Inspiration Week # 1: Microcosmic Art

{This post marks the springboard for a series I hope to articulate weekly concerning, quite simply, what inspires me. Because, let's face it, no ideas arise in a vacuum.}

all images via design *sponge

How lovely, when the art of published pages is transformed through a new medium: that of visual aesthetics. This collaborative project between Mia Cabana, a children's librarian (one of my career musings) and, obviously, an artist and her photog-taking boyfriend Oliver Scott Snure, reminds me that love breeds creativity. We look to literature to escape to microcosmic worlds, fascinating fictions reflective of the reality around us, and here, that seems to me literally depicted as diminutive figures interact with the books upon which they perch. That last one is my favorite: a delicate, female silhouette jumping to life from the page, casting shadows and reflections around her. Read more about this whimsically delightful project on Snure's tumblr, here.

Funeral Parlor

My room - thanks to the contribution of a gentlemen admirer, whose adoration is not extended to me, but rather, to one of the girls I live with - smells like a funeral parlor. And that assortment of blooms rests at the foot of my bed on her dresser top, as though they're a small offering of life at my viewing. (Aside: please cremate me. Flowers should not be associated with embalmed bodies in cushioned caskets.)

I remember the time when I had male devotees like her. It was during that era, not so long ago, that I was twenty five or thirty pounds lesser than what I am now.

I've always been a bit aloof to the opposite sex, cushioning myself in a bewildering nest of contradictions, a jarring set of values that somehow managed to entice.

Now, I'm lucky to have one, sole admirer. One boy who remained even after he was through examining all the twigs that form my roost, who even after stepping in the repulsive spit that holds it all together - my cruelty, depressiveness, ignorance, insecurities - wants to be a part of my aerie, doesn't mind being entrapped in a place of high altitude with a bird of prey.

That unflinching love, that undying insistence upon never flying away down south without me, upon always, without question, flying home, leaves me like an open-mouthed baby bird, completely stupefied, but crying out for more nourishment, tenderness.

Paddling back to YA Literature

As a girl, I was never discouraged that the kiddy pool closed up shop too early - no, as soon as I was barred from entry to the world of picture books and early readers, I dove eagerly into the waters of YA lit. No one told me in fourth grade that those olympic sized pools dropped off into deep, deep chlorinated vats of blue, so I taught myself to paddle through novels with mature themes, devouring the sex in Judy Bloom's Forever and the eating-disordered, depression-laden personae non gratae in The California Diaries.

But I remember foregoing those books that taught me the skills I needed to go on to be a lover of literature sooner than my friends around me. By middle school, I had burned through series after series and coming of age tales galore and was braced to move on to classics. I scoffed at the teenagers who followed Gossip Girl after eighth grade, and rolled my eyes in disgust at adult Twilight devotees.

And then something happened. In my senior year of high school, I took a fiction class with Suzanne Supplee, a published writer in the genre of Young Adult Literature, and she encouraged us to embrace the field as a springboard for our own work, our own careers. She made us exercise our voices as young writers, crafting characters close in age to ourselves. And I found that I took comfort in that place, that setting where I didn't have to embody the wisdom of an adult or the struggles of a middle-aged man, but instead, the very real, no less valuable, and inevitably poignant thoughts and endeavors of growing children.

All of this was just a jolty bounce in preparation before jumping off from the diving board and into my main point. I'm currently taking a class on Children's and Young Adult Literature, and one of our exercises was creative in nature, calling on us to personify the voice of character in a YA novel. (Remember when we had to do those sorts of book reports in middle school? Even then, they were my favorite.) Anyway, I based mine off of Sherman Alexie's The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian, and to be flat-out honest, my teacher was really digging my response, and I loved writing it, so I thought I'd post it here as a self-motivating force to linger in this genre more, especially when my own life can't seem to inspire me to turn out essay after essay about yours truly. (Please set aside my vanities here.) So here goes. Book synopsis tacked on to the end for those interested. Alexie's novel is an oh-so-enjoyable read, and no one, really, is too old for it.

Dear Sis,

So maybe it’s true – what Rowdy told me. Maybe I killed you when I decided to get the hell off the rez and be some sort of Founding Father of better lives for Indians. Maybe you never would have gotten all googley-eyed over some drunk, gambling Indian that lived states and states away if I had just stayed put. Maybe you never would have decided to pack up your life from the basement and voyage to an unknown land to marry an unknown man if I hadn’t gone the twenty-two miles every day to get to Reardan.

