"theWArofART"

I am reading theWARofART by Steven Pressfield.  The book, a quick read, is subtitled "break through the blocks and win your inner creative battles. The enemy - Resistance!  Resistance has a lot of really good buddies - Procrastination. Fear. Self Sabotage. Sabotage by Others.  Drama. Victim Hood. Criticism. Fundamentalism. Self Doubt. Fear.  I have grown too familiar with all of these evil companions of Resistance. And they know too much about me! They are unwelcome intruders that don't even bother to knock on the door before they lodge themselves in the creases and crevices of my self destructiveness.  They have been in charge for a long time.  Too long!  My writing and art projects, including this blog, buckle under the weight of my procrastination and self doubt! My creative projects that allow me to breathe, that I dream about, that give me purpose, that make living purposeful - are packed away dying in boxes, are smothered under piles of papers on my desk, are screaming for attention from suitcases and purses, and are pounding out rythyms of madness inside my skull!  Resistance is killing me in my silence and inactivity.  I can't stand who I am in this acquiescence to Resistance! I will not survive another year allowing this debilitating, crippling disease to take over and kill the why of my existence on this planet!  And so...I am writing.  Today.  Tomorrow.  And the next day. And the next.  Every day!  I am working on my quilt show for 2017.  Today.  Tomorrow.  And the next day.  And the next. Everyday!  So that I can stop the screaming in my head!  So I can spit out the bitter taste of the Resistance that is keeping me from being the writer and artist that I was born to be. Because the days of my life are running over each other.  And - I - Must - Fly!

The Sounds of Silence

They call it writer's block.  I call it the sounds of silence!  There is nothing blocking my characters from talking. They are refusing to talk!  Purposefully, blatantly, stubbornly!  They sit in the back of my brain, straining my neck with their protest, their torturing, their withholding!  They stare at me, with accusing eyes, wrinkled brows and pouting mouths!  This is the way they take their power, control my fingers, reign in my journey down wrong paths.  This is their way of saying - NO!  That is not what I want to do, not what I want to say, NOT WHO I AM!  Take another look, Vanessa.  Listen.  Think.  Listen. LISTEN!  We are in a tug of war.  This new play "Bar Codes" is at a stand still.  My schedule is not the schedule of the characters waiting to brought to full life.  They do not like their becoming, as I am writing it.  They demand a new unfolding. And so they sit in their silence - holding me hostage until I give in.   I hold onto the words that I have written. How can I let go?  And so we sit at this cross road - neither side will to give in.  They know that I know that it will be me that gives in.  Will delete.  Will re-write.  Will morn the loss of my beginnings. And, eventually, will celebrate what is re-born.

Fairy-tales are Twisted

After a wild summer in Ghana, the break up with my husband, a serious bout with Malaria, leaving West Africa worried that Ebola would come to Ghana, then recovering from it all at a fabulous Bali Beach House outside Beaumont Texas (5 hours away from the first Ebola outbreak in the United States), I am setting in for the cold winter of New York State.

November was filled with storytelling and making art work for the Plowshares Arts and Crafts Festival. November was filled with getting my feet back under me, trying to decide what my life will look like now that I have no husband in Ghana to go back to.  And now December is figuring out that in wanting to go back to Ghana, what that life in Ghana will look like.  New Years Eve is coming, and I liked to have a plan solidly in place. This time...an A - B - and C plan, because my husband breaking up with me was not part of the A and only plan that I had for my life.  He broke my heart and almost broke me.  And that will never happen again.  I will never again build a life-plan dependent on someone else.

An so, fine-tuning those A - B - C, and maybe D plans, by New Years Eve.
I am the architect of my life, and have to build it myself.
Fairy-Tales are Twisted....and the Prince is not coming to save you.
So - I am saving myself.

