Explorations in Photography: Keeping things in focus

In yet another of Ricky Tims' weekly Photo Challenges, we were to take photos that were "tack sharp", meaning that the entire photo was in crisp focus.  For an image that involves some depth (with some parts of the image being close and some further away), this typically involves using a high f-stop on the camera.  Accompanied by the ever-patient Q, I tramped out in the snow to our local playground to find some shots.  

My original vision had been to take a photo of an empty swing, but that didn't work out.  First of all, swings move, which makes it very hard to get a crisply focused image.  Second, no matter what angle I shot from, there were always distracting elements in the background.  So much for my original vision.  

But Q suggested taking a photo of this springy duck. The duck is somewhat creepy-looking, but with my shadow cast over it, the expression seems more frightened than menacing. Putting the duck in the left edge of the photo gives room for the implied line-of-sight . . . what is it looking at?

 

(Did you know that there are quite a few unusual examples of playground equipment out there?  A Google search for "creepy playground equipment" brings up a startling array of images, such as these.)

I also took some close-ups of the merry-go-round.  I don't think this is "tack sharp", though -- the front seems in focus, but the back is somewhat less sharply focused.

I took some shots of the jungle gym and the steps up to the slide, too, but nothing emerged as a strong composition.  Finding good photos can be challenging!  After being out in the snow for over an hour, my socks and the knees of my pants were soaked, my feet were cold, and I packed it all in for the day.  

Lessons learned:  Your original vision may or may not work out; be open to other ideas.  And dress for the weather.  

Memories of My Mother

After a long hiatus, I have a new post on my other blog, Memories of My Mother.  I hope you enjoy it.  If you haven't visited my other blog before, you might want to read some of the earlier posts, including the first one, to get a sense of the project.

My mother, Nancy Driessel Stearns (date and place unknown)

Aparth-eyed

My first year of college was hard for me. I felt socially isolated and disconnected from many of the students in my dorm, who spent their free time getting high or going to fraternity parties. I joined a couple of student groups to try to find a community, including the Anti-Apartheid Coalition. The Coalition was working to convince the college to divest itself of any holdings in companies that did business in South Africa, which at the time was still under apartheid, a system of racial segregation created and maintained by the state. The idea was, first, that it was immoral to reap profits from a violently repressive, racist state, and second, that divestment would create economic pressure for South Africa to change its oppressive policies. Those of us in the anti-apartheid group spent time educating ourselves about the history and politics of South Africa as well as putting together campus rallies and demonstrations to urge the college trustees to divest.

I grew up inspired by the activism of the 1960s. I often felt that I had been born in the wrong era, as I so passionately wanted to be part of a larger social change movement. Yet by the time I came of age in the 1980s there was little enthusiasm for social activism. While I proudly identified as a feminist, the popular culture offered up anti-feminist backlash; I wouldn't find a strong feminist community until the 1990s, when I was in graduate school. The political idealism of the anti-apartheid movement was deeply compelling to me. I wanted to be part of a movement that worked toward positive social change and I truly believed that dedicated activists could, in fact, make the world a better place.

Like most college students, I was juggling the academic work of writing papers and studying for exams, as well as a number of extracurricular activities. As the semester wore on, paper deadlines neared and we stepped up preparation for our big divestment rally, so I got even busier.

It was an unwelcome surprise, then, to wake up one day with my eyes glued shut.

Seriously, my eyes were completely glued shut, and I couldn't open them. I didn't even know that was possible! I panicked, and finally found my way to the sink in my dorm room. I washed out my eyes and was able to able to open them, which was a huge relief. My eyes were red and puffy, crusty with some stringy mucus secretion. Weird. It seems like a design flaw for a species that relies so much on sight that your own eye secretions can render you unable to see. I rinsed them out more fully and got ready to go to class.

I know -- you're thinking that I should go to the student health service and get this red-eye-gluey thing checked out. But you don't understand: I was busy. With important, life-changing, world-changing things. What did it matter if I had a little eye goop in the morning? We were going to end apartheid. Not only were my personal problems trivial, but ignoring my suffering revealed the depth of my selfless commitment to the cause. Real activists are willing to lay their bodies on the line, risking arrest and bodily harm on a regular basis. Of course, I wasn't in the least prepared to face arrest or expulsion, so my inflamed eyes would just have to do. And it never occurred to me that this even needed treatment. I didn't think of it as an infection that could be spread or that it could have long-term consequences if left untreated. The same boundless optimism that made me think I could change the world also told me that my body could take care of itself.

