The Artist’s Way Contract

I believe I can succeed in this course...as long as I get to make my own rules. 

The Artist’s Way Assignment: The Censor

Assignment: “Think of your Censor as a cartoon serpent, slithering around your creative Eden, hissing vile things to keep you off guard. If a serpent doesn’t appeal to you, you might want to find a good cartoon image of your Censor, maybe the shark from Jaws, and put an X through it. Post it where you tend to write or on the inside cover of your notebook. Just making the Censor into the nasty, clever little character that it is begins to pry loose some of its power over you and your creativity.”

I chose to sketch (and paint) my inner censor, then use its description as a writing prompt. 

My rough draft (because I’m working on getting okay with sharing them): 

I imagined my Censor as a many armed thing. It wears my wedding ring on one tentacle, a watch on another. In the grip of one flange is a bottle of bubbles and in that bottle the mom I’m supposed...the mom I want to be.Perhaps there is a mop in one tentacle and a set of car keys in another. Two weigh the difference between a teacher’s Apple and a stack of textbooks, they fail to find a balance. The last one is empty and placed across my mouth. I have named my critic Samctimony. 

And another- not necessarily final- draft: 

MANY-FLANGED SANCTIMONY

Around one tentacle, stretching long 

Sings a ticking timepiece song 

To another feebly clings 

A pocked and tarnished wedding ring 

In the next, child's bubble wand

And four children of whom I’m fond 

Mop in one flange, unstick the floors

When that’s finished, chores galore 

Tossing car keys to and fro

This one bellows, “Time to go!” 

One long tentacle dials my phone

“Call them all before they’re gone!” 

One is measuring when I look 

the gap ‘twixt reading and teaching books

One last tentacle holds a key

Placed to my lips, it shushes me 

The critic inside, no one trick pony 

I will call her Sanctimony 

Tabelle Außenseiter (to the Table of Misfits)

To my right: an accordion (& trumpet...& cow bells!). 

To my left: a young man with autism named Odin. 

The seating was communal, the meal was German.

Odin and his mom were about the business of building happy memories in the wake of deep and recent loss.

Odin said to us “Something terrible happened to my grandpa- he passed away.” 

With Odin there was no pretense, when he needed salt, that’s all he needed and he sought it out with determination. When he thought the candles would be fun to blow out, he blew them out. We smiled and wished we could be that free, too. Sharing a meal with O was an extra scoop of joy. 

Odin’s mom is made of strong stuff, yet she remains uncalloused. She leaves any excuse to be overwhelmed on the table and instead invests in the lives of her son and many others. 

Jannik was our golden waiter. From a foreign land and eager to fill our cups, he was more than hospitable, he was truly kind. Employing Odin as his sidekick in the quest of lighting (and re-lighting) the dining room candles, he was neither put-out nor patronizing. 

And there we were, as a family, celebrating a milestone that shouldn’t exist, (if statistics were given the last word). 

Thankfully, Mercy and Grace reach further. 

At some point it dawned on me that I’d been treated to a real-life misfit meal...set to accordion music, no less. 

So you guys...you were all there, too, in my smile and the delight of it all.

I share with you now a picture of that table and some of the music (where Odin makes a quick cameo appearance) 

PS- I am growing a tad concerned that I’ve fallen and bumped my head or somehow slipped into an alternate Hansen-esque Utopia: I was just informed that a marching band checked into our hotel today