In Memory of Marjory Wilkins - "Lens"

I wrote this piece to honor Marjory Wilkins, an amazing woman and photographer.  She lived in Syracuse, New York and documented her Community, our lives, our memories.  I read this tonight at the ArtRage Gallery in Syracuse.  The evening celebrated this year's Syracuse Cultural Workers Women's 2013 Date Book which features poems and visual art pieces by CNY artists.  Poets and an artist who's work appears in the Date Book read and displayed their work.  Mrs. Wilkin's artistry is recognized in this year's Date Book.  This story is for you Mrs. Wilkins.  Ashay!

 

LENS

 

They say that the camera never lies.  It memorizes truth; freezes it in the moment of its telling.  Records it in a permanence that can not be denied.  Stark black and white images, spread across life's magazine.  A kiss leaned back and haunting.  Dogs and hoses fighting a raisin people exploding in the heat of injustice.  Footsteps left forever walking on the moon.  Young high-school faces stilled in great expectations of what maybe will be.  Births and Deaths.  Races won and lost.  Wars begun, and begun, and begun.  Stories in motion, frozen in Forever.

 

She asked me to call her Marjory.  But I always spoke to her with a Mrs. Wilkins - respect for one older, wiser, more lived than I.  And my heart whispered Mother, Teacher, Elder.

 

She was everywhere!  Recording. Archiving. Preserving Memory.  Tellin' Truth in Black and White.  Her face, in my memory, melded to the camera.  One shaded eye.  A half smile.  Half a furrowed brow, concentrated and focused.  In between snap shots - "Did you get that job that you told me you were interviewing for?" "How did your program go at the museum?"  "I heard you just got back from Africa!"  Her mind preserved every word spoken.  Her heart encapsulated life moments deemed insignificant by others.

 

She was everywhere!  Juneteenth Festivals.  Community Folk Art Gallery Events.  NAACP Act-So Competitions.  Southwest Center/Dunbar Center/Boys and Girls Club dinners, awards, forums, youth performances.  She recorded Paul Roberson Theater openings, and the closings of Lives celebrated with wreaths, and tears, and dirges.  Her camera documented Syracuse.  The mundane elevated to art.  The ordinary made extraordinary. Our children coroneted Princesses and Prince.  Our elders crowned in light and glory.  By her lens.  By her love for her Community.

 

She was in every time!  When my Father died, an envelope arrived in the mail.  There was a card from Mrs. Wilkins.  "I thought you would like to have this."  My Father, in a black suit.  Pencil thin tie.  All of his hair was there!  Full.  Thick.  He stood tall, handsome, debonair, amongst the fathers of my childhood friends.  Black Business Men.  Community Leaders.  This part of my Father that I was too little to know, and knew so little about.  Shoulder to shoulder with Syracuse legends.  Mrs. Wilkins giving me memory in spaces that were empty.

 

She was in every time!  When my mother died, months later - again, an envelope.  Presented by a parchment covered hand, her camera held in the other.  "I thought you would like to have this."  And she gave me a piece of my Mother, long forgotten.  A photo of the Lambda Kappa Mu Women's Civic Sorority.  My mother's face smooth and unwrinkled.  An hour glass figure in one of those stylish black dresses of the sixties.  The memory of a bus trip to Washington, D.C.  The sorority sisters dressing down the Lambda Kappa Mu little sisters.  They had snuck out of their hotel rooms and were in big trouble!  Amongst the memories of the Lincoln Memorial and the Washington Monument, I remember the tears running down the little sister's faces.  The apologies and forgiveness given so that they could all move on, together.  My mother mothering along side these Women, these Mothers of Syracuse.  This Gift from Mrs. Wilkins.

 

When Mrs. Wilkins passed,  I wondered, who will now record our truths?  Send us living moments in envelopes with elegant cards and whispered lettering?  I looked to find her in NY State Fair Pan African Village audiences.  At ArtRage openings, a movie at S.U. about Dark Girls, the downtown Street Art Festival, and at Plowshares.  I searched for the one eye...shadowed. The half smile. The furrowed brow, concentrating on the images of all of us that she loved.  Who will tell our stories, in black and white?  Tell the grey nuances of our challenges, and the sharp contrasts of our triumphs?  Who will fill the empty frames of our being here, left blank in mainstream newspapers, and blogs and websites?