Another reason I didn't see this eye goop thing as a problem had to do with the pink eye scares of my childhood. When I was a child, my parents and the pediatrician periodically thought I had pink eye. I rubbed my eyes and they were red, so they couldn't tell if my eyes were red because I rubbed them or if I was rubbing them because they were red and infected. Just to be on the safe side, they would diagnose it as pink eye and prescribe daily eye drops as treatment. Couldn't be simpler, right? Except not for me. I have a very strong blink reflex -- when I see something coming at my eye (even if it is just a tiny drop of fluid), I blink. To me, that has always seemed reasonable. So to get the eye drops in my eye, my mother would hold my eye open and say, "Now, don't blink." And I would agree not to blink. But then as the eye drops were falling toward my eye, I would blink so forcefully that she couldn't keep my eye open, and the eye drops would fall on my closed eyelid. We'd do this a couple of times, and then my mother would just give up, hoping that some of the medication got into my eye through my closed lids.

As it turned out, it hardly mattered -- I never did have pink eye as a child. So I learned two things from this experience: One, that some things are out of my control, like blinking, and two, that I was invulnerable to pink eye.

But back in my college dorm room, I had to figure out some way to manage my goopy eyes. So I worked out a system. I'd keep a damp washcloth next to my bed so that I could clear out my morning eye-glue, at least enough to open my eyes, and then I could get on with my day. I worked my shift at the cafeteria, went to class (I never missed class), then handed out leaflets for our upcoming divestment rally. I'd stand in the path through the main campus green, wearing my denim jacket covered with political buttons, rub my red and gooey eyes, and offer leaflets to passing students.

"Don't forget about the rally on Wednesday!"

"Anti-apartheid rally, Wednesday afternoon!"

"Divest now!"

The passing students could not have been less interested. This was not Berkeley -- the majority of these students were not politically engaged. And South Africa was far away. What did this have to do with their lives? When the administration later attempted to ban keg parties, then the students found their political voice, to be sure. But the number of students interested in demonstrating to ostensibly help people in a distant country was a small minority, at best. And even if successful, our movement would only benefit those oppressed by apartheid indirectly through economic pressure -- it was not as though attending the rally would instantly free Nelson Mandela and others unjustly jailed. But I couldn't help being angry at the apathy I saw all around me. Why can't people see how important this is? So we persevered, handing out leaflets and getting the word out about our rally. I even wore a DIVEST NOW sandwich board to classes one day. I was the only one wearing a sign. I got quite a few stares that day.

The rally came off, though it wasn't as well-attended as I had hoped. We stood in front of the campus administration building, listened to the speakers, and chanted as loud as we could.

Hey hey!

Ho ho!

South African stocks have got to go!

Hey hey!

Ho ho!

South African stocks have got to go! . . .

We were a small group, to be sure. But student groups across the country made similar demands, and colleges started to feel the pressure to respond in some way. There was some divestment, though the process was sometimes slow and incomplete. And the international social and economic pressure did have a role in bringing down apartheid. I think we made a difference. 

Photo of the protest via  

I came through the experience with my optimism largely intact, both in terms of social change and in terms of my own body. Maybe I couldn't marshal thousands of students into the rally. Maybe the trustees delayed their decision on divestment. But in the end, the divestment movement had an effect. In the end, apartheid fell. And that goopy eye thing? After a week or two, it cleared up on its own; I never did go to the doctor about it. It wasn't until years later that it even occurred to me that I might have gotten pink eye that semester. No matter how often I got sick or hurt, I maintained a pretty robust belief in my body's resilience, assuming that any physical problems would resolve themselves without the need for medical intervention.

I have to admit, though, that my political optimism was a bit bruised by all those apathetic students. It can be difficult to sustain one's hope for social change in the face of such pervasive disinterest. My experience as an activist and as an educator has taught me that you aren't going to reach everyone, or even most people. You can leaflet and argue and talk yourself hoarse, but many people will not be persuaded. Like blinking, this is something I can't fully control.

However, as a teacher I've also learned that we can sometimes have an effect on someone that isn't immediately apparent. I don't know that I changed even one mind or inspired one student to attend the rally. But it could be that being exposed to the passionate political ideals we wore so proudly and shouted so enthusiastically created a sense of possibility for the power of a dedicated movement to enact social change. Those seemingly apathetic students may have gone on to become political activists for some other cause, or they may have formed community organizations or joined the Peace Corps. And certainly our public activism raised awareness about apartheid for students who might have otherwise not even known about it.

In the end, I'll never know whether or how they were influenced by our leaflets and chanting. I want to believe that I made a difference, even for those students who seemed utterly uncaring. It's important for me, even all these years later, with my idealism a bit tarnished, to have made an impact. I'd like to think I had at least some effect on them.

