So Monday starts the actual workshop part of the “Your Living Canvas” workshop by the awesome Christy Tomlinson.

I must confess that I got WAY (all the way) behind on the pre-workshop journaling prompts. Mostly because I got stuck on the very first one, which was to talk about a heartache, and how it has shaped me. And here’s the kicker – how it has shaped me in a POSITIVE way.

At first I went generic and did a whole page on just shame in general, because it has been my constant companion since about BIRTH. I may, or may not have posted a picture of that page. Regardless, I post it here again to show my first impression of the assignment.

I have had many heartaches in my life, and although ultimately on the back side of them I’m always better off, I can’t say of one that it “shaped me positively.” Unless being all dented and bruised and tender and scarred is a “positive.”

Heartaches. Before I can pick one, I have to go through them.

Ho hum. Let’s see…My childhood. Disappointing my parents, sometimes not knowing why. Sometimes knowing things they would be disappointed about if they knew, but I kept to myself. This just made me feel like an evil secret-keeper that they SHOULD be disappointed in. Sometimes I confessed to them so I could feel their disappointment, because it was my due. My kitty died. We moved and the kids in school hated me. I went through a phase of kleptomania (disappointing my parents, but at least I knew why). My hamster died. We moved back home. My old friends didn’t like me anymore. Another cat died. I fell in love with a preacher, then a guy with a bar in the back of his car, then a football player. Stayed perpetually inebriated and ended up getting married to someone who was none of the above. Joyfully freed from that relationship through infidelity (the marriage was hell, the infidelity was a God-send…with this perspective, one can deduce that by this time –age 17– I am a pretty fucked up individual, misshapen to say the least).

Between the 1st and 2nd marriages were a slew of relationships gone bad. One, two…no three were big enough to call “heartaches.” And a friend committed suicide. Ahhhhh let’s just stop there. That’s my shaping moment. Damn I would not have thought so…

His name was Brent Lansford Turk. He was very handsome, dark, brooding. This is not him.

He and his friends – who were my old school chums – would come through the Sonic Drive-In where I worked most nights, especially weekend nights. I wore a large Bonnie Bell chap-stick like thingie on a rope around my neck and I can’t remember what vulgar joke he always made about it, but it made me laugh and feel like I belonged. At that time in my life, I was 18 and saving up for a divorce I’d have to type and file myself, living with my grandmother, the rest of everyone I knew being in school all day while I went to business school in San Antonio and worked half the night. I NEEDED to belong. I am grateful for the friends I made that dropped by Sonic and took me to all the best parties, to Kicker Palace, or just back home so I wouldn’t have to walk.

Anyway, one night Brent was particularly dark and moody. He’d broken up with his girlfriend, and he’d just been told that a cancer he’d been in remission from was recurring. So a mutual friend and I talked him into going to a dance with us. Afterward I invited our group back to my house (my grandmother was out of town) but while everyone inside was having a good time, Brent was skulking around outside and I went with him. He said –as he had said several times earlier in the night– that he was going to kill himself. I remember wanting to tell him I loved him, not in a mushy romantic way but in a “you matter to me” way, but I was afraid. He ran with a cool crowd and I couldn’t stand the idea of them laughing about my silly expression of love the next day. So I chickened out.

Later that night, back at his own grandparents’ house, he shot himself. The friend that had gone with us to the dance rushed to his house and held him as he died. I did not find this out until several days later, as I got very ill at about the same time as he died. Weird huh?

So how did this shape me? I never let “I love you,” or any other sentiment that needed to be said go unsaid. When I feel the need to express something to someone, gratitude for a gift given years ago that yet AGAIN brings me delight, or just to reach out and touch, I DO. People need to know that they matter, that you care, that what they do makes ripples and waves that go on. I think losing Brent helped show me that.

I have to say, that was a little cathartic. Holy shit. Did not expect that.

Thanks for listening to me ramble. And Brent, if there’s internet in Heaven and you’re a blog-hopper…dude, I love you.

Then I said “Screw it.” And here’s the one I made for my journal. It still doesn’t tell “THE story” but it isn’t about that… it’s about hope, which I do have, amidst all the other emotions. Yes, I’m a Christian who says “screw it,” among many other things. I have LAYERS people. LAYERS.

I will say this… I am completely unafraid of any truth or lie that could be told about me. Completely. Unafraid. Start talking, boyo.

First of all, I found free parking at a parking meter and all I had to do was parallel park. Wouldn’t you know, of all the useless skills I have that I have absolutely not had use for in 30 years, I CAN parallel park like a wiz. Then I spent about 6 hours downtown before heading home. And on heading home I decided I wanted to go to the big downtown library first and look at books on maps (cartography being our AJC theme this year), and I did!

The best part of my trip downtown was an antique shop. I remembered having seen it years before (in 2005) when the kids and I were there on one of our bus trips (our first year as homeschoolers….gosh that was fun) but I couldn’t spend a lot of time there because the kids were all little and restless and this place had THREE STORIES of wonderfulness to explore. I found it! And I probably spent 2 or 3 hours just in that one place, taking my time. The downstairs was nicely staged, the middle floor a little less, but the top floor was just total crap and that was what I wanted to see. The stuff that didn’t get polished up for the big sell downstairs.

