My friend Maureen and I went to an exhibit at the Pierre Ménard Gallery in Cambridge the other day based on the book The Writer’s Brush. The gallery, in an ancient house on Arrow Street not far from Harvard Yard, had just two smallish rooms and a basement space and the paintings, all by writers, lined the walls ceiling to floor. It was great to see such a mishmash of work and by so many authors—e e cummings, Sylvia Plath (who did the painting you see here), Borges, Gunter Grass, Victor Hugo, Maurice Sendak, Patti Smith. A very eclectic group and the paintings ranged from inept to brilliantly executed. Gunther Grass had a strong, clear hand, for one. I loved e e cummings best—his paintings of both men and women were full of eroticism and humor. They had more than a faint hint of the amateur but it lent the paintings a charm that cannot be designed. All the work felt like artifacts of fine adventurous lives. There is something fantastic about seeing the actual hand of a writer whose work you’ve loved.

What amazed me was just how many writers paint. I’ve always felt powerfully drawn to both writing and art and have practiced both all my life. Writing is where my true energy is now but there is still the need to make art. They are different muses—I can hardly say how though one is linear and narrative obviously, the other tactile. They are different ways of playing, like we experience in different friendships. But one is as necessary as the other.  This show really made me aware of how wondrous the whole range of personal expression is—not just writing and art, but mastery and ineptitude too.  There’s no need to judge or place things in a hierarchy of good and bad it seems to me.  Everything that spills from the human hand holds some kind of magic in it.  Sometimes it’s the small inept work that touches us more than we know.  A tiny line drawing of a tiger from Victor Hugo, for instance.
This whole crowded mishmash of an exhibit, with the prices typed on peel-off labels stuck onto the wall, half askew, and a few missing, made me think this is how we ought to see art—in a casual way, like it’s part of everyday life and not a precious, ghastly serious thing. By the way—some of the prices for this everyday art were in the stratosphere—$25,000 and more. May we who feel compelled to draw and paint live long!

I’m so happy to announce that Allan’s book, Stories We Need To Know / Reading Your Life Path In Literature has just been published by Findhorn Press. It’s a brilliant book, a directed walk through some of the great stories of over 3,000 years of literature , from ancient myths to Jane Austen to Harry Potter. What Allan does is show us how the characters in these stories progress through six stages of development (or, at least, some of those six stages) and how we, in our own journeys, do the same.

Not everyone realizes they are on a journey, of course, and that is one of the reasons that we read stories—to gain this awareness. We know there is more and want more and are moving in varying degrees from innocence to self-awareness and mastery to being effective agents of wisdom in the world. What Allan does is break down these stages into six archetypes. These are fluid states—we may be very effective in the area of work and not so effective in personal relationships but on the whole, once we break through to awareness, we are moving forward towards self-realization. Knowing what these archetypes are and what the particular challenges each faces gives us real tools for our onward journey to happiness and peace and effectiveness.

And seeing ourselves in the great stories of literature lets us know we are not alone and that there is a way forward. Whenever unhappiness strikes it is a sign we are ready to move into higher levels of being.

I’m very excited about this book. It’s a new perspective that I know can be of help to many people. It’s also a new experience to market the book and bring it into the world. I will share the adventure here as we go on. We are planning a book launch party in Boston, there is a reading in New York City in February, workshops in Boston in June and so on.

But for now—just a big shout out—Allan Hunter!—Stories We Need To Know!

Hooray!

It snows and snows so nothing to do but shovel and work! But another happy development. Thierry Bogliolo, director of Findhorn Press, stopped in to meet Dear A last week. He’s publishing Allan’s latest, Stories We Need To Know. The book traces characters in great literature as they progress towards self-awareness and self-mastery and shows us how we can see where we are on our own life journey. I’ll be giving a big shout-out when it comes out in January. I’m a little prejudiced, of course, but I can tell you it’s a fascinating and really useful book in the way it points us in the forward direction.

Well, we all had an excellent dinner at Casablanca in Harvard Square. They really never let you down in the food department. Findhorn publishes wonderful books on spirituality, healing and self-improvement so it was a pleasure to meet Thierry.

And also a pleasure when he wrote a couple of days ago to ask if I could design a book cover for him. It was snowing, as I said, so I sat right down to do it. There wasn’t time to do original art so I dove into my files and found one of the paintings that had been rejected from the art show last month. I was able to manipulate it and create the cover. It’s for a book on living and dying—seeing death as a transformation and is written by a hospice counsellor.

I love how it came out and good to note that nothing we do is wasted. One rejection is just another acceptance. I do believe that everything good we do leads to more good if we hang in there. The good gets better.