Well, if nothing else, I probably gave some of them pink eye.

***********************************************************************

NOTE:  I've come to enjoy storytelling podcasts like The Moth and The Story Collider, which feature live performances of people telling true stories from their lives.  It got me to thinking -- if I had to give a live storytelling performance, what stories could I tell?  I wrote this story with that in mind (it's not the same, of course, since I am writing it, not telling it live, but one does what one can).  Many thanks for helpful feedback from Clio, Ken, and, of course, Q.  The title was also Q's idea, so blame him for the pun.  (In case you were wondering, Divestment Bunny, pictured above, is a relic from my college days, when even my stuffed animals were politically active.)   

We Who Believe in Freedom

This semester I've been sitting in on classes in Photoshop, television production, and video editing.  It's been interesting to be working so much on visual skills, particularly since I am typically so immersed in the world of words.  In my teaching, in my scholarship, and even blogging, I'm very verbally oriented.  To be sure, I have my visual side, as well, in my textile and photography work, but I am generally less well-versed in visual storytelling than in verbal storytelling.  So it's been a terrific opportunity to grow and develop some new skills (although quite a steep learning curve, as well!).

Our most recent video editing project involved creating a music video using still photographs using Adobe Premiere Pro.  I struggled for a while to develop an idea for the project.  I knew that I wanted to do something around the history of social activism movements, but I couldn't identify the right music.  I spent some time researching songs until I rediscovered a song I used to listen to years ago.  At that point, the vision for the video really came together.  Then I spent endless hours looking for suitable photos online (they had to be topically relevant, visually compelling, and sized large enough).  Thank goodness for the Library of Congress online database!  That was a rich trove of terrific images.  Of course, then I had to make choices about which photos to use (I gathered more than I needed) and in what order, as well as creating movement through the piece.  My first draft was good, but Q noted that the movement across photos was less continuous and smooth.  So I tweaked it to create more consistency in the movement across photos, which I think improved the flow of the video.  I spent another day looking for the source information for the photos (trying to find the name of the photographer, etc.), so I could give appropriate credit.  (Have you noticed how often websites use a photo without any information on its source?)

So it took about two weeks of work, but I learned a lot from the project, both in terms of working within Adobe Premiere Pro and visual storytelling more broadly.  I'm also fairly pleased with the final product.  Enjoy!

Garden Remembrances

The gloomy sky offers another day of cold rain and I have been struck down by a dreadful winter illness.  In between my bouts of coughing and fevered exhaustion, I can't manage enough energy to do much of anything.  You know what I need?  Summer garden photos.  If we can have Christmas in July, why can't I have summer garden in January?

The garden wasn't really at its best in 2014, as a number of shrubs were damaged or killed by the Polar Vortex.  We lost a big rosemary plant in the front garden and had to severely cut back the hydrangea and crepe myrtle shrub in the back garden.  I still have some work to do to fill in gaps in the back garden that will continue this spring and summer.  The vegetable plot wasn't very productive, perhaps due to the increasing shade from the nearby tree.  But we had lots of new garden art, and there were lovely annual flowers.  We had some very nice (i.e., not too hot) days and I tried to keep up better with tending and weeding.  There were bunnies and butterflies and birds, including a number of hummingbird sightings, which I always find thrilling.

So let's explore the garden, shall we?

Front garden, west side (Aug 2014)

Malá Strana and Hradčany (Prague, Czech Republic)

John Lennon Wall

After our lengthy perusal of the Musaion, we walked through Malá Strana (the Little Quarter or Lesser Town). We saw more beautiful buildings, including the Czech Museum of Music, among others, before we found our way to the John Lennon Wall.

After John Lennon was murdered in 1980, an image of him was painted on this wall (across from the French embassy), along with political graffiti and Beatles lyrics. The secret police kept whitewashing the wall, but the graffiti was always replenished. (Not only was John Lennon a pacifist hero for many young people, but most Western pop music was banned by the communists -- some Czech musicians were arrested for playing Western pop music.)

After the Velvet Revolution in 1989, much of the original graffiti was lost to weathering and additional graffiti, but now visiting tourists have contributed their own political messages and other graffiti.

Yes, the guitarist was playing a Beatles tune. And yes, we gave him some coin. :-)

Making a Difference (whether you know it or not)

Butchart Gardens, Vancouver Island (8/2012)

With the advent of the new year, it's a good time to review the experiences, events, and achievements of the previous year.  Last year, I blogged about my cosmic footprint and tried to sum up all I had done in 2011.  But recently I've been recognizing that we often don't really know what effect we have on the world.  Sure, I can list my activities, but it's harder to capture the impact I may or may not have had on the world around me.  The carefully crafted lecture that I spent weeks refining may have breezed by my students, while an off-hand remark I made might have been a turning point for a student's academic career.

