Alchemical Expedition

On Vox: Charity shop madness

If it weren't for the fact that it would only encourage me to spend money, I would totally start a blog about my love of charity shops. I mean, I LOVE charity shops. Why? Well in two charity shop stops this week, I nabbed:

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Struggles

I almost didn't do my morning pages today, for the first time since I started keeping them (I started last week - yes, that long ago!).

Our gold

Terry Heaton, someone I admire hugely and care about a great deal, says:

[C]reative concepts already exist in a place available to everybody, and as such, nobody really "owns" the ones that they find. Richard Adams called this "The Unbroken Web," and he used it to explain why the same ancient stories popped up at roughly the same time in various places around the planet.

I love this idea. Maybe I'm not just searching for 'my' vein of gold, but for a vein of gold we can all access. If the same vein of gold that served Da Vinci and Gwendolyn Brooks is also there for me...Well, now. Possibilities really are endless.

Morning pages and my weak, weak hand

I am stunned that I have been able to complete my morning pages for four consecutive days. I was doubtful that I would be able to do it in a paperback-sized notebook, but then I read Julia Cameron's insistence that an 8x11 notebook be used, and was quite sure I wouldn't be able to get through the first day. (This did give me a good excuse to go out and buy a new notebook, though. I scoured my local Paperchase for a big one, couldn't find one, and thought, "Sod it. I'll start in a smaller notebook and work my way up to a large one." What should then appear before my eyes but the only large notebook in the entire shop, on the sale table, looking cute and marked down to £3.75. If I believed in signs, I would believe this was one.)

So: Three pages, longhand, every morning. It's not really that difficult, though it is painful after a few minutes and my writing is completely illegible about a quarter of the way in. I know it's supposed to be stream of consciousness stuff, but I have slipped into using the pages as a way to write out how I've been feeling, what's been going on, what I dreamed the night before - the kind of stuff I wouldn't normally blog. Then, out of nowhere, I'll start writing about how weird it is that I love to hang clothes outside to dry when I hate putting them on hangers indoors, or how calming it is to handwash my lingerie.

That is to say, my morning pages are a mess, but they are getting written. Long may it continue.

Artist date ideas

One of the important elements of Julia Cameron's creativity courses is the weekly artist date. Excuse the writing style, ignore the 'inner child,' but note the information contained in that link:

There are two main keys to Artist Dates that allow them to feed your creativity. The first is that these activities must be done solo. If you bring someone along, anyone!, they will shadow the event....even if they remain completely silent! You will act differently, do different things, and not listen to your inner voice if you are with another person.

The second key is listening to your inner voice. If your inner child wants to splash around in a tub of bubbles -- GO FOR IT! Nothing is too silly for an Artist Date. It's our silly, childlike qualities that allow us to explore and create without inhibition. Our inner critics keep us trapped in the "shoulds". "The cow should be brown or white or a combination of the two, but definitely NOT purple!" It is our inner child who does things just because she/he likes what it looks like, or thinks it is fun. So what if the cow is purple. Isn't it a beautiful, vibrant shade of purple!?

My artist date for the week was walking around Brighton for two hours yesterday, taking pictures and taking in the sights and shops. Brighton is a place that buzzes with creativity, and I had a hard time not spending much money (I did break down and get a pair of Paul Frank monkey flip-flops from this shop, to wear when I hang clothes outside to dry - a bargain of cuteness at £10).

One aspect of the artist date not mentioned at the above link is that it has to be pre-planned. This is about giving yourself your due, and not fobbing yourself off with "Oh, I guess that thing I did yesterday can count as an artist date." You're supposed to treat yourself as you would another person, with respect and consideration. Not a bad rule in general.

London is full of museums and galleries, but those choices seem rather too obvious for me. Here are some of my ideas for upcoming artist dates:

• the clay painting place around the corner from me (my fiancé got me a voucher for this place for Christmas)
• a trip to Kew Gardens to take pictures
• a trip to the cinema

And, er, that's it for now. Ideas welcome.

The project mindset

James Thurber was from my home state of Ohio, and as such we read his stuff a lot in school. I found this quotation from him the other day, and want to remember it:

Don't get it right; get it written.

Good to remember if you, like me, find it difficult to get going on big, important writing or other creative projects. (Maybe the problem for people like me is thinking about things in terms of 'projects'. I know people who thrive on that designation, but for me, it just smacks of hard slog and no fun. JP Rangaswami says that if you have a project, you have no collaboration. Perhaps for minds like mine, if you have a project, you have...no project.)

Yeah, another blog

A few years ago, I tried to read Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way. I was floored by the quotes, made it about halfway through, but never gave the exercises a real chance; I really wasn't in the right place to do that back then. My copy of the book went to (someone I thought of as) an actual artist.

Back in November, my dad took Antoine and I to Half Price Books in Columbus. Antoine groaned when he saw the huge stack of books I wanted to buy. It only came to about $80, but as Antoine pointed out, "That's a pound added to our luggage for every dollar." As I told him it would be, everything was fine.

One of the books I bought was a fresh copy of The Artist's Way; the other was Cameron's The Vein of Gold. I lost track of both until one day last week, and I started working on the exercises in The Vein of Gold a few days ago: I wanted to have at least a couple of days' worth of morning pages under my belt before I started a blog about this, and now I've got three. (My handwriting is pretty illegible after half a page, though it definitely gets easier to fill three full pages as I go on.)

I was thinking that this blog might help me to stay committed to staying the course this time around, help me to keep my artist dates, and enhance the process all over. I checked out some Vein of Gold online groups, but some of them seem to take this stuff way too seriously:

This club is dedicated to the study of Julia Cameron's Vein of Gold, as well as a place for us to share and support each other as we embark on our Vision Quest for our creative selves.

I couldn't bring myself to click that link. That is to say: All of this is supposed to be fun, and I'm hoping this blog will keep me honest and unpretentious about it all. Here we go.