 

I miss you, Mrs. Wilkins.  I look for you at every event that I attend in Syracuse.  As my eye scans these places, these life passages where her every - where had recorded the every - times of our lives, her lense focused in on the lifes lived in these moments....the flash-dance of a camera echoes across the room.  A half face comes into focu. One eye lidded. A wide half smile.  A softly lined forehead.  The camera lowers.  A face, edged with the memory of her mother, appears....

 

 



We make plans, and God laughs!

We make plans, and God laughs!

Working on going to Africa this summer, but have had to shift my plans!  I am going to go between June and August 1st, instead of through October.

I am still doing the oral history project for CENSUDI, a women's and girls development in northern Ghana, as planned.  I am still working on the partnership between Africa Bound, the Gage Center and Censudi with high school girls this summer.  That expansion of the Girl's Ambassador project with Africa Bound will happen.  It will still set up this summer.  I am still traveling with a SUNY Oswego professor and developing a storytelling abroad class for SUNY students for next summer.  I am still taking a student intern with me to work on an Aids Education program with CENSUDI.  But I'm coming back in August of this year!  A shorter volunteer project than first planned!

 I will return next spring to finish the oral history project. Staff at Censudi will follow-through with skypes and connections with girls in Syracuse, from October to May.  Girls will still travel with Africa Bound to Bolgatanga in the summer of 2014.  Girls from Bolgatanga will still visit in May.
The integrity of the projects I am working on will hold.

But...I have some important opportunities here in the States that I need to focus on in the fall.
I have an opportunity to manage and story tell in an ongoing storytelling space at Shoppingtown Mall, and to be a part of a web-casting project for that space.  I also have an opportunity to work on a t.v. show on the prop side of the production team.  I have been offered the opportunity to help develop and be in a production with a storyteller that I have always wanted to work with!  I have the opportunity to take the class that I am helping to develop with the professor at SUNY Oswego. 

It seemed that when I was ready to move away from Syracuse, feeling that all my opportunities to grow had been played out, the flood-gates opened.  God seems to have another plan for me.

Now the issue is this apartment - still let it go? Sell everything?  And live where in the fall?  And....how to keep it for the summer?  Oh boy!

So, I will return in the Fall and keep re-evaluating things.  Who know where all this will lead!  I will go to Africa again in May of 2014, and then see if I will come back in August or stay for a while.  Meanwhile, I will continue my volunteer work with CENSUDI and developing bridges from Upstate NY to Bolgatanga!

Ashe!

Letting go....

I am struggling with material possessions!  Stuff.  I own a lot of stuff, and it owns me!  Things that are markers in this 55 years of life on the planet.  Things that remind me of Adventures and Sorrows.  Of Triumphs and Failures.  Of Love and Scoundrels! (LOL) Things that have acted as markers in documenting my life.  It is hard to think of letting them go. And I need to let go of all of this stuff that I own in order to embrace future Adventures!  I have to think of living differently, and in living differently think differently about stuff!

I can't afford to store everything that I own, for a year, while I volunteer with CENCUDI in Northern Ghana!  So...I need to get rid of stuff!  I fb'd my friend Maureen Sieh, who just completed 2 years with the Peace Corp in Morocco.  She is still there, working with a NGO on a project involving Girls and media.  I asked her ...what did she do with all of her stuff?  She told me that she sold or gave away EVERY THING!  I asked, "Everything?"  "Yes...Everything!"  EVER SINGLE THING!

I had been thinking about all of this stuff that I own for a long time.  I have no children to pass "things" to.  This stuff will have no meaning, once I am gone.  Now, I have momentos and art that I have collected for years.  I have furniture that I have enjoyed for years; a sofa that was in my deceased parents house and an ottoman that my dad re-upholstered.  Gifts from friends and ex-boyfriends.  African masks and statues. Drawings and ceramics from school kids.  Photographs.  And lots of fabric, beads and buttons!  Stuff that I love! Get rid of everything?  Everything?