I'm reminded of an email I got over the summer from a former student.  I hadn't heard from this student in years, but I was deeply moved by the story he told.  I share it with you now (with the student's permission), not to toot my own horn, but to let you know that we can all make a difference, even if we don't know it at the time. 

I'm a UMD psych major right now who's pulled nothing but As and academic honors since becoming a full time student again, I'm going to be eligible to graduate in the fall and right now I'm going through the process of finalizing some grad school applications and taking my GRE.  I'm finishing up PSYC300 with a student I found out yesterday also came from MC and we got to talking about how hugely formative having you and Dr. Palmer as teachers was in really shaping our interests.  [. . .]

I bombed out of my freshman year at a 4 year institution, never because I couldn't do well in my classes but because frankly I just didn't care about them.  I hated my job, I hated being in school, my family situation was atrocious, I didn't like myself very much and I was really depressed about that for a very long time.  Even my time at MC was approached very half-heartedly, just stumbling through random classes hoping to find something that would really interest me.  Plenty I would just not show up to after a few weeks because even the idea of coming to class just made me feel deathly bored.

I took PSYC100 over the summer with you what feels like a life time ago and I know it sounds really cheesy to say, but that was without a doubt the best experience I'd ever had with either a professor, or an academic subject ever.  I found I really loved the material which helped, but more than that I was really struck by how much you obviously loved what you do and that really resonated with me for a very long time.  That was exactly the kind of engagement I was looking for in my life.  I felt challenged and engaged in your class and even though it was hugely inconvenient for me to make the trek to Rockville then, I always looked forward to coming to school for that.  I don't think I can really explain how enormously important that was to me.

I ended up taking Human Sexuality simply because you were teaching it, and Abnormal Psyc with Dr. Palmer, even though neither class fulfilled any kind of a requirement for me at the time.  I started reading psych books for fun.  For a few years, I didn't do more than that, because I really didn't think that I could go to school for that, let alone get a career in it.  Going to school for several more years seemed daunting but much more than that, I didn't think I'd be good enough so I didn't try to do more.  My life was a mess, I struggled enormously with depression.  Things really started to run around for me eventually. I found myself a really great therapist with many of the same qualities I saw in the teachers I had at MC.  I got a lot of the encouragement I need from her to really pursue that interest and I was lucky to have really great teachers for my other psych classes.  Long story short now I'm looking at entering a grad program for the 2013 school year.  How that's going to play out exactly is still very uncertain, and even if I feel like I don't always feel like I know what I'm doing making that leap, I can't imagine working towards anything else.

So from the bottom of my heart, thank you.  Even though I probably didn't show it very much when I was in your class (I was a really average student at best), you've had a huge impact in shaping who I am today.  Please don't underestimate the impact you can have on students, even those that you aren't really sure if you're reaching or not.

I am truly fortunate to be able to work with such amazing students, and to have the opportunity to help them find their way in life.  But we all have the potential to make the world a better place.  To paraphrase my student's sentiment, please don't underestimate the impact you can have on others, even if you aren't really sure you are reaching them.  Your passion, your enthusiasm, your caring, your encouragement, your commitment touch those around you, even though you may not see it at the time.  Don't give up.  You, too, can make a difference . . . whether you know it or not.

Some of my Social Psychology students
at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History (3/2012)

Continuity

Results of the baking frenzy of 2011

I don't know how it all started.  Maybe it was the holiday visit to my high school boyfriend's family.  I baked cookies to bring as a gift.  But they'd like a variety of cookies, surely, so I'd need to make different kinds.  Somehow I ended up surrounded by tins of cookies -- far too many, really.  Was it then that I thought to give the extras to my friends?

It really snowballed in college and graduate school.  I became well-known for my cookie baking:  More and more of my friends asked to be on my holiday cookie list.  I spent days baking to make enough for everyone.  I hunted for new recipes, bored by the old standbys.  After final exams were over, I'd immure myself in the kitchen, surrounded by flour and butter and sugar, in marathon baking sessions that left my feet aching from the hours of standing, my hands wearied from mixing and rolling. An enjoyable pastime had become an exhausting mandate. 

Decorated by Q (2012)

Appreciating the Commonplace

I've been thinking about birds recently.  In particular, I've been pondering the thrill that runs through me every time I see this woodpecker visit our yard.  Sightings cause me to rush to the window, crying out "Look -- the woodpecker is at the feeder!"  Q has been very tolerant of these outbursts (even when they interrupt our conversations), but I suspect he doesn't understand my fascination with this red-headed avian.  Why does this bird make me so happy?  Obviously, it's a beautiful creature, with an elegantly long beak and rich coloration.  The brightly colored birds do tend to catch my eye (as I've noted before, I'm a sucker for color).   

