Mood:  cool

This morning I found my way to a blog about blogging, http://lorelle.wordpress.com.  I don’t know how I got there, but I deemed it a site worth bookmarking.  Apparently, Lorelle’s goal is to help the rest of us be better bloggers.  One of the ways she attempts this is by posting weekly challenges.  This week’s challenge is to define our passion.

Luckily, I spent two months this summer rediscovering, reaffirming, and further exploring the boundaries of my passion.  I am passionate about Life.  I am constantly amazed at the simplicity, the complexity, the ingenuity, and the variety of Life that surrounds us.  My purpose seems to be to find a way to communicate the beauty I experience in an attempt to inspire wonder, passion, and hope in others.  My worry is that I don’t have the genius or the skills to fulfill my purpose.

This summer I was privileged to spend a few hours with a small number of children (and one big kid) and several minutes with thousands of other kids and parents.  I learned a lot about what kids find fun (apparently kids find me fun!  who knew?) and how to engage kids in thought while they are playing.  I also had a tremendous freedom to try new things, to PLAY!, and to repeat the same art activity dozens of times and realize that I could have new thoughts and experiences each time.  I learned that I am a reasonably good catalyst, that I set things in motion and empower kids to find their own answers and their own art.  This may be an art in itself, and now that I find myself writing it down, it certainly sounds like it’s a “right” art for me and my purpose.

My inclination over and over throughout the summer, however, was to learn “real art,” so I could look like a real artist and teach the more sophisticated art techniques real artists use.  My art still looks much like the art I created in elementary school, at best like the art I created as a twelve or thirteen year old.  I am CRAZY about glitter paint, and I still love the color pink.  Especially combined with purple.  And aqua blue.  On one hand, this may have contributed to my success over the summer—the kids saw me as a peer rather than an authority figure.  (I know, though, that this isn’t really the case.  I may be encouraging, open, and easy to talk to, but I am sure the kids never really forgot I was an “adult.”)  On the other hand, I felt the need to be seen as an “artist” by the parents and adults who were either formally or informally evaluating me and my work with the kids.  In that area, I’m sure I failed to some extent.  I am sure it was obvious to anyone with any visual art training that I have never had any formal training, and this knowledge caused me discomfort.

All summer long I felt like a beginner.  Perfect, if my goal is to maintain a state of Beginner’s Mind!  But when I try to console myself with this, I hear a voice inside my head say, “Yes, but the TRUE goal is to become a Master with a Beginner’s Mind,” and I am far from being a Master of anything.

Being a beginner, though, was a true asset this summer because it completely freed me to try things I’d never tried before—including several things I probably won’t try again.  I learned what things kids respond to, how to organize an activity so that thinking was part of play, how long things take, what kinds of dexterity kids of various ages have.  I had no preconceived notions and so got to be delighted every time a child stopped to write a poem with me, said, “This is fun!” or told me the project I was asking them to contribute to was “neat” or “cool.”  So maybe when working with kids it’s good to be a beginner.

The summer also really opened me to the experience of beauty.  Several times in the last two months I’ve caught my breath at the sight of a sunset or the waxing moon or the twinkling of dozens of lightning bugs as they lifted off the grass below a stand of pines at dusk.  I’ve been stopped by the shadows cast on my living room wall by the four-foot-tall liatris blossoms outside my window as they moved in the wind; by the patterns of light cast through the leaves of a sugar maple as they moved across an expanse of vinyl siding.  I spent twenty minutes standing at the island in my kitchen trying to capture with a pen the patterns of light reflected through the French doors onto the kitchen wall as the sun sank into the western sky behind the trees at the back of my house.  The sketch is filled with words, written directions for the triptych watercolor painting I would create if I knew how to paint with watercolors.