Now that it’s stopped snowing I went out with my son to the shops tonight and we both bought new digital cameras. The technology has improved so much and I want to photograph my work more and other things that I see. As luck would have it there was a most knowledgeable young salesman there who’d read all the reports about what is good etc.—something I could never do. So I have a small box on my desk with a camera no bigger than a pack of cigarettes but that will do me a whole lot more good than a smoke. I’m going to wrap it up and give it to myself for Christmas. Great things will come from this wee thing. The gift that keeps on giving, as they say. One of them anyway.

Thanks to my great friend, Sally, who discovered that Maira Kalman and Roz Chast were going to give a talk at the ICA (the new Institute of Contemporary Art) tonight and snagged two tickets. I adore both of these artists. Kalman is a writer and illustrator, has written 12 children’s books, collaborated with designers like Isaac Mizrahi and Kate Spade, and done New Yorker covers. Chast is a New Yorker cartoonist and recently collaborated with Steve Martin on an alphabet book for kids. It was so great to hear them speak tonight because they are wildly devoted to their wildness and we got to see their work and hear them talk about it. It was especially great to see that Kalman has a new book—
The Principles of Uncertainty

Sally and I each bought copies immediately. I flipped through the book in the half-lit auditorium straining my eyes until they were hardly fit for the drive home in my wee, ancient Miata. We stuck to the right hand lane of Storrow Drive and I kept the speed down to less than 30 mph. Sally clutched the books to her bosom. We paid full price and I see now we could have had them for half the money on Amazon, but not so immediately and we needed them that badly.

Roz Chast was incredibly funny and effortlessly, sincerely, self-effacingly so. You could only wish she was your best friend even though you love your best friend very much. You would be glad to ink her into your address book and hope to have jolly evenings with a bottle of wine and a few steamed mussels in an Italian restaurant somewhere, anywhere. She was that nice. And funny. And we get to see her cartoons every week in The New Yorker. She submits seven every week just to have one accepted and sometimes none. But usually one.

Roz’s new book is—Theories of Everything
It was a life-changing night. I’m having quite a few of late. The changes are so rapid and, well, exhilarating that I’m forced to take notes. Note 734—art need not be black or even serious. Humor is fine as in life. A saving grace. A grace, at least. I can now see light in the tunnel. Thank you, thank you, Maira and Roz.

And this morning my friend, the photographer, Mark Peterson and I hung our show that opens this weekend at the Joy Street Studios in Somerville, right outside Boston.  It was an art day and a great one.  More soon.

Last night the great writer, James Carroll, spoke in Boston about how this country has become paralyzed in the face of the aggressive power of the behemoth Pentagon machine that makes wars that so many Americans don’t want. We’ve all been asking where are the protests? Where are the photos of Guantanamo? What has happened that this war in Iraq continues when so many Americans want peace? As he pointed out, it is not a war. The Americans are an occupation force in the center of a civil war. Iraq is not our enemy. No one was attacking us but Americans were traumatized by 9/11. It fueled the paranoia that already exists in this country.
He talked about how bit by bit the war machine has taken over the government, and not just this government, but going right back to the second world war. They have become entwined in a bad marriage that nobody wants to break up because the kids will suffer economic consequences. He said it’s not just about blaming George Bush. We are all at fault. We all need to look at what we’re doing, at our complacency, at our love of luxury and at our fear.

I wish I could tell you all the things he said but I don’t have that sharp a memory and am not as conversant with history as he is. That’s a good part of the problem. We don’t know our history and the long road that led us to the disastrous and dangerous place that we’re in.

But we all know this—it’s not other countries who have most of the world’s weapons of mass destruction, it’s us. And we’ve broken international law like thugs.

And we know this too—it’s not other countries who are coming after us; we are going after them.

The underlying question is—what is this fear that Americans feel? Why have we felt this paranoia for so long, way before 9/11? Why do we think we are going to be attacked, as individuals and as a country? Why do we believe we need to own guns? Why do we believe we need to invade other countries and kill people? One million people have died in Iraq already of which less than 5,000 are American soldiers.

It’s not right.

There were 250 concerned and rational peace-loving people in the room last night listening to James Carroll at a small college. Most were middle-aged. There were only 3 students. I don’t know the reason why.  Could be that the five-hundred-billion dollars spent on this war has left education underfunded.  Maybe our kids aren’t as curious and engaged as they might be if they were better educated.
House of War,The Pentagon and The Disastrous Rise of American Power is the book James Carroll wrote to address these questions. He has a brilliant column in The Boston Globe every week and those of us who have hungered for reason in these awful times have been sustained by it. He is a sharp historian with an eye for how change really happens.