The Great Material Continuum

Among the Ferengi people of the Star Trek universe, there is a belief in the Great Material Continuum.  This represents the trade that they see as the force binding all life in the universe, the river that flows from those who have to those who need.  The Ferengi see the Continuum as an opportunity for profit, but I attempt to traverse the river on a nonprofit basis. 

23 years and counting

Q and I celebrated our anniversary yesterday -- we've been together 23 years.  It feels like just yesterday we met, and yet I can't imagine life without him.  I could say that our relationship works because of how wonderful Q is.  I could describe my initial attraction to him, and how kind and supportive he was to me, a total stranger.  I could then enumerate his many fine qualities (and a very long post it would be!).  This would be a tale of how I met my perfect partner and now we are living happily ever after.  We see that story so often in movies, but it is only part of the truth.  The real story of any successful relationship is how the two people involved built a strong and satisfying relationship that stands the test of time.  I am fortunate because Q and I have worked together to create just such a relationship.

Exuberant enthusiasm and concomitant excess

So often we are advised to practice moderation.  "All things in moderation," they murmur, urging us to sample pleasures in small portions.  We are assured that excess is bad; after all it is, well . . . excessive.

I've never been good at moderation.  I'm full of bubbling enthusiasm that inspires me to fling myself wholeheartedly into one activity after another.  I go from a passionate pursuit of teaching perfection to months of extreme gardening only to then throw myself into a grandiose creative project.  There is no temperate jogging for me -- I'm always running full-tilt.

I've never forgotten some words of wisdom my undergraduate class received during our college orientation.  We were urged to pursue our passions intensely.  If we enjoyed a writer's work, we should read everything we could find by that author.  If mathematics intrigued us, we should immerse ourselves in the study of mathematics.  I found this advice deeply compelling.  The idea of plunging headfirst into something, letting it take me over completely, fit my approach to life.  Moderation be damned!  If we are going to do something, let's really go for it, fully and without reservation.  I wanted to meet life with exuberant enthusiasm, not cautious reserve.  Indeed, in my first year of college one of my friends gave me a sign that reads, I Am Subject To Bursts of Enthusiasm.  I have it on my shelf today as a badge of pride. 

Writing is Life

Montgomery College student

In recent years, colleges have been asked to prove the utility of a college education for the job market.  Of what possible use are liberal arts courses?  After all, a course in philosophy or literature does not seem to facilitate the development of specific job skills.  The typical rejoinder is that such courses teach broadly useful skills, such as those involved in research, writing, or analytical thinking.  This is indeed true.  Beyond these skills, though, taking on the challenge of college courses teaches life lessons that extend beyond the academic environment.  Take my my students' experiences of completing a research paper, for example.

Losing the lecture?

When I was a college student, most of my classes were lectures.  I had some excellent professors, who gave inspiring, entertaining, and informative lectures.  I sat in the front and took notes furiously, trying to get every word down.  I still have some of those notebooks, somewhere in my archives. 

In graduate school, when I began teaching, I wrote lectures.  I interspersed some demonstrations and some discussions, as well, to engage the students further, but I stayed within the lecture format, by and large.  After all, that is what professors did -- they organized the information and delivered it through lecture.

In recent years, though, I've shifted away from lecturing in most of my classes.  In part, this came from a desire to engage students in discussions of complex issues rather than have them passively absorb information.  One semester I spent four hours of my Psychology of Human Sexuality class lecturing about female sexual anatomy and physiology and it seemed like a phenomenal waste of class time, particularly since the information was readily available in their textbook.  Given that I can't possibly cover all of the material in class, making myself a conduit for information from the textbook struck me as a poor use of class time, which is, after all, a limited resource.  I wanted the students to grapple with debates, learn to apply the concepts, to actively engage with the material, and lecturing was not reliably accomplishing those objectives.

The value of dissent

Contemplating the journey (Sagrada Familia by Antonio Gaudi, Barcelona)*

In my Psychology of Human Sexuality class on Wednesday, we had an intense discussion about sexual assault.  We talked about a number of commonly-held beliefs about sexual assault, including the issue of whether women are "asking" to be raped when they dress in sexy outfits or when they invite a man into their home.  One of the students (I'll call her Pat -- not her real name) was of the opinion that women should be held accountable for such choices.  She argued that women should be aware of how these behaviors will be viewed by others in our society, and stated baldly that she had less sympathy for a rape victim who had dressed revealingly.   I (along with other students) challenged her assumptions regarding the cultural meanings of any given behavior and made the case that nothing justifies assault.  She acknowledged some of our points but was unpersuaded and stuck to her opinion with considerable passion.