This evening, my eye was arrested by the light playing through the trees as just the top branches moved gently in the 100+ degree heat, then by chunky, irregular, flat, red bark of one of the pines, then by the silvery weathered wood of the dead tree that still stands pointing skyward with two giant arms at the very edge of the woods.  I wanted to capture this beauty and the peace of the light patterns and the motion of the branches and leaves, the wonderful contrast between the outer shells of the trees, and I wondered how to do it.  Visually seems to make the most sense, capturing it in photographs or on film, as Jon Turtletaub did in Phenomenon with the swaying of the trees, symbolically rocking John Travolta’s dying character in their limbs, or Sam Mendes did in American Beauty with the plastic bag dancing in the wind.  But, I am not really a photographer or filmmaker.  I could try to paint the scenes, at least the bark and skeleton tree, but, again, I probably do not have the expertise to convey what I really want.  So that leaves me with words, a narrative description or a poem, but even then I worry I don’t have the skill to conjure the power of those simple images.  What if I’m never really able to express the beauty I experience all around me?  Would I be satisfied with pointing and hoping another person has the openness and the skill to experience the beauty for themselves, in whatever way they understand beauty?

Which brings me again to the Master vs. Beginner, Artist vs. Player with Art Tools dilemma.  If I am trying to express the beauty I see, it behooves me to study formally and to practice—to attempt to achieve mastery.  If I am trying to share an experience of beauty with you, and perhaps expand your capacity to experience it and respond to it creatively, spontaneously, and authentically, I better serve you (and my own goal) by practicing beginner’s mind and interpreting the experience only enough to facilitate your awareness of your surroundings.  If I employ too many techniques or too much “artistry,” if I paint the picture so clearly from my perspective that your ability to experience the moment independently is limited, I have failed.

So maybe the key is to practice toward mastery but always be experimenting and learning as a novice, and to learn when each skill or state of mind is more appropriate.  And, especially, to fight against the urge to display mastery as a means of gaining status, respect, or safety.  Any time I use mastery to “show off,” rather than to further my experiments, I’m robbing myself of an opportunity to learn something new.

The second half of Lorelle’s challenge is to describe how I’m living my passion and working it into my life.  That, I’m afraid, will have to wait for another time.

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 12:01 AM EDT

Updated: Wednesday, August 15, 2007 12:05 PM EDT

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Rob Brezsny's free will astrology for my sign for the week of July 18 directed me to this wonderful poem by Dara Weir called "A Modern Version of the Way the Rosary was Once Said Throughout Western Europe in the Late Middle Ages."  It's lovely!  Read it out loud at least twice, taking time to contemplate the twists in meaning afforded by line breaks.

The poem is also absolutely appropriate for my life through the end of July.  I am swamped and exhausted.  Work is intense, especially since I'm on a reduced work schedule and we're trying to get a new book from the graphic designer to the printer, overhauling the current website, and adding a new children's site. 

Plus, I have my last seven days at the zoo coming up and I am trying to wrap up the River of Words poem we spent more than a week on.  It's a piece of paper about twenty feet long and three feet tall on which I wrote all the words the kids gave me about water, beginning with the word Mountain and ending with the word Ocean.  Then, I spent more than fifteen hours cutting out the words with an art knife.  I smooshed the words together at weird angles so that when the spaces were cut away, the words would still link together.  Then, I had kids paint the words.  Now, I need to go back and outline the words with contrasting paint so viewers can see which letters go together (several words are made up of letters painted different colors, and if you have a couple of those words next to each other, all you see is smush of nonsensical letters), and laminate it by hand.  I'm dragging my feet because the lamination is going to be a bear.  Each of the letters has the tendency to bend under or curl and getting it perfectly flat is going to be tough.  Once that's done, I have to figure out some way to attach it to a blue background.  What I think I'm going to do, though, is attach the blue background to the fence where I want the shape poem to hang using grommets and wire, and then hang the laminated poem on top of it using separate grommets and wire.  I would like to have this all done by Sunday so I can take it to the zoo and have it hung by the time the kidZone reopens after a temporary closing on Thursday.  In addition, I have two other major projects this week.  On Wednesday, I'm going to stitch leaves together using pine needles into the shapes of animals and then float them on the African lake.  The plan is to do African animals and North American animals and float them next to each other so they can be seen from the bridge into the African exhibits to reinforce the idea that all animals are united by the common need for water.  Beginning on Thursday, I will be constructing the wire portions of the giant raincloud mobile I want to make, and asking kids to write WATER acrostic poems on raindrop-shaped paper to hang from the mobile.  If I can get that project finished by the time I wrap up my time at the zoo on the 29th, I will be so happy.  Plus, we still have to get a videotaped version of me leading the Walter the Water Drop story/adventure.  I'm in new territory everywhere with these projects which is both exciting and a little bit exhausting.