But then, sis, maybe you just never would have lived, you know? Maybe you would have stayed in the basement and let your brain shrink down to nothing. And then assholes would call us “Little Head” and “Big Head,” since mine is overflowing with water like some kind of giant oil spill, and since yours would be rotting away.

No, I think I’m glad you got off the rez, even if it was just to go to another one miles away from here. And I’m glad you started writing again, and that you rode horses across that beautiful, mountain backdrop, and that you started looking for a job, even if you never even got one before you died. I wish I could read your stories. You know what makes me feel worst of all of everything that’s happened? That your book, your little testament of hope, just burned up in seconds in that stupid TV dinner tray of a trailer.

But maybe some day people will find your home out there, and think it was some kind of rare, ancient Indian cremation ground. And maybe it will give people hope: hope about uncovering lost history, or hope about leaving a part of yourself behind to be remembered when you die, just some kind of faith or assurance in something.

But, okay, before I start trying to sound like one of those philosophers Gordy is always getting a boner over, I wanted to tell you a story of my own. Remember how much you loved cantaloupe, and how I’ve always refused to even go near that forbidden fruit since that stupid wasp stung me ON THE FACE in first grade when I was covered with cantaloupe juice? Well, I’ve started eating it again. Like as a memory to you. Like if I eat it, I almost feel like I can carry a part of you with me. I know, I know, I just sound like a crazy, weird, Indian. But it’s true. And you know what I noticed as I was shaking salt onto my little slice of cantaloupe the other day? By the way, I add the salt now to like, subtract some of the sweetness because wasps like to nest in one place and are hard to get rid of just like Indians on reservations. But anyway, did you ever realize that “cantaloupe” is like a play on words of, “can’t elope?” Except that’s exactly what you did: ran away and got hitched without telling mom or dad or grandma or me or anyone. It’s kinda funny that that’s how things work out. Or I guess I should say ironic. But that’s just how everything seems to play out around here. Grandma, who never drank a drop in her life, got killed by a drunk driver. When I threw my geometry textbook and broke Mr. P’s nose, HE apologized to ME and told me to get off of the rez so I could find hope and not give up on myself. And you, who lived in the basement for seven years and hardly saw the light of day, wrote romance novels in your spare time. And you eloped even though your favorite fruit told you not to! And when you died because you were passed out drunk and couldn’t feel the fire, everyone got drunk at your wake because that is the only way Indians know how to deal with the accumulation of death.

Miss you, sis. I’ll keep trying to figure out how to live my dream, for the both of us.

Love,

Arnold

Sherman Alexie’s The Absolutely True Diary of a Part Time Indian chronicles the trials and tribulations of fourteen-year old Arnold Spirit, an American Indian better known on his reservation as “Junior.” Born with hydrocephalus, Arnold is forced to struggle not only with the problems that accompany a crippling medical condition, but also with universal adolescent stresses, like figuring out how to fit in, warding off bullies, and acting on teenaged feelings of romance. Add to the mix the fact that Arnold has no choice but to face the many known problems of life on Indian reservations – alcoholism, depression, poverty, violence, few educational opportunities, and more – and you’ve got the basis for this first person, diary style narrative first published in 2007. Despite the conflicts with which he is faced, Arnold manages to fight them off with humor and with his drawings, which are scattered throughout the book. All the while, Arnold becomes more mature in his reflections and experiences as well as in developing and embracing his very idiosyncratic view of the world and place in it, however different (or perhaps similar, as he eventually learns) it may seem from the white kids he decides to join at Reardan High, a school away from the reservation that offers him a glimpse of life outside of “the rez,” and more chances for growth than he could have dreamed up. Perfect for the 10-14 age group, this young adult novel should appeal to both girls and boys alike, exposing them to the diversities of the world, as well as teaching them that differences should be celebrated, and that perseverance and creativity will take you a long way in the world.

A + B = C

School is a monotony far deeper, far more complex, than the pure and simple couch canoodling lifestyle. It goes a little something like this: class, eat, nap, work, study, prepare, class, nap, eat, work, study, prepare. Notice there is no conception of "sleep" or "bed" in this continuum, only naps, because the scale does not allow for true inactivity of the nervous system. Even the weekend seems to usher in due dates for endless assignments, and most everyone has by now realized that drunken obliteration in itself becomes a tedious repetition.

Such is the predicament of college, of the proclaimed best years of our lives. It's ho hum and humdrum, and I'd rather be planning weddings or popping out babies or working on my memoirs.

I wonder when American universities and professors will realize that the steady increase of allocated readings and papers and presentations does not yield balance, productivity, or our supposed self-defined ideas about success.

