ADVICE ON A RAINY SATURDAY NIGHT

I recently finished reading BIG MAGIC: CREATIVE LIVING BEYOND FEAR by Elizabeth Gilbert, the EAT, PRAY, LOVE lady.  And before I go any further and hear you witheringly say “oh, her!”, I remind you that EPL was on the New York Times Bestseller list for 187 weeks (that’s more than 3 years, baby!), re-issued in nearly every language and made into a movie (unfortunately.)  

Liz came to Rochester for a reading at a large venue and I was the oldest person in the sold out audience. Clearly she spoke to a profound need and connected uniquely to a huge number of younger women and you, friend, are too much of an old fart to know anything about that!  (Frankly, I didn’t get it either.)

But I love BIG MAGIC and recommend it to everybody - required reading for any liberal arts major. I will try to paraphrase some of her ideas and surely will get it wrong. But know this:  there is some meaty stuff between this book’s covers, enough controversy for some blood letting discussions and I hope you’ll invite me to one.

Basically, what Gilbert says is that we arrive on this earth with a cache of creative jewels stashed inside us waiting for the time and place to be vomited up and the vomiting part (she doesn’t use that term exactly) is the GREAT CREATIVE EXPLOSION that can give our humdrum existence meaning, excitement and satisfaction. (I may be over-stating all this just a tad.) 

Don’t be afraid. You will fail. So what? You will not “get it right” because there really is no “right.”  Don’t expect the end result to change your life because getting there is the change. And meanwhile, for heaven’s sake, do something else! Don’t spend every waking moment whining in the garrett trying to paint the next Mona Lisa. Guess what? The world won’t end! Don’t decide because you haven’t gotten a single poem published of the 3,742 you’ve written that the jig is up. Write 3,743.

The mantra is:  today I have this life. I will meet basic needs and I will find a way to stoke the creative parts too and sometimes the balance is weird. Or hard. A long time can pass before a glimmer of success shows up. But sometimes the discovery that comes along is AWESOME. 

CELEBRATE!  FIND A WAY TO REMIND YOURSELF THAT YOU HAVE THE POWER TO BRING THAT WONDERFUL THING INTO THE LIGHT. 

But WAIT!  What if you’ve only felt a twinge of slight gas? What if you haven’t felt that gagging, oh lord, here it comes! feeling? What if you don’t even know what the hell I’m talking about?! Not to worry….change the terminology.  Instead of “passion” and “creativity”, try “curiosity” and “challenge.” (But I’d stay away from “hobby” if I were you. Sounds too flighty.) I don’t know why anybody would be interested in building ships in bottles (for instance) but there they are anyhow. Your curiosity may be totally stupid to somebody else. So what? Go ahead and build the stupidest ship ever imagined in some lame bottle. It’s yours and you know what? It’s just as important as the Mona Lisa.   So let ‘er rip!

I chose these two photographs....the recent lunar eclipse posted on Facebook (I'm sorry I don't have the photographer's name for proper credit). And wonderful Ithaca painter Joy Adams  -  one of her Mad Sally paintings. I look at both images and am thankful to be living this life where such marvels happen.

SEE BELOW POST

P.S. A FOLLOW UP POSTING

Is there a moral to the below post: the Oneida Story?  I can’t seem to find it.

I thought perhaps one avenue was the feminist angle. During the same week end adventure, we stopped at Smith College in Northampton, Mass. The current exhibit in Smith Art Center was Feminism: Phase 2.  All I could think was (1) this is ugly stuff and (2) it’s time to quit your whining and (3) under any banner in the universe, this would not be considered “art.”

At the same time, I do understand that women are not treated equally in any profession - including the arts - and I strain to resist and suggest that this situation must be amended for the good of humanity.  Do females need to turn their backs on parenthood and monogamous relationships to fully be considered equals , as in the Oenidas? I hope not. I hope there’s a more enlightened way. (But interestingly, is the very fact of the Oneida business success due to talented women’s equal ownership?)

There’s a message circulating on social media presumably authored by a middle eastern woman who warns about sharif law, its horrible treatment of women particularly and it’s growing influence in the western world…that somehow, this movement will overthrow our government through the voting system and we will find ourselves with girl children being sold to old men/husbands, stoned for any variety of reasons…an entire menu of miseries. 

Why is it that women and sex are used repeatedly for political and economic leverages? the “reason” for acting - or not acting - in reprehensible ways? and the kernel of fear mongering? female reproduction, a political issue? Is it a fundamental as CONTROL? If you control women, you control the culture? Well….yes…..

A HISTORY LESSON

Churches. Cathedrals. Tabernacles. Temples. Meeting Houses. 

Religious edifices symbolize man’s effort to glorify and appease a more powerful creator. It’s a calling, a longing, a challenge, a primal need. Architects give it their all and artists enhance, embellish, create, and interpret. The pull is as old as humankind.  So it isn’t any surprise that we visit, photograph, and write about these structures probably more than any other manmade object in the world.

Which brings me to …THE WORLD’S SMALLEST CHAPEL! 

The Cross Island Chapel is non-denominational, seats two, measures 51 inches by 81 inches and rises out of Mason Pond in Oneida, New York.

The chapel was built by Chandler Mason and his son in 1989 and “Dedicated as a witness to God.” Unless you can walk on water, you can only reach the little white building by row boat or a quick swim. The pond and the chapel remain in the Mason family.

Weird, eh? But it’s in ONEIDA!  And that’s a story that so far outstrips weird that the definition needs a good stretch! 

In 1848,(remember the Second Great Awakening?)  John Humphrey Noyes founded the Oneida Community. I remind you that just down the road in Palmyra, Joseph Smith founded the Mormons  and around the corner, the Shakers… all around the same time. Middle New York State was bristling with religious visionaries. 

The Oneida Community built a community house for its 300 + participants.  The guiding theory was that Jesus had returned to earth in AD70 and so, believers (that would be, them) were perfect and without sin. 

All men and women were presumed “married to one another” and that puts a whole different spin on sex, division of labor and “family.” Birth control (male coitus interruptus) was practiced rather successfully  - as was selective breeding. Children were removed from the birth parent at around a year old and raised by the commune. Without the constraints of exclusive responsibility for home and hearth, women were encouraged to be equal partners in pretty much everything. 

The community manufactured, grew, traded and/or sold a variety of commodities successfully but clouds were on the horizon. By the late 1800s, led by a professor from Hamilton College nearby, an organized band of clergy began protesting the ideas and living arrangements of the Oneidas.  Old John, the founder, turned over the community to a son who lacked the leadership qualities to keep the band en point. The maturing second generation members were drawn to monogamy, sexual exclusivity and jealousy.

By the turn of the century, the Oneida Community reverted to a purely industrial limited stock company. For a century, Oneida became synonymous with silverware.  The flatware company sent manufacturing off shore in the early 2000s and was subsequently sold to a foreign owner. 

The community Mansion house still stands in Oneida. It has been lived in continuously since its construction in 1862 and today incorporates 35 apartments, 9 dorm rooms, 9 guest rooms, a museum, meeting and dining rooms and is listed as a National Landmark Historic building.