The cherry on top is that Portrait Homes, the lovely builder of the community in which I live, is again attempting to wrangle adding those two additional buildings (twelve total new units) on the green spaces on either end of my building.  When I thought the homeowners had won a victory a few months back and convinced the big, bad, money-grubbing Chicago-owned development company that Green Space is necessary to our community's wellbeing, what actually had happened is that the developer had been told that they did not actually own the land on which they want to build.  The homeowners own it.  Portrait has purchased more land on the other side of my neighborhood and is building 98 more units, which will bring our total up near 500.  Several residents were upset that Portrait was not building a second pool to help alleviate the pressure of these additional units, so now Portrait is blackmailing us.  They want to "give us" a second pool, in exchange for us conveying the two green spaces back to them so they can build twelve additional units.  If this were the only issue we as homeowners were having with Portrait, I might be inclined to agree to the trade.  But the truth is, there is a long history of neglect by Portrait in our community--though other Portrait developed communities in the area seem to be flourishing--and I absolutely feel this is a bad deal.  So I joined eleven neighbors last night for an impromptu meeting, reaffirmed my willingness to chair a committee, and will be gearing up for a vote on whether or not to make the trade at a meeting on Wednesday night.  It is really more than I want to deal with right now, but the timetable is obviously out of my hands and I feel an obligation to participate.  The thing I find exciting about the whole process is that I'm getting to know my neighbors as a result, and the ones I'm meeting are proving to be caring, articulate, intelligent people who share my sense of justice.  I'm trying not to hold too tightly to the outcome of the vote on Wednesday night and just concentrating on the fact that there are improvements to be made in the community and I can be a part of those.

So, even though Dara Weir's poem says she's not doing any of these things, I am on some level trying to keep wolves at bay and I think it would be SO LOVELY to walk through a rainstorm into a cypress grove.  In fact, I think I can smell the cypress now....

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 10:47 AM EDT

Updated: Friday, July 20, 2007 10:58 AM EDT

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Mood:  don't ask

I don't know what happened to me, but I am grouchy today!!  I think it's because the bulk of my communication with other people has been in writing, and I'm interpreting messages as hostile.  Plus, I had to type up a letter for my boss in which she was firing someone, and that negative energy totally invaded my space.  It has been my experience that everyone eventually disappoints my boss and every time I type one of these letters, I'm anticipating receiving one from her one day.  Yuck!  Maybe the funk will pass quickly and I can come back and write happy thoughts about all the great things that have been happening to me lately....

Love.  Really.

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 12:21 PM EDT

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Mood:  energetic

I managed to stop crying and watched more than twelve hours of Live Earth Concert coverage on Saturday.  I moved the love seat out of the living room and replaced it with the dining room table so I could work on my River of Words project I'm creating with kids at the zoo, and Hans and I spent the whole day flipping back and forth between Sundance and Bravo, both of whom did all day coverage, and then NBC later in the evening.  (I don't know the name of the female co-host on the Bravo broadcast, but she scares me!  She is pregnant, which means soon she is going to be shaping a small mind, and when she was asked what she was going to do to help stop global warming, she said she was going to drink more bottled water so she could recycle the plastic bottles!!!!  If this is the brightest person Bravo could find to help bring an environmental message to Americans, we are doomed.  Seriously doomed.) 

It was fun because I heard a lot of bands and artists I hadn't heard before.  I fell in love with Keith Urban's "Stupid Boy" and Joss Stone's "Right to be Wrong."  And, of course, I LOVED Nunatak!!

This morning I taught my first Nature and Art class (fun, cool group of kids!), and this afternoon I signed a pledge to be a Carbon Conscious Consumer on the New American Dream website.   Check it out and sign on, too!