But Maureen gave me some wise advise.  You have enjoyed those items for years, and when you come back to the States, you can begin again...fresh!  Another friend said that I could take photos of the items I really love.  After all.....memories are in our mind and in our heart.   Not in stuff!
 
So...I prepare to give up everything!  Well, just about everything!  For Adventure!  I will keep 6 bins of stuff.  Art and momentos, mostly.  A lifetime of stuff in 6 bins!  A friend has agreed to store them in her basement.  I will sell as much as I can.  I need to fund this year of service.  I have to pay for my own food and personal items for the next year.  I need a plane ticket to come back to the States at the end of September through the middle of December and then back to Ghana.  (I have the money for my ticket there in Junte) I need to raise money for the transportation, lodging when I travel and petrol for the Oral History Project.  I want to do a quilt project with the Junior High Students that I will work with in Ghana. (Looking for grants too! and will do some fundraising!)  

As I look around my apartment, I see the potential funds for paying for this volunteer adventure!!!  In some ways, giving up EVERY THING will be a lifted burden.  It is unbelievable how much we accumilate in a lifetime!  And is it amazing how much we really can live without!  I have lived for months in Ghana, with my stuff in storage, and have not thought of one item in storage that I needed while there!  After months of not seeing my stuff, and opening boxes to move into a new apartment...so much of what I pull out of boxes I say "Oh, I forgot I had this!"

And so, I will sell EVERY THING! Almost every THING.  I will boil my life down to 6 bins.  I will find new owners for all this stuff!  I will take a deep breath, and unburden myself.  I will embrace the void, and fill in the space with this new ADVENTURE!  It is hard letting go.  But I am trying to get ready and look at it as not letting go but embracing the future.  And when it is all gone, I will be ready to go to Ghana and to serve.  Here's to letting go! 

New Year's Resolution

     I was reading old diaries and checking out past New Year Resolutions.  I reviewed annual promises to myself that I broke over and over again, year after year.  Exercise more, eat better, eat less, loose weight, write more, finish my college degree....the list goes on and on. 
     I got my first one in 6th grade at Fays Drug Store in Fairmount, New York.  I had failed a math test and was devestated.  I got a D!  I had never gotten a D before!  My mother was a take-action woman and, (after wiping my tears and snot with tissues and dinner) she took me to Fays Drug Store and bought me math flash cards, my first mechnical pencil, a protractor and my Diary first diary.  Red with gold lettering on the outside.  A flap with a brass lock and a tiny key.
     I still have that first Diary.  I sat in my home office and turned the fragil paper.  Each entry began faithfully with the words, "Dear Diary".  This worn red book was my secret keeper for several years.  It held the mondane - "Woke up, went to school, ate dinner, went to bed...." and my first loves (in secret code) - "Dear Diary, I love E.H."  My first death, (of my hamster Henly) was recorded there - "Poor Henly, he was all alone.  I came home from school and found him..."  There were adventures - "I am going on a three week canoe trip in the Adirondacks with the Girl Scout Council..." and raging anger..."I HATE HIM, I HATE HIM, I HATE...."  And forgiveness- "I don't hate him...I don't.  I love him."
     Since that first little red Diary, there has been a dark green one.  A larger pastel flowered journal.  (Journals were for high schoolers and grown folks)  A dark blue journal.  And now - this blog.  I don't write to my Diary everyday, like I used to.  And I forget this blog is here most of the time.  It is not as private as that first red Diary with the little brass lock; although I remember how my brother Wendell did find it once and taunted me by reading the words out-loud!  Also, now.. there are so many secrets I don't even share outloud with myself.  I hide them in the stories that I tell, the characters I bring to life in plays, the dreams that I fight through at night, and in the resolutions that I make with myself each and everyday;  so many still - unkept.
     And so, My New Year Resolutions for 2012.  "Dear Diary - I promise to write - something, anything - everyday.  I promise to work on finishing my college degree this year.  I promise to exercise more.  I promise to eat better....and to eat less.  I promise to loose weight........................"