paisleypiper's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- good enough place to be A few thoughts about work�. This seems to be all I�ve been thinking about lately. I am nervous and paranoid at the same time I am confident and strong. The esquire has not changed. The community liaison and I are friends again. Stella handed in her resignation. And we pack our days with drama and stress, with disbelief and abandon, with work. We, because I�ve been discussing this every step of the way with the community liaison. We are both tied in knots, sick to our stomachs, fretting, and concerned about our future. At the same time, I�m the veteran at this and I am becoming used to working at a place where someone breaks down in tears at least twice each week, where someone yells at someone else nearly every day, where work is a place I steel myself to each day. Yet I cannot give up on the partnerships I�ve formed, the classes with students out there doing interesting, enriching projects. Each day I go in and navigate the rough waters in my little boat with my little paddles. Each day I get a bit wet, sometime I get drenched and other days I just tip over before I�ve begun. Other than work, I�ve been thinking about the medical field a great deal. When I watch ER, I like to watch with someone else because I split the hour between watching the television and watching whoever is sitting near me. Partly, I do this as a reaction to the gore, and partly because it is difficulty to watch actors on television reaching into bodies like they do not house the life force of people. As a non-medical person, I still think the inside of my body is where my spirit lives and all sorts of other associations that are superstitious in nature. So it freaks me out to see the body worked on like it is something inanimate but bloody. I don�t know what I�ll do with this bit of information, but the realization of exactly how superstitious I am regarding my insides is something that I previously had not considered. I�m not saying I don�t have superstitions. Sometimes I think I travel when I sleep and dream. And when I sense no evidence of dreams it is only because I did not have anywhere to go. I feel trapped. Not a miserable trapped, just an adult life trapped. I think I spend a lot of time waiting for some resolution at work, waiting for the beginning of the rest of my life, waiting for any sort of beginning besides Today is the first day of the rest of your life That is a cheap out, not a beginning. Getting my master�s degree has been a hefty goal for so much time that I feel as though I�m drifting a bit. That summer will be over before I know it. It always is, whether I get a stupendous amount done or I just relax. For some reason I want to just relax and live a good life but I don�t know that I�ll find it possible to just work on things and not spend every minute stretching toward some accomplishment. To just drift is not in the culture. Only that concerns me because poetry and art live in the corners, on the boundaries, in the in-between areas�. Quinn and I went to see a documentary about Andy Goldsworthy called Rivers and Tides � if it is playing at a theatre near you, I recommend it. This quiet film spends time with the sculptor as he makes art out of the elements of nature in situ. Some of it is quite temporary and other pieces are around longer, but through photography each piece gets a permanent, though simulated, life. Nothing happens in the film, no epiphanies or resolutions. Rivers and Tides is very much a film about middles � we meet him in the middle of his life, without introduction, and get to know some middle part of the man, and a few slices of his art, his artistic philosophy, and gorgeous scenery. During the ninety minutes of the documentary, I did not tire of his quiet reflections, his attempts to create art on that delicate edge of being so much a part of nature that it is temporary, a few times too temporary to last long enough to be completed. Goldsworthy works directly with nature in order to understand it, but the film shows us how nature resists a thorough understanding � it is so much more fluid, intuitive, artistic than sometimes our science presents. Rivers and Tides would be perfect viewing for the middle of the week, but just be certain you go with an alert mind because the viewer needs to bring along his or her own thoughts. For more information visit this thoughtful short article, or to see some of his images, head to this picturesque overview . �I enjoy the freedom of just using my hands and �found� tools--a sharp stone, the quill of a feather, thorns. I take the opportunities each day offers: if it is snowing, I work with snow, at leaf-fall it will be with leaves; a blown-over tree becomes a source of twigs and branches. I stop at a place or pick up a material because I feel that there is something to be discovered. Here is where I can learn.� �Andy Goldsworthy I like this quote. I think that right now I am finding my opportunities at work and trying to make something of it, something of my investment of two years. At the same time, I feel as though I am emerging confident and strong enough to set about the work nearer to my heart/mind/spirit. Here, where I learn, is a good enough place to be. 9:01 p.m. - 2003-06-16 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
||||||