Mixed Up Files, or "On Not Three Blogs"

When Bekah was in third or fourth grade and a voracious reader, there was a book around whose title I loved--From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. It's about a girl who drafts her little brother to run away with her to Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where they dupe the security guards and hide in the restroom until the museum is closed for the night, and, of course, they get embroiled in solving a mystery.

I don't remember if I ever actually read the book, but its title has always stayed with me. I suppose I often think of my journal or perhaps even more so my blogging as something akin to mixed-up files. Maybe the subtitle of my blog could be: From the seriously mixed-up files of the somewhat mixed-up mind of a relatively sane woman. 


Or something like that. Because that's really what this seems to be--it's sometimes a blog about painting, and sometimes a blog about leaving the priesthood and starting over to find a new path in life, and sometimes about what it was like to have been an Episcopal priest, and sometimes it's about my childhood, and sometimes it's about . . . well, being alive, being human, being myself. (I know, that last phrase sounds a bit egocentric, but I don't really know what it's like to be anyone else.)

This blog is, for better or worse, all of those things, and in no particular order. Believe me, I spend lots of time (usually in those gaps between blog posts) debating the merits of having a blog that's only about my art or only about leaving the priesthood or only about--you get the idea. For a while I even had two blogs  at the same time, but they blurred and overlapped, and I wasted a lot of energy trying decide when I was writing for which. So I gave up on that track and retreated back to one blog.

I've even thought about starting a money blog, because dealing with money and finances and how to make a living having left the one profession I was trained for does occupy my thoughts quite a bit. And I've learned a lot about myself and money (and about money in general) in the last couple of years, and I have a few funny and hair-raising stories to tell. (Talk about seriously mixed-up files!)

I have a feeling the time is near when I may actually start an art-only blog for posting images of paintings and maybe even of drawings. That one seems relatively straight-forward, and it doesn't mean I can't blog about painting in my mixed-up files blog.

But I'm not quite there yet.

I've even composed in my head a blog post titled "On Not Three Blogs," which is kind of an in-joke for students of Christian theology who might remember Gregory of Nyssa's essay "On Not Three Gods" about the doctrine of the Trinity. OK. I had to Google "On Not Three Gods" to remember who wrote it--which one of those so-called Church Fathers. But writing this has made me realize perhaps that's the title of this post.

So for the time being I will keep going in this blog, thinking of it as my "mixed-up files" blog. Or more precisely, From the seriously mixed-up files of the somewhat mixed-up mind of a relatively sane woman.

Happy Making Art

I believe that Robert Motherwell once wrote that he wished he could be living and painting in an earlier era, like way way earlier, like in the age of the cave paintings of Lascaux. Back in a time before there was any such concept as "Art" (note the capital A). Back in a time when creative, artistic self-expression was present despite so called "primitive" life circumstances, thus affirming that art is something essential and intrinsic to being human. One can imagine that in such a time there wasn't a whole lot of froo-frah about what is or isn't Art, or what makes real art, good art, great art, bad art, childish art, etc. (I could be wrong of course; perhaps there was a selection process for getting the best space in the cave.)

When there were no museums or galleries (just cave walls!) and no gatekeepers of the art world to say, "Yes, you're in", or "No, you're not". (Actually, I'm glad there are museums and galleries most of the time, but I trust you know what I mean.)

Of course in my experience, the gatekeepers are not just potentially out there but are also quite actively "in here"--meaning, in  my head! The jury is interminably in: "No, you can't paint that way. People will think (or know) you're just an amateur." "That's not art or (depending on the day) not good art, real art, or just plain art)."  "You're just playing with paint.""You can't do that; that's not real painting." Blah blah blah. Ad nauseam.

And when I'm in my right mind (which is somewhat  but not altogether different from being attuned to my right brain), I reply:

"You know what? Who cares? All I know is that I'm happy making art (at least when I get out of my own way). And if sometimes my art is also happy-making for someone else, all the better! So for now, I'm not going to think about great art, about museums and galleries. I'm just going to make art that makes me happy and dare to share it and trust that it may help someone else to feel happy, too. Not everybody, mind you; just somebody. And that will be plenty."

Accidental Art

"Want to come see our scenery?" Anna asked me late one evening last summer shortly before the Fourth of July. 

She and a friend had been preparing for the neighborhood's Fourth of July play, painting scenery backdrops with poster paints on some white sheets taped to our garage door. They worked past dusk under the outside lights on the garage, and by now it was pretty late.

Since I was already in bed, or about to be, I was tempted to say I'd wait until the morning, but I could tell Anna really wanted me to take a look, so I agreed. The two sheets were now hanging inside our garage for safety overnight. 

They were wonderful! Simple colorful shapes denoting a crowd in an arena decorated one sheet. Sprigs of flowers and grasses signified a meadow on the other. I oohed and aahed and was ready to return to bed, until Anna said:

"Now you want to see the garage?" There was something different in her voice and face, a trace of her wry wit, perhaps? 

I was a bit puzzled. What more could there be?

I followed her lead and stepped outside the garage. There on the two-car-wide door was an exact, if slightly fainter, imprint of the two sheets! Much to the girls' surprise, while they were painting the sheets, the poster paints had seeped onto the garage door itself. It was all decked out in paint!

"I love it!" I said, or something like that. "Let's leave it there for a while. I think it's cool. I love the colors, and it's much more interesting than anyone else's garage!" 

Mostly it reminded me of one of Daniel Pinkwater's delightful children's books, The Big Orange Splot, about Mr. Plumbean, who woke one day to find that a gull had dropped a can of orange paint on his roof. And what at first seemed like a big mess became the inspiration for him to decorate his house and yard in wild colors and designs.

"My house is me and I am it," he declared to his unhappy and oh-so-tidy neighbors. "My house is where I like to be and it looks like all my dreams."

And so the set designs stayed on our garage, fading slightly as summer turned to fall and fall to winter, winter to spring. I've enjoyed telling this story over and over to both the curious and the scornful. 

I've been thinking it may be time to scrub off what remains of the poster paint--but only in order to clear the way for another design with fresh colors! Garage art, anyone?