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 3:22 PM EDT

Updated: Monday, July 9, 2007 3:36 PM EDT

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I thought I was going to be up to watching this concert all day.  In fact, I thought it was going to be exciting.  Instead, I find myself sitting on the couch crying.  Kaija, my American Hairless Terrier, who is accustomed to having a mom with crazy mood swings and usually watches me from a safe distance, crawled into my lap and started licking my eyes.  I managed to stop crying for a few minutes and cuddle with her. Then Hans came downstairs and said, in a serious tone, "What's this a concert for again?" and I lost it.  If he lives with me (and has been asked repeatedly over the past few days to go to a Live Earth Concert party with me tonight, because, yes, I still ascribe to a policy of asking a question over and over until I get the answer I want) and doesn't know the answer to that, then who does?  Do the people in all those stadiums really intend to take and uphold the Live Earth Pledge, or are they just there to see a cool concert? (And what about all the CO₂ that was emitted getting all those people to the venues? (Some of the artists, like KT Tunstall, did find carbon neutral ways to offset their travel!) And what about the eco-policies of the venues themselves? Are they at the very least recycling the thousands of water and beer bottles and plastic cups from their concessions? Using solar panels? Using reclaimed water in their toilets?)

I have to use my day preparing for Monday morning's start of my children's class, "Exploring Nature Through Art," and getting ready for a week of nature and art projects at the zoo.  This is some consolation.  It isn't much, but it is a hopeful way to use my time.  I just have to turn off the waterworks so I can safely use an art knife!  More posts to come on how I am upholding my Live Earth Pledge.

Love, peace, compassion to all life today and every day.

Let's figure this out, people. I want your kids to inherit a liveable planet.

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 12:01 AM EDT

Updated: Monday, July 9, 2007 2:15 PM EDT

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Mood:  happy

The North Carolina Zoo sent out a press release yesterday about the Visiting Artists working in the kidZone.  I received nice placement in the release and was featured in the accompanying photo:

NC Zoo photo by Tom Gillespie 

Kristine Goad (standing left), one of six visiting artists at the North Carolina Zoo in July, engages children in her “The Whole Wide Wonderful World of Water” project. The project is part of a larger Visiting Artists Program at the zoo throughout July. Goad’s project is designed to engage children in poetry, movement, visual art and storytelling.

As far as photos go, it has some attractive elements (excluding me, of course!).  I like that it captures the size of the group, the tarp we used as the river and the ocean (such a lovely shade of blue!), and the Artist's Cove wall behind me.  I wish, however, that it was an active shot.  We are "rehearsing" sound effects here that we will use once Walter's Water Adventure actually begins.  (Walter is a water drop and the kids accompany him on an adventure through the water cycle.)  The kids look a little bored here, but I can assure you they weren't bored a few moments later when the real, 3-D story began!

You can read the full press release here.

I don't know that the story has been picked up anywhere yet aside from the blog of the Executive Director of the North Carolina Zoo Society, Russlings. 

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 3:57 PM EDT

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Mood:  on fire

My first six days as a visiting artist at the zoo were wonderful.  I had so much fun, but I was really nervous getting started.  Even though I was supposed to be doing experimental work, I wanted each experiment--and the visiting artist program as a whole--to work. Each morning there was the unknown of trying to visualize how to make an activity work logistically, how to make it appealing to kids (and to parents, because, truthfully, it’s the parents you have to hook if you want kids to be given the freedom to hang out and create with you for a few minutes), and worrying that it wouldn’t work at all.  It took about three days for me to really feel like I had my legs under me.  Then, on the fourth day, the giant shape poem idea I had proved to be completely unworkable. It was really hard to not be disappointed, because in my head the activity worked and the physical poem it produced was beautiful!  I had to switch gears pretty quickly, and the physical and emotional stress of the week started hitting me.  All I could think about on Friday afternoon was how I couldn’t believe I still had to make it through Saturday and Sunday.  But then the two ideas I had on Saturday, one of writing poems in collaboration with kids at the polar bear exhibit, and one of writing collaborative stories about bears with individual kids each providing one line and coloring a cut-out of the main character, went over very well and I got a surge of energy.  The weekend ended up being really fun and exciting.

