Spontaneity

Spontaneity lifts the ordinary dull rote of existence into life of another order, it is a sparkling touch of revelation that responds to whatever is true, beautiful, and harmonious, giving energy to the living moment.
--Caitlin Matthews

I'm making good, creative progress this week.

On Memorial Day, I carved out some time to make a collage to congratulate a friend who has recently been given a big promotion in the U.S. Navy to say, "Well Done!" It's a mixed media piece that contains elements hearkening back to the long Navy traditions of exploration and endurance. Thank you, Mike, and those like you who are willing to devote your lives to public service.

I had a wonderful video Skype chat with a dear friend who now lives very far away from me in British Columbia, but with whom I share the remarkable privilege of being able to pick up right where we left off each time we connect. Our conversation about the direction our lives have taken since graduate school. It made me reflect with some pride on the lifestyle I've chosen and the far distance I've come since I left my years in academia behind for a career. I realized that even though I don't have the career that I set out to achieve, I actually have one that is perhaps far better suited to my energies and talents. That lifestyle now includes the luxury I didn't have when I was a student: time. Time to pursue happiness (as it says in the Declaration of Independence). What greater gift can anyone really wish for?

My life now feels as if I'm flowing along like a river, rather than treading through the mud. I am thankful for this precious opportunity.

Another gift that I've been reflecting on is one that comes with feeling happy. When I am comfortable and happy, I live more in the present tense. The pleasure of just being causes ideas that might have been muddled before to come bubbling to the surface. Caitlin Matthews quote above says it best: "Spontaneity . . . [is] giving energy to the living moment.

Nothing like having a party for spreading happiness!

My celebration of the week was to draw all of my co-workers into a Luncheon Tea in honor of Queen Elizabeth II's Diamond Jubilee. They were such good sports about it and crafted fantastic tea sandwiches and desserts. A very bready, but scrumptious meal with three kinds of tea and good conversation. Thank you so much, Ladies!

My Cheesy Scones came out very well. 

My Victoria Sponge was very tasty, but I'm going to have to work
on this recipe. A sponge cake should definitely be  spongier.

Getting Un-Stuck

Sometimes I just slow down and the creative juices don't flow.

While I find it frustrating, the ebb and flow of creative energy is innate to its character. The winter season hit me in November last year with a great slump. I found myself sucked into reading and watching films and enjoying others' creativity far more than my own.  Even though the weather never truly became wintry, I still felt dragged down and lumpish throughout. Then I spent most of the spring suffering from creative frustration. I'd begin a knitting or crochet project, but either couldn't find the flow or, ended up making mistakes and ripping it all out.

My first major crocheted garment turned out to be a huge muddle. I started it in a class in late February and did an okay job with the first half of a simple, green shawlette. I could not get the hang of what I went wrong with the decrease side of the pattern. I'd start, then realize it didn't look right and tear out all of my stitches. Several times. My friend, C, helped me diagnose what went wrong and gave me clues to re-starting.  Finally, I found the nerve to rip out yet again and get back to the mid-point where I made my errors.  Not until last weekend, when I was spending time crafting with another friend, that I finally began to make progress towards the second half of my shawlette. Whew! I feel better now that the chevron shape is working out.

Sometimes life is like that. While there's no way to "rip out" and turn the clock back, you can re-group and make forward progress.

I jump-started my work in the mixed media crafting world with an art journaling class taught by Karen Bearse at The Queen's Ink.  I enjoyed it so much, because I needed to get my hands dirty again and remind myself how easy it is for me to slip back into child-like mode when I'm playing with colors, shapes, and collage. Karen had some fantastic tools for us to play with and gave us a series of projects that allowed the students to experiment.  I'd never used the style of pigment called "Gelatos" made by art company Faber-Castell, but that was our main color tool with Karen's May class. It looks like a lip-stick tube, but has pure pigment which can be applied directly to surfaces or mixed with water to produce watercolor effects.

Karen gave us collage elements and sets of instructions, but we had free-rein to choose colors and to decide which elements to combine. Here are some of the practice samples I made with Karen Bearse's wonderful prompts and kits in the class.

So, now the trick is to keep going independently. I've scheduled some more mixed media classes this summer to help keep up the flow. My challenge will be to work on my own in-between them.

Close Encounters of the Corvid Kind

Corvid in the Wind, Point Reyes National Seashore, California, 2011

I have been making a study of crows and ravens, the family of Corvids (from the Latin = Corvus, family Corvidae), all during the summer.  I find these birds fascinating because of their clever behavior and ability to use tools. I thought it might be fun to learn a bit more about them in a natural science way, so I am writing a natural science article about crows that live in and around Annapolis and Anne Arundel County for the Jug Bay Wetlands Sanctuary newsletter, Marsh Notes.  We have two types of crows here in Maryland, the American Crow (Corvus brachyrhynchos) who is slightly bigger than his relative, the Fish Crow (Corvus ossifragus). 