It would be easy for me to see this interchange as a teaching failure -- I failed to convince Pat to give up her belief.  I failed to persuade her that such beliefs reflect a cultural mythology that justifies rape through victim-blaming.  Certainly, I find such rape myths deeply problematic, part of a larger societal system that normalizes sexual assault and silences victims who believe they are somehow at fault for their victimization.  Yet while I am utterly opposed to Pat's beliefs about rape, and I strive to eradicate such myths at every opportunity, I still consider this discussion a success.

The power of stillness

One of the lessons I have learned from dance is the importance of stillness.  Beginning dancers often assume that one must be continuously in motion -- keep moving, keep moving, fill up the music.  But constant motion is wearying to watch and gives the viewer no time to rest.  Of course, pauses do more than just give the audience a breather.  Stillness provides a frame for motion.  When the dancer stops moving, it serves to accent the previous move -- it lets the viewer know that something important just happened.  Even the most spectacular move will not be appreciated by the audience unless they are given time to absorb it and the pause that lets them know how amazing it was (think of the "ta-da!" moment, for example).  Dance also needs stillness for structure, just as language uses punctuation to break the continuous stream of words into meaningful units.  Similarly, we use pauses and changing tempos to create phrasing in dance. 

But these moments of stillness are challenging.  As one of those people who can become uncomfortable with silence, I tend to want to fill up every moment with sound and action.  Pauses create anxiety in many dancers, because they worry that the audience will get bored.  We tend to think of stillness as an absence -- without movement, nothing is going on.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  When executed well, the pause is filled with meaning: with the memory of movement and the anticipation of movement, with the persona of the performer, with the connection between performer and audience.  The quiet moments require that we have confidence in ourselves -- confidence that we alone, without the distraction of movement, have a strong enough presence to compel the viewer's interest.  In this way, stillness requires that we make ourselves vulnerable; stripping off the cloak of our dance technique and putting aside our bag of tricks, we expose our self, the self we embody for performance, to the audience. 

This excerpt from George Balanchine's ballet, Apollo, uses moments of stillness to create tension and heighten emotion, as well as to highlight beautiful poses.
 

In this piece by the spectacular dance company Momix, stillness is essential for the illusion of defying gravity.  Tension is created as we wonder whether the dancers will be able to hold their position.  We are able to focus on the one dancer who is moving because all of the other dancers are immobile.  Notice, too, the moment at about 1:30 when the dancers hold a new position for a long moment, and the audience applauds.  This is the the "ta-da!" moment I mentioned earlier.  Later in the piece, moments of stillness highlight particular poses and shapes created by the dancers. 


In life, as in dance, I want to keep moving, striving, doing.  I don't like to just sit still and do nothing.  But I'm coming to realize that we all have (or should have) pauses in life, when we are not doing, but merely being.  While they may feel unproductive, these moments give us a chance to reflect on the past and envision the future, as well as to fully experience the present.  Of course, just as in dance, there are more and less effective uses of stillness -- we need to fill these pauses with meaning, not just hang around doing nothing.  If you find your life overfull of activity, perhaps it is time to cultivate moments of quietude.  If you find yourself in a prolonged pause, make it a meaningful one and recognize that sometimes it is all right just to be, suspended between moments of doing.  I suspect I will always enjoy action best, but I'm learning to appreciate the value of purposeful inactivity.  Perhaps someday I can learn to live as comfortably in stillness as I do in motion, even if only for a moment, when I am my only audience.

Clearing space and finding words

As she came near the second of these alcoves she stopped skipping. There had once been a flowerbed in it, and she thought she saw something sticking out of the black earth- -some sharp little pale green points. She remembered what Ben Weatherstaff had said and she knelt down to look at them.

"Yes, they are tiny growing things and they might be crocuses or snowdrops or daffodils," she whispered.

. . .

She did not know anything about gardening, but the grass seemed so thick in some of the places where the green points were pushing their way through that she thought they did not seem to have room enough to grow. She searched about until she found a rather sharp piece of wood and knelt down and dug and weeded out the weeds and grass until she made nice little clear places around them.

"Now they look as if they could breathe," she said, after she had finished with the first ones. "I am going to do ever so many more. I'll do all I can see. If I haven't time today I can come tomorrow."