Now the good news, which he took care to point out—the end of the cold war came peacefully forced upon Gorbachev and the idiotic Ronald Reagon by pressure from the people, first in Russia then in the States. And the Russian people sacrificed economically when the arms race ended. We can sacrifice. This is peace and real security that we’re talking about. This is our planet, our only place.
So, Carroll asks us to maintain the pressure and to put our feet to the pavement. The internet does not work as a means of protest. He thinks it has been a deterrent to peace because it keeps people at home safely in front of their monitors when politicians only respond to real people out on the streets en masse.

So, on Saturday, there is a march for peace in many cities across this country and this time Dear A and I will bind on our sandals and be there. I feel my life changed last night. I bought House of War and lined up for James Carroll to sign it. When I met him I ended up saying, ‘I’m an artist. Sometimes it feels so irrelevant.’ He came right back, ‘No! No, it isn’t. Read Kennedy’s speech about Robert Frost.’ Then he smiled and took my hand and shook it.

Here is a small part of Kennedy’s speech— ‘When power leads man toward arrogance, poetry reminds him of his limitations. When power narrows the arrears of man’s concern, poetry reminds him of the richness and diversity of his existence. When power corrupts, poetry cleanses.

For art establishes the basic human truths which must serve as the touchstones of our judgment. The artist, however faithful to his personal vision of reality, becomes the last champion of the individual mind and sensibility against an intrusive society and an officious state.’

The whole speech is worth reading. You can google it.

Art is always an exploration of what is possible. May we, as artists, not retreat but step forward out of ourselves and into the world with what we have.

Keeping the faith. That’s all for now from here.

James Carroll—www.jamescarroll.net

In setting up my new site and reorganizing this one last week I managed to accidentally delete two categories of files including one called mdf, which was intended to be letters between my dear friend, Kathy Todd, artist in Penzance, England and myself, artist in Boston, Massachusetts. There’s a large body of water between us but much in the way of shared history, paths and dreams. Kathy is a wonderful painter who takes much inspiration from having lived on the magical island of Tresco just off the southwest corner of England for many years. Although she hails from the States she has lived and worked in England for many years.

At any rate I wanted to get mdf up again so we can share art adventures. Making art is incredibly compelling work and just as compelling is bringing that work into the world. Kathy sent word that she is now preparing for the Affordable Art Show in London in October. Wishing you the best with that, mdf.

www.kathytodd.co.uk

I think it could be my lucky day. I found this huge clover growing in one of my pots in the garden. The one beside it is from the ‘lawn.’ It just jumped out at me that really everything we need and want is already here for us. But—but nice to be reminded in such a visceral way.

And then there was this bee. Sorry about the photography but he’s twice the size of an ordinary bee and there are several who come each day to feast on the nicotania. There’s an article in The New Yorker this week about how bees are disappearing by the hundreds of thousands. I haven’t finished it yet so can’t make any assumptions about who these big guys are but they do bring a sense of sweetness and abundance to our city plot.

So—in the midst of hard work I discover a whole harmonious universe just outside my back door.  And I’d always thought our wee garden was a bit scrappy.  No more!

On Friday we went into Harvard Square to observe Harry Potter festivities around 11:30, a half hour before the two bookstores in the square opened their doors to sell the last book in the series. We have never seen such a festive air in the square nor so many people, not even for the street fairs. There were people of all ages—from a newborn baby three weeks old to grandparents. At least half were in costume.

The line to The Coop which is directly across from Harvard Yard extended around three blocks. People sat on the sidewalk or stood around in little clumps. Some had lawn chairs, some had books. It was a great, mellow atmosphere—a very cool, lovely vibe.

Lots of kids showed up in costume. The girls wore short plaid school uniform skirts with knee socks. There were lots of boys in capes and Hogwarts scarves. And some in Quidditch uniforms. It was as if, for this one night, we were in Hogwarts itself. Such is the power of magic.

We all gathered around the front door to The Coop just before midnight and watched the giant clock on the bank across the street as we counted down. When the doors opened a great cheer went up and seconds later the first person emerged carrying a copy of the huge tome.

Afterwards we wandered around the square just soaking up the feeling of amazing fun. All for a book! And this was just one place. The whole world was celebrating right along with us. Magical.

Dear A, my better half, is a devoted fan. Our own copy arrived from Amazon by noon the next day and he set to reading. A party that night interrupted progress but he set to it again yesterday and finished all 850 or so pages by two in the morning last night. This morning, before breakfast and with my eager permission, he summarized the plot for me. Just great.

Millions of kids in the world have had the privilege of growing up reading this for the first time and will always have it as part of their lives. They believe in magic. So glad we ventured out to see. Here’s to J.K. Rowling. Brilliant.

