciating the art?

in the end,
anne killed herself too...

maybe her anger and sadness was aroused by sylvia's success in the matter. maybe it wasn't jealousy so much as a horrible wish? anne left behind children too. grown children but children nonetheless. there is an entire family that morns her and misses her... and i, on my high horse, wondering if she was a "good person" or not. maybe i am the one offending my morality here. i am not offering the compassion i claim to believe in. my heart twists and i realize i'm being a big dumb baby over the clash that may or may not have existed between two, now, dead women. is it even my business... is it any of ours?

but this is the power of words right here. they go on. infinitely. as long as the pages are being turned, the age of the page doesn't really matter. and it hasn't really been all that long since these tragedies occurred. not really. sylvia plath killed herself in 1963. anne sexton did it in 1974. 11 years between each other. and only a little more than 40 years ago.

maybe my anger is the same anger anyone would have? the anger that swishes out of confusion and tremendous sadness... a need to find a place to rest the blame. more than 40 years and my finger is eager to point. more than 40 years and the wrestling continues. the argument goes on. and all this happened before i was even born.

this is the power of good art.

and so i need a do-over-
i take it all back. about anne. i will keep turning those pages and remind myself to find a path of compassion. i think it is one of the points of finding poetry in the world anyway: establishing a vehicle of compassion. and hope.

everyone fails.
and everyone shines.
everyone
everyone
everyone

and hopefully, me too.



p.s. does anyone else have big thoughts like this first thing in the morning? ha!

p.p.s. i forgot to mention it yesterday- check out the two AMAZING artists i blurbed about over at ANTLER. good stuff. heart-felt work and so full of longing. scroll down to yesterday's post and you'll find them.

hooked...

in spite of waking up at an early hour, i am already planning another all-nighter. coffee brewing and brain stewing, i am only in the mood to keep moving, keep working, go farther. i've spent the last few hours (and few days) crocheting. the banner project i started a year ago seems fitting again somehow and i'm happy to pick it back up. maybe it's the cleaning/sorting/weeding project in my home, the need to make my outside more closely resemble my inside, that has led me back to making banners... maybe being trapped inside by the rain makes me more introspective... whatever the reason, i am definitely not arguing with it. it was and is one of my most beloved projects. besides, it's a great way to come up with new ideas and just let my mind skip around while i wait for the big paintings to dry. text based work has always been one of my great loves anyhow: an excuse to look for poetry! and you know what a sappy, romantic glutton i am for that stuff! TOTAL poetry nerd! the rain most likely IS responsible for my plath/sexton obsession of the past few days, however. i've been taking the poems in like good medicine - a dose every few hours when i need to stretch my fingers away from the crochet hook. it works wonders.