Alongside the incredible scientific studies out their on crows and their raven cousins is the sheer amount of cultural encounters with corvid kind that I have had without even trying very hard.  My research into these birds in the natural world has opened up floodgate of mythological, sociological, and poplar culture references.

Something to Crow About, Big Sur, California

Crows are such an important part of language and our mythic psyche that it is difficult to summarize it all. You might have something to "crow" about if you are proud or be forced to "eat crow" for your misdeeds. If you need to get somewhere quickly, you might see how to get there "as the crow flies." If you need a hand, try a "crowbar," a tool which is named for the shape of a crows' beak, but I think it especially apt for a bird who can cleverly use sticks as tools to get at food as scientists have recently discovered. Farmers still put out scarecrows in the fields to ward off blackbirds from their crops, but the scarecrow is more of an artistic convention than a deterrent to these would-be crop-snackers.

Ravens seem to follow me everywhere, from the local football team here in Baltimore to Charm City's admiration for its resident storyteller Edgar Allan Poe, whose most famous poem is "The Raven." Every autumn, I see crows gathering in the farmlands, looking for tasty bits the farmers left behind. And I also see the Raven appear faithfully every October as one of the Halloween images along with ghosts and monsters. Ravens seem associated with portents of doom, and have been part of this cultural association since our ancestors watched them hover around carcasses and carrion. Therein lies the dark side of this bird family's mythology.

Opportunistic eaters like humans, corvids don't let a potential meal go to waste. Crows and ravens haunt the history of Western culture as harbingers of death and decay because they find our killing grounds, road kill, and trash heaps so appealing. I can understand why the angry farmers whose crops have been stolen don't like them, and why watching watching crows pick through garbage may make them seem "dirty" and unappealing to many people. When I look at my own Northern European ancestry, I find many stories that involve corvids seen in a negative light.

My Celtic forebearers, for example, often associated corvids with goddesses of battlefields, death, and devastation like Macha and Badh Catha. Ravens or crows might appear as companions to these angry, hungry goddesses, or in the case of the Morrigan at the time of Irish hero Cuchulainn's death, she might shapeshift into one.  This isn't very surprising, since part of the corvids' job is to take one human's tragedy and turn him or her into lunch. But fear is a powerful influence on the mind, and so corvids become associated with war goddesses and prophets of death.

Gods, too, are associated with corvids, including Bran the Blessed (Bendigeidfran, the name means Blessed Raven), whose severed head was said to be buried in the ground at a site upon which the Tower of London was built. Bran's head, and apparently since the reign of King Charles II,  modern ravens with clipped wings are there to ward off invasion.  The Norse god Odin has a pair of ravens, Hugin (Thought) and Munin (Memory), who fly the world each day on a reconnaisance mission to observe and report back news from Middle Earth.These are but two of the cultures for whom corvids figure widely in myth and legend.

Wherever people live, crows especially have found ways to live close to them. Ravens tend to keep themselves to themselves and seem to be less tolerant to humanity's grasp on the environment. Both crows and ravens, on the other hand, are a great interest to Native American peoples.  Corvids vary widely in their character from the malicious Trickster to benevolent helper of humankind in Native myths. My all time favorite depictions of these birds come the art of the Pacific Northwest and Alaskan peoples on bark paintings and wood carvings. So revered are these birds that certain families adopted crows or ravens as their symbols.

There is much to be read on the subject of corvids. For my personal explorations, I chose books that combine scientific and creative approaches.  Author Catherine Feher-Elston created a collection of mythic stories and factual essays in her book, Ravensong: A Natural and Fabulous History of Ravens and Crows (Penguin, 2005) that I want to recommend to anyone interested in exploring the folklore, as well as natural history, of corvids in more depth.  Likewise, one of the most readable studies from both the natural science and cultural perspective on corvids is by John M. Marzluff and Tony Angell entitled, In the Company of Crows and Ravens (Yale University, 2005).  Their book surveys scienists' understanding of corvids without neglecting their long effect on our culture. An artist's gorgeous illustrations accompany all aspects of their guide to corvid culture. And finally, for those deeply interested in ravens and their intelligence, you should not miss the incredible books Ravens in Winter and Mind of the Raven by ornithologist Bernd Heinrich, who is not only a brilliant scientist, but a natural storyteller.

My personal survey of crows and ravens leaves me more enchanted than frightened. I find their black feathers shine in the sunlight and their profiles to fit their obvious intelligence and nobility.  Their "caw-caw" and "quork" sounds more like discussion than noise to me.  I can't help it, but I find their antics amusing. I can see crows and ravens as tricksters, but not as malevolent beings.

The photos you see above and below are tributes to the corvids I spent time with this summer in California. There was one early morning where we drove up to the northern section of Point Reyes National Seashore and discovered hosts of crows and ravens lining the farmyard fences. As the car came up the hill, hundreds of black wings took flight on both sides of us and in multiple groups, the corvids flew away. They flocked together in groups. (Family groups? I wonder.) Always, they kept eyes on each other and us. Amazing. So much so, that I had to go back another morning to take more photos.

Fly by Wire

Aggressor?