There aren't even challenges anymore, other than that of fitting incalculable amounts of work into the twenty-four hours distributed to a day. Let's face it: excess no longer can solely be associated with our literal waste and lavishness. How long will it take for the world to be exhausted by its own intemperance?

The Teacher from the Black Lagoon

I told myself that I wouldn't do this anymore; that I wouldn't succumb to the grips of melancholia, that I had thrown that out in high school with my fat jeans and donated myself to a better cause: good, old fashioned, high quality living. I'm trying to approach my depression with a sense of humor, trying to imagine it as the Teacher from the Black Lagoon - an empty, harrowingly dark shadow that, in the bright light, actually turns out to be a overweight croc with red hair, bad lipstick, and a penchant for issuing math exams, who just so happened to swallow me hole. But here I am anyhow, trapped in the pit of her stomach, trying to hold my ground amidst the churning gastric juices and particles of yesterday's dinner.

Here, there is not much left for me. I polish my shoes. I make dinner. I cleanse and de-clutter my space. I watch sitcoms and a few worthwhile reality television shows. I read. I go dancing. Occasionally, I talk to people. I use my exorbitant amounts of free time to think about how little free time I will be left with once I return to school. I go down the checklist of glaring symptoms of depression: loss of interest - check, insomnia - double check, irritability - get the fuck away, weight gain - check plus star, et al.

What is different this time around, though, is that I am acknowledging it: I can admit its existence to my best friend and not feel like a piece of bruised, rejected fruit. Though I don't remember the ending to The Teacher from the Black Lagoon, it was a children's book, and I am therefore sure that it was a happy one. I don't write frighteningly masochistic entries in my journal, and I don't mentally vote on the most artfully beautiful form of suicide. No, that era of self-loathing, of wanting to press the delete button on my own pneuma and self is as gone as my teenaged acne and hopefully, with time and retrospective thought, will only seem to have lasted as long as I can last without hacking at my own bangs. Which is to say, not very long. And while I may not yet have the courage, the motivation, the want to roll out of bed and spear through this phase with a tribal war cry and proactive action like some Indian chieftess, I can, at least, begin to imagine myself applying the face paint, crouching in the depths of a colonial forest, on the verge of vaulting to attack this enemy.

Happy New Year to You, Too

What a girl should resoundingly never do on New Years' Eve is get drunk off champagne and try to piece together what the History Channel has to say about The Knight's Templar and Free Masonry while all too comfortably sitting in her mother's recliner. What a girl should resoundingly never do on New Years' Eve is resolve that the oh-so-riotous sequined top she very decidedly bought to showcase at a holiday party on the night of December 31st is left better off to step out on the town at a later date.

I should've known that living room laziness on the birth of the fresh year would only propel what's made a week and a half rut drive even deeper, so that I have become like a wheel wedged in a pothole, unable to pry out of the chipped pavement no matter how much pressure is applied to the pedal in the dire attempt to achieve acceleration.

In the New Year, I've baked double batches of five different kinds of cookies and apparently made a resolution to engorge myself on as many different kinds of chocolate as I could possibly dream up. I've filed and painted my nails canary yellow and drawn myself a bubble bath to get my creative juices flowing. I've gathered all the materials to redesign my inspiration board for 2011, but am patently too uninspired to decide what inspires me. I've planned my wedding, right down to the cake topper, centerpieces, and table themes. I've discovered whitening strips gathering dust in my bathroom cabinet and applied them to my to my upper and lower teeth, something that I haven't done since high school. I've gone on an aerobic walk through my neighborhood, up all the biggest hills and past all my favorite Victorian houses. I've done arm exercises while sizing up Oprah Winfrey's new Network, OWN, whose initials worked for her, as I'm sure you've heard. I've even gone so far as to watch the Lifetime Movie Network with my mother, in the hopes that witnessing melodrama would make me grateful for flat-out monotony. I've bought impractical heels, gone to the movies, and eaten Mexican for the first time in four months. I've read all my favorite blogs, updated my own, and looked at more Facebook photos than dough I've formed into two inch balls on pre-greased cookie sheets. I've started and stopped all too many activities, like cleaning my room, loading the dishwasher, making a list of resolutions, and reading that book I've been meaning to get to for years.

All of this, and I feel utterly unfulfilled, like I'm furrowing myself deep into the supposed comforts of rest and relaxation, and before I can poke my head back out from underground to be greeted by sunlight, I've realized that someone's kicked dirt over my nest of doing nothingness, and I can't dig my way out.

Obviously, I need a hobby. Or maybe some friends. Or a prod in the ass with one of those wrought iron pit pokers, heated in the hearth of meaningful productivity.