I realized it’s been ten years since I was a full-time Beach Ranger, and that was in a completely different climate, so it’s quite a shock to my body to be standing outside all day and interacting with kids in 90-degree weather with high humidity.  By the end of the week, I was absolutely exhausted.  I am so glad it worked out that I’m alternating weeks at the zoo with weeks at my regular job.  It was something of a relief to go back to the “craziness I know” this week.  And so far, my work week has been great.  We’re in the middle of publishing the third book in the children’s book series, creating a new children’s web site, and redesigning the current website. Today I tentatively set up our first author events to launch the new book in September, and yesterday the web developer and I laid out the work schedule that will allow us to launch the new websites in September, too.  I am really excited about all the things going on.  I wasn’t involved in the original design of our site, but the ideas for the redesign are mostly mine, and it is so much fun to be collaborating on the creation of something that will have a physical presence, even if it’s only in the virtual world.  The sites are going to be much more interactive than the current one, which means I’ll be increasing my workload substantially, but I’m hoping that the benefits we’ll gain from updating and changing the way we meet and interact with people will make it worthwhile.

Another magical thing that has happened recently is that I met Susan Hope a few weeks back while I was dropping off Sudie’s artwork to a gallery.  I fell SO in love with Susan’s fused glass jewelry, especially the Lavender Confetti collection that I was still talking about it when I returned to work.  A few days later, Sudie completely surprised me by leaving the entire set of earrings, pendant, and bracelet on my desk as a gift!  (My pendant is rectangular, but the earrings and bracelet are made of small, round beads about the size of pennies.)  Now that I’ve been living with Susan’s creations, I love them even more.  The only problem is that the silver chain that came with the pendant is so short it makes good on its name of “choker.”  Sudie has insisted that she wants to get me a longer chain, so I took the pendant back to the gallery today, along with another of Sudie’s finished pieces, and incredibly Susan Hope was there again!  She took the pendant and will order me a longer chain and is also going to add another link to the beautiful bracelet so it will be a little more comfortable.  Clearly, the Universe thinks I need to know Susan Hope! Maybe it’s just so I can fall in love with her glass, but I’m thinking there’s probably more to it.

I also learned that my art and nature children’s class has received enough registrations that the Alamance Arts Council is going to run it next month, so tonight I fully mapped out the outline of the course.  It’s the first time I’ll be teaching it, and I have four ninety-minute sessions to fill.  We’re going to have a lot of fun!  I’m going to try to go heavy on the visual art and the nature observer components, but still sneak in some poetry and writing.  My goal is to move kids from thinking about nature in the abstract and as something from which they are separate to personal observation and experience with nature.  I want them to see that no matter how we try to dominate and separate out nature, we are really tangled up in it.  They don’t have to forget what they “know” about animals and plants and forests and oceans, but I would love it if they learned to supplement the facts they’ve memorized with questions, and maybe a few answers, derived directly from their participation in nature.  It’s a big goal for such a short period of time, but like everything I do, it’s an experiment.

Tomorrow is the solstice!  It is also the one-year anniversary of me spraining my ankle while I attempted to celebrate last year’s solstice.  The ankle still hasn’t fully recovered and has been talking to me quite a bit ever since I started working at the zoo.  I’m not planning to repeat the injury, or the activity that led to it, tomorrow.  Instead, I’m hoping to be up and outside walking during the sunrise and then walking (not running!) Kaija at the park during sunset.  I tied gauzy, shimmery, silver ribbons around my ankles and wrists today and will cut them off in a cutting the cords ritual tomorrow night after dark. The cords are really supposed to be tied on at the new moon and then cut off at the full moon, to symbolize cutting oneself loose from past habits, ideas, and patterns that are no longer useful, but I feel like doing it now.  Everything in my life is moving forward so beautifully, but I know there are still a few things holding me back.  Mercury is retrograde in my House of Habits, making it a great time to revisit the old habits and find new ways to organize my thoughts and energy.  Before I cut the cords, I’ll make a list of what they represent. Right now, I’m thinking they mostly represent the habits that are keeping my body from being lean, strong, and limber.  I’m in my eleventh month of walking at least thirty minutes a day and my health continues to improve (my blood pressure and cholesterol have dropped steadily over the last six months and my liver function has returned to normal), but my size is holding me back from the active lifestyle I really want and has to be influencing my success as a teacher to some degree.  As much as I’d like to think people see me for who I am, I am sure some people see me first as fat, and therefore less capable, less intelligent, and less professional.  Even worse, I know it sometimes influences how I see myself.  I’d like to use the solstice to help me engage this issue again, as it is a process, and deepen my commitment to becoming healthier.  I found an old picture of me in a bikini from when I was in college.  It was supposed to be a “before” picture though I honestly can’t see why I thought I was fat!  I would kill to have that body again now.  Looking at the picture, I realized that I still have prominent trapezius musles but I can’t see my clavicle any more.  So my goal right now is simply to unbury my clavicle.  Since I seem to lose weight from the top down, I think that’s a reasonable next step.  I love that the ribbons I used are so pretty!  It will make me a little sad to cut them off, which is appropriate since some part of me will also be sad to cut myself loose of the habits that have been with me so long.  All good energy toward this endeavor will be greatly appreciated!