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Writing requires space.  I don't mean just physical space (with a nod to Virginia Woolf) -- I mean mental space, as well.  When my life is overfull (of projects, meetings, plans, and deadlines), I simply don't have the mental space to write.  To some extent, this is due to the very limited time that is left over after all of the urgent tasks have been addressed.  However, scraps of time remain -- a half hour here or there -- and writing could take place in those times.  But my mind is filled with the minutiae of work and home, and I cannot clear away the mental clutter of everyday life to construct threads of meaning.  I have enough time to live my life, but not to put it into words.  When my present is stuffed to bursting, I seem to develop a tunnel vision, seeing only what is in front of me. There is no room for detours into the infrequently traveled, often fragmentary side paths.

Yet again, I have forgotten the lessons from the garden.  I fail to thin, weed, or prune, and my life becomes overfull.  Of course, the act of clearing space itself takes time -- my long hours weeding in the garden can attest to that -- and becomes yet another contribution to my crowded schedule.  Task upon task, each of which is important and clamoring for priority, squeezing out the extras.  After a while, the habit of writing is lost, and even writing a blog post seems like an insurmountable task. 

I miss writing, though.  Processing my life, putting it into a formal narrative, creates a deeper understanding than that allowed by fleeting thoughts or casual conversations.  In graduate school, after my advisor and I had discussed an idea for a while, he would say "Good.  Now go write it all down."  He knew, and I learned, that the writing the ideas down often revealed gaps in the theory or created new ideas to pursue.  Writing helps create emotional meaning, as well, as I have found in my other blog.  In addition, writing endures:  Even the ephemeral text of the internet is captured and can be replayed, living beyond the moment of publication. 

So I promise to write, but the to-do list is never complete and the words remain fragmentary.  As time passes, writing seems more and more distant, more unlikely.  Until the day when the must-do tasks remain ignored and incomplete; the weeds and dust and piles of paper are left for another day.  Writing takes precedence, for once, and I reconnect with my inner narrative. 

Lessons from the garden: Weeding, pruning, and thinning

When I first began gardening, I thought mostly about adding to the garden (that is, putting in plants), but a big part of gardening involves subtracting from the garden through weeding, pruning and thinning. These are still the tasks I have trouble with, but they are important components in all aspects of life.

• Weeding: Weeding is about eliminating unwanted volunteer plants. Weeds are constantly cropping up, and they have a tendency to crowd out the desirable plants, leaching away water and nutrients and creating a messy look to the garden. So we pull them up. The lesson here is to be vigilant in looking for weeds in our own lives. Are there projects or commitments or activities or habits that you don't want, that are stealing energy and time from your goals and priorities? If so, it may be time to uproot and eliminate those unwanted aspects of your life. But remember that something may seem like a weed to one person, but not to another. I am determined to uproot every pokeweed plant in my garden, but I have a friend who loves to watch the birds feast on its berries. To me it is a weed, but not to her. Just because something may seem like a waste of time to others, doesn't mean you must eliminate it -- you are the only one who can determine whether it is unwanted in your life. And sometimes, the unintentional plants are a delightful contribution to the garden -- I'm happy to see the petunias that re-seeded from last year's plants, even though I didn't intend for them to be there. Just because something is unplanned, doesn't mean that it is necessarily unwanted.
• Pruning: Even desirable plants need to be cut back from time to time. Not only do we cut away the dead wood, but we cut them back to make them smaller, to train them to a particular shape, to encourage more vigorous blooming. Pruning helps maintain healthy plants and keeps them from overgrowing the space. Yet I find it difficult to motivate myself to prune -- the holly gets bigger and bigger, but isn't that good? The rose brambles take over an entire corner of the garden, but how could that be bad? Yet now the holly is pressing against the house, and that spectacular rose now shades the lavender and coneflower. Even desirable parts of our lives can become too big and unwieldy and may begin to crowd out other goals. Sometimes we need to check the balance in our life, to make sure that some activities or commitments haven't exceeded the space we meant to allocate to them. I have always enjoyed baking, but at one point, I had so many people on my holiday cookie list that I ended up baking cookies for days on end. What had been enjoyable became a chore; I needed to scale back, to prune. Is there something in your life that has grown too big?
• Thinning: Every year, I put in vegetables from seed: carrots, kohlrabi, radishes. I sprinkle the seeds in the ground and am rewarded with rows of tiny seedlings. This is when I'm supposed to thin the plants -- to remove enough of the seedlings so that the remaining ones have space to grow. Every year, I resist thinning. How can I remove perfectly healthy plants and throw them on the compost heap? I pull a few and then give up, figuring the rest of them can fight it out. But by being unwilling to thin out the plants, I doom the whole lot of them to become thin and pallid, unable to develop fully. This really is the hardest lesson for me. I want to be able to do everything, to teach and research and sew and bead and dance and read and garden and cook and bake and write and take art classes and learn Arabic . . . but I can't do it all. If I try, I end up doing a little of everything rather poorly, or taking on commitments I can't fulfill. I have to be willing to prioritize, to thin out the activities that are less important, so that I can achieve my goals. I struggle with this constantly, and I keep hoping that I don't have to thin. Maybe all those carrots will do just fine on their own. Right? The garden keeps trying to teach me to cut back, to eliminate, to clear space for what matters. Maybe one day I'll actually learn that lesson.