Through that doorway at the back, I found a completely icky little room with stuff just thrown on the floor and in shelves. It was here I found the little porcelain-covered pot that I just KNEW would be perfect for all my beautiful colored pencils and pens. So I bought it and brought it home, and Jessyca and Paul look at each other and back and me and go, “Don’t you know what that is?” Yeah, it’s a really cool… well, isn’t it cookware?” I tried to remember the items in the shelf around it….wait, there was one of those little throw-up pans, and a bedpan…. ewwwwwwwwww it’s a CHAMBER POT!! So I scrubbed it (and myself) with really hot water and oodles of soap and bleach.

But I still think it’s the perfect choice for my art desk. Because I really love old stuff. I always say that old stuff has a story that wants to go on, and when I re-use or upcycle something, I want to do honor to the life it lived and let it go on telling its story. In this case, however, I’m pretty sure that *I* am the best part of this particular item’s life story.

Go forth and make something beautiful!

When someone poops on you, when a monkey throws its own poop at you, or when you accidentally step in a big steamy pile of poop, or when you realize that you’re completely surrounded by poop and the only way to get on the other side of it is to stomp through it, remember this.

Poop is not the final word. If there were no God, poop would be the final word. An animal would take in its supper, use what it needed and discard the rest as a smelly, nasty, sticky, useless substance, and that would be the end of that. But it’s not. The sunshine and elements break the poop down into nutrients that nourish the soil. A bird that ate something elsewhere flies over and poops as it goes. Its droppings contain seeds, which fall into that soil and God sends the rains and look what happens.

God ALWAYS has the last word.

Remember that when the devil turns your best intentions all to shit—it’s not over until God has His say.

Shame on me!

So I showed it to my husband last night. Bless his heart, he looks at it like he looks at all my work, supportively and a little puzzled as to WTF it is. So he says, “What’s it supposed to be?” and I explained to him, it’s like a picture saying 1000 words and in this case they’re all “shame.” So he says, “Well I don’t really know what shame looks like.” And I smiled at him, and pointed back to the pages, and said, “Now you do!.” This morning he sent me a link to this fabulous video. I will have to go back and watch it and recreate more pages about things like “vulnerability hangovers” and petri dishes and other such things that I could SO identify with. It’s a wonderful, wonderful talk about a condition that has plagued my family for generations, disfiguring our souls and our relationships. Oh, so awesome.

May God bless you as you go into a new week!

Okay, she might be stoned… hahaha but I don’t think so. I do know that she’s my age! A year older than me, even. OMG! It is totally not fair that she looks THAT good.

So Paul signed me up for one of her workshops and I’m having SO much fun. Jessyca and I have been sitting together every day, watching Suzi and drawing and talking. Today we did a mandala, which is completely not Suzi-related. But still, Suzi’s teaching me some stuff, and the most important part is what I want Jessyca to get, that art is in our souls, it’s not some talent that X person has that Y person doesn’t. It’s not a contest. It’s F-ing awesome. Know what I mean?

I’ve become OBSESSED with art journaling. Like, paint and glue and making a HUGE mess. Here are some AJ pages and a couple of things from my sketchbook, as well.

Let me know if these pictures don’t show up. I might have to tweak my Google settings a little bit.

So anyway, there’s my art life. Just had a birthday, Paul and I bought each other Barnes & Noble Nooks and I’m listening to Mozart while I post this. That’s really freaky right? Don’t worry, yesterday I was listening to Merle Haggard and Ronnie Milsap.

So until the next time I can wash enough paint off my hands to use the keyboard,

Nitey night!!
Tam

Anyway, today I have a list about a mile long of things I need to do, and hopefully I will get a chance to post tonight that I did them all! And pictures!

For now I will leave you with this, which I took in front of our library yesterday. God bless Texas!

Go have a great day!
Tam

Then later I looked out the kitchen window and saw this storm coming in. I ran outside and got these with the light to my back. I love the way the bare tree branches look with the sun shining on them, and those ominous clouds looming behind them.

I must admit that all these were taken with the “auto” setting. It’s just wrong, to have a camera with all sorts of bells and whistles and settings, and be so intimidated that I mostly use auto. I really look forward to learning what they mean. Especially aperture. WTF is aperture?

It’s very important first to remove little hangy-offy things (like tails, sometimes arms, definitely any little fruo-fruo like scarves or collars) and eyeballs. Then you can start loving it for real.

Now of course, Nicky knew which one was his, and he’s clearly claimed it. Trudy watches, but shows no interest in either toy. Nicky just didn’t want the poor monkey to feel unloved, I suspect.

Nicky carries his bear up to take a nap next to me while I work. When he wants me to take a break, he puts it up on my keyboard. It’s really quite sweet. Meanwhile, as I discover when I come downstairs after work, monkey has been… um… dissected. Trudy has a telltale piece of fluff stuck to her mouth, but she swears that she was trying to put it back INTO the monkey, that she just found it this way and was trying to fix it.