One last thought....  As excited as I am at how well my teaching has been going, some part of me is beginning to get jealous of how much time I'm spending planning, preparing, and leading my classes.  There's this little voice that says, "Okay, so when do YOU get to create?"  I'm approaching a place where my need to write is going to start getting really loud and cranky.  (I started both a poem and a short story this week, but "started" is a really loose term!)  A niggling little thought has crept into my mind in the last few days: I could regenerate and bliss out by going on the 2008 Big Ride Across America to commemorate the ten-year anniversary of my first cross-country bike trip!  This thought is quickly followed by, "Yeah, and I could do it better this time" which is quickly followed by, "There is no such thing as 'better.'  Better implies comparison, and Big Ride Kristine knows that comparisons are not useful."  Which is then followed by, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know--but this time I really could just use 48 days to WRITE!  And now that I'm using Advair, my asthma will probably be much less of an issue and I'll be able to avoid asthma attacks and sagging and visits to emergency rooms.  It would be so GREAT!" 

And it would be great.  I think.  I probably wouldn't write, because, as I discovered in 1998, it's difficult to write poetry when you are living it.  But then, I might have Randy's experience of expecting an amazing repeat of a prior bike experience only to find the new adventure doesn't hold up to my first....ahem, isn't that also a comparison?  I'm a little afraid to broach the subject with Hans.  He really is, rightfully, going to expect me to grow up sometime.  And I haven't decided yet whether I'd really want to spend a year preparing for a trip I've already taken once before, or whether I'd rather spend a year preparing for a trip to Italy or the Galapagos or Australia...(someplace I may not be able to afford once the true energy crisis sets in; and once that happens, I'm sure I'll have PLENTY of opportunities to explore the country from atop my little purple Rodriquez Stellar).

Happy, happy Summer to all!

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 12:01 AM EDT

Updated: Thursday, June 21, 2007 12:28 PM EDT

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Mood:  crushed out

It turns out the North Carolina Zoo offered me more than one week as a Visiting Artist this summer.  While I would have loved to be able to do more, I was able to negotiate four weeks of extremely reduced hours from my regular job to allow me to be at the zoo full-time every other week through June and July.  I start next Tuesday.

It's been an interesting process of thinking about what I could offer the zoo, worrying that nothing I had to offer would be of interest, being offered a huge expanse of time in which to work and the freedom to explore, and then panicking that a) I don't have anything to offer that couldn't already be offered by their kidZone educators, 2) I don't have the visual art skills/techniques/manual dexterity to create professional level "art," 3) I haven't tried any of my proposed activities before and so have no idea whether they will work, and 4) that I don't know enough about all the animals I'll be interacting with or the water cycle (water is my theme) or science or art.  Most recently, I have felt like I was drowning in a sea of details, getting too hung up on small things because I was afraid of the big things.

Last night, the heaviness lifted, however, and I suddenly had a whole new shower of ideas.  I tried two little experiments in the kitchen and got up this morning and immediately tried another (the third one worked beautifully!! and I'm still thinking about what I can do with the other two.  I think I'm going to try them at the zoo and ask the kids if they'd like to help me with my art experiment and just see what happens).  I am through the roof excited again.  (I have to be careful about that because when I get too enthusiastic, energy flies out of my body in every direction and I end up exhausted and really tired of whatever idea generated all the energy in the first place.)  I had a hard time getting to sleep last night because every time I climbed into bed, I'd have a new idea I was worried I would lose and I'd have to get back up and write it down.  The great thing is that they're simple ideas for the most part, using materials I've already put on my requested list.  I finally realized on a deep level that I don't have to teach the full water cycle and make all the connections in every activity.  That's not what the zoo expects and it's completely impractical given the set-up in which I'll be interacting with kids.  I realized that I could simply play with water in every way I could imagine and try to involve kids in that play.  My job is to inspire wonder and fun and love (and maybe throw in a sprinkling of teaching).  The phrasing I think I'm going to use to explain to kids why I'm playing with water at the zoo is that I'm "celebrating" water because of all it does to sustain life.  Kids love to celebrate, right?