Lessons from the Garden: It takes work

I've been doing an inordinate amount of gardening this summer, and I think I'm seeing connections between gardening and the rest of my life. Today's insights are all about the work involved in gardening:

• Be prepared for ongoing maintenance work. While there are some things in life that one can finish and be done with, most require ongoing maintenance: Touch up that paint job, work on your relationship, feed the dog. Every time I turn around, the garden needs to be weeded . . . or mulched, or aerated, or whatever. I don't think I knew when I started this how much ongoing labor is required to keep up a garden.
• Some tasks aren't fun. No matter how many (many!) times I weed, I never really enjoy it -- it's sweaty, grueling, unrewarding work. Again, this is true in so many areas of my life: no matter how much I enjoy something, there are always some parts of it that I just have to slog through.
• It always takes you longer than you think. I may go out with the idea that I will weed the entire front garden that day, but I'm lucky if I can get a quarter of that done in a day. This is a lesson I never seem to learn -- with every project I undertake, it invariably takes me *much* longer than I expect (this is known as the planning fallacy).
• Putting effort in early on can save you effort later. If I were to really weed thoroughly in the early spring, there would be fewer weeds later in the summer. But I never have enough time to do a thorough spring weeding, so I pay for it later with many more hours of weeding. This isn't true of all things in life, but it's worth remembering for some things.
• You don't have to do it all yourself. I do most of the gardening work myself, but I have a landscaper come in to do things that I don't have time, skill, or tools for -- I have them do tree planting and pruning, for example. And then, of course, Q has been a huge help -- not only does he help me weed sometimes, but he spent hours putting in our new, wonderful paths. Again, this is a lesson it's hard for me to learn -- I tend to think I have to do everything myself, but there is no shame in getting help from others.

Resisting completion

I have always found it much easier to start projects than to finish them. New projects are exciting and full of possibilities. I can dream about what I could do and how it will look when it is finished. I get excited about the vision of the final product. I pull out materials, look at designs, consider alternatives. This part is fun and can last a long time. Then at some point I get inspired to start -- I cut into the fabric, I sew together some of the pieces. At some point the project stalls. Maybe I can't figure out one step of the instructions. Maybe I can't decide what color to use for the binding. Maybe I just get too busy with other things. Then the project may languish for months or years before I get back to it. At that point, the enthusiasm has faded; the bloom is off the rose. While I still have the vision for the project, there is less impetus to keep moving on it. I'll often put the project away and start something else. While I do occasionally come back to an old project and work on it, sometimes even finishing it, I have all-too-many incomplete projects (I hesitate to even call them works-in-progress) to testify to this pattern.

In the last few months, I've been trying to revisit old projects and complete them -- to clear the boards for the new academic year. The unfinished projects have started to feel like an albatross around my neck (and no, it doesn't come with wafers). Plus, I am sick of feeling guilty about the incomplete projects, and I want to be able to have something to show for the work I have done.

I've made some headway -- I finished two house-painting projects, and I'm pleased with how they came out. But I've also figured out one reason I resist finishing projects. When something is finished, its possibilities are complete. It is all it will ever be, for good or ill. And sometimes (many times?), it is for ill. I finished two skirts, and while they are well constructed, they just don't look good on me. My vision was not realized, and the work seems wasted. Frankly, it's disheartening and depressing. I would rather have the incomplete project, with its dream of beauty, than the completed object, with its flawed reality.

I guess I understand why someone might be a dreamer -- having your head in the clouds means you don't have to see the dirt you're kicking up behind you.

I know that I have to be prepared that some projects won't work out the way I thought. I know that everyone has a certain "crap quota" -- we need to make a lot of bad stuff to get to the good stuff. I know that I should see these as learning experiences and think about what I could do differently next time. I know that it doesn't mean that I'm incompetent. I know that (in theory) I can make things that do fulfill my vision and make my heart sing. I know.

But in the meantime, maybe I'll just dream up a new project and live in its possibilities. What's so great about finishing things, anyway? Shouldn't we just enjoy the journey? ;)