A year ago I won two hundred dollars betting on a horse at a Kentucky Derby party.  And wouldn’t you know—few days after I won this money before I got to be self-indulgent as I certainly planned to be I got an email from a friend who is doing service work in Morocco for a couple of years.  She said she’d met a boy, well, a young man really, almost twenty-two but still childlike in many ways because he was deaf, born without ear holes but with some residual hearing.  She needed to raise, yes, two-hundred dollars so that this boy could get an MRI and it could be determined whether some kind of medical intervention might restore his hearing.  His mother had been told that had he had surgery as an infant he would be able to hear, but this is a country of wretched poverty.

So, of course, I sent the two hundred dollars.

He got the MRI and the doctor in his town looked at it and said it was now too late for surgery.  There was nothing to be done.  The boy was very sad.

And I was sad but just for an instant.  It didn’t make sense.  If he had some residual hearing surely something could be done.  So I wrote back—Don’t give up!  Then I suggested we show the MRI’s to a doctor here.

It took some time for copies to be made and as my one doctor contact was traveling abroad on another medical mission for some months I suggested that my friend send out an email to her whole list to see if a doctor could be found.  One was and he declared that indeed something could be done and that there were actually three possibilities.  Great news.

My friend wanted the boy to come here but that would involve all manner of complication and fundraising.  I couldn’t believe that even in a poor country like Morocco there weren’t some modern hospitals.  My friend investigated and made arrangements for the boy to go to Casablanca to see a doctor at a big hospital there.  She would need another hundred dollars for the trip. Almost nothing.

Yesterday he went and the news is better than I, at least, imagined.  It’s amazing news.  Yes, the doctor can restore his hearing with surgery and an implant of a hearing device and he will find the funding for the device which costs about $9,000. and he’ll do the surgery for free.  AND this man who is clearly a saint will travel to the small town where this boy lives and where there is a whole community of deaf people to see if any of the others can be helped.

I love this story.  I love that keeping the faith made miracles.  I love that the boy wanted to hear so much that he would not give up.  I love that my friend worked so hard on his behalf.  I love the hugeness of heart of this doctor.  And I love that I got to share my winnings—that I got to see the way good ripples forth when we act on it.

Amen.

When I get immersed in a big project that tunnel vision thing starts to take over. Everything else gets shoved aside, postponed, put off, ignored. Well, not everything. I still love a party! And good dinners. But things like blogs, fun as they are, languish. No more! It’s summer and there are other claims on time like gardens and, in our case, a major garage restoration when we noticed that two sides of the thing had begun to sink into the earth, the foundations completely rotted away…but I’m back.

Which brings me to some good news. My amazing son has just started his own design/build firm and was able to put the garage right in a matter of days. And that included jacking the whole building up and poring new foundations and who knows what. Dear A lent a hand, I made lunch.
This week there was an article in the local paper announcing Nick’s new venture but they neglected to include his phone number. Hence the thunderbolt inspiration—he must have a web site! Now! None of us are techy in the least but this wee blog has helped me get a tiny, tentative grip on these matters. Then Dear A, who has a new and brilliant book coming out in January 08 which will change how a lot of people look at their lives and is based on literature (this sentence is way too long)—well, he discovered that at Yahoo (plug) you can get a website for $9./month and there are templates there to choose from and some aren’t half bad. AND you don’t need ANY expertise at all or to know code. It’s EASY-WEASY. You can type right onto it and upload any photos that you have stored on your computer.

So—in a matter of two hours I managed to do a very cool website for Nick. There’s more coming on it soon—photos and words. www.nickportnoybuilders.com

I’m really excited about this. Artists and writers can do their own websites and have them up in a matter of hours. There’s telephone support as well but I promise—you won’t need it.  More importantly, it’s easy to add to the site and keep it changing with new work and inspiration—make it a live thing. A fun thing. Bring energy to it.

So, here’s wishing Nick all the best! Already the work is poring in. If you live in Boston and have any home renovation needs I can tell you he does supurb work and has an excellent design eye! I know, I’m his mother but I do not lie!

And I’m back—here, now. Well, once a week anyway. Tunnel vision doesn’t work. All kinds of things are happening and we can give our attention to them as we must. The work is getting done, all of it, and it seems to me that the more we have to do the more we get off the duff. So here’s to new ventures, the magic of websites, ongoing inspiration and summer!

And now out to the garden where the garage restoration has led to a whole garden redesign. It includes a wee side deck to the garage where Dear A and I made a sitting area. After dinner we head out and look up at the sky—the closest we can get to the vastness of nature in our city space. But the sky’s always there for all of us wherever we are.  It’s good—so good. It makes it seem like a fine world after all and magical. Good to look up. (Photos to come when the work is done. Soon—I just know it. We’re on a roll now!)