I think part of what happened over the weeks between when I was offered the visiting artist residency and last night was that I got overwhelmed by the word "ART."  I forgot what I had learned as the result of teaching my most recent creativity class: art is the process of asking and attempting to answer questions.  It's creative play and experimentation and immersing oneself in an environment or a material or an idea and seeing what happens.  Instead, I reverted to the definition of art that I think is probably pretty widely held--that art requires "talent" and "training" and needs to be "beautiful."  That definition has kept me from thinking of myself as an artist for a long time.  It was Owen in Seattle who first really planted the idea in my head that I, in my life, am an Artist.  He realized that the way I experience and interact with the world makes me an artist, regardless of whether anyone thinks of what I actually manifest in the world as art.

Isn't it amazing how powerful words, and definitions, are?

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 10:13 AM EDT

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Mood:  energetic

I have been watching Sundance Channel's The Green since it began, and the program is really growing on me.  They aren't really telling me anything I don't already know about the state of the environment and the planetary costs of our daily choices, but they are exposing me to lots of people and companies that are doing some very cool green things.

I had heard of the book Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things by William McDonough and Michael Braungart but had never read it.  Afterall, I had been pushing the "cradle to grave" concept in relation to the use of toxic chemicals when I worked for U. S. PIRG in the early 1990s, so the title of the new book made intuitive sense.  Instead of thinking about the lifetime environmental costs and effects of a product from its creation to its destruction and final resting place (i.e., what negative effects will it add to the landfill it will join?), you plan each thing you create with a blueprint for how it will be disassembled and made into something else at the end of its useful life.  I figured once you groked the title, why bother reading the book?  (I didn't realize that the book was printed on pages made from recyclable plastic.  Pretty cool!)

The Green showcases William McDonough frequently (and Michael Braungart in at least one episode), and I've since added Cradle to Cradle to my pages-long list of books to read.  Here's a link to a TED speech that gives a great glimpse into what the man is all about.

What I love about him and the life he's created for himself, aside from the environmentally-friendly, amazing things he's accomplishing in Detroit and China and around the globe, is that he has found one idea that is so huge, he can do it every day and still have every day be new.  Much like Janine Benyus's biomimicry.  That's what I've been looking for my whole life.  One door to walk through, knowing the whole world waits on the other side and the sky's the limit when it comes to learning and doing new things.  I knocked on the biomimicry door a few months back, had a nice conversation with some wonderful people, and was sent back out into the world to continue my search.  I still haven't found my door, but I know I am at least on my own path.  So far, the path includes teaching and writing and helping other people disseminate their art or achieve their creative potential.  This path has been sustaining me pretty well, and I can't say whether I will ever truly have an opportunity (or create an opportunity) to carve out my own portal into some completely new landscape.  But, until I do, I can enjoy watching McDonough, Braungart, and Benyus blaze new trails.

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 12:29 PM EDT

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Mood:  caffeinated

MSD at http://mentaljunk.blogspot.com/ sent me these two links this morning: Encyclopedia of Life, which will be an amazing resource for learning about the life forms with whom we share this planet, and a video clip of Edward O. Wilson talking about the need for an Encyclopedia of Life at TED.com.

I don't know where to start: E.O.W. (who is one of my heroes), EOL, or TED; they're all so very cool.

Thanks to MSD, I now have a new life goal: to be invited to a TED Conference!

Also as a result of my introduction to TED, where I was happily surprised to find a talk by Janine Benyus, biomimicry goddess, I also stumbled upon lornamatic which led me to artplantae.  Fun day!

Thoughts captured by Kristine at 4:14 PM EDT

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