WATERMARK

I began this a bit late, but will count this as the end of the first week [Recovering a Sense of Safety] of doing The Artist’s Way. I’m tired. This was a cold, gray day, after a long and restless night. There was some brightness, a few blue sky patches and new snow on the mountains.

I’ve been doing morning pages since Tuesday. The dogs and I are still negotiating this change of schedule. Fortunately, I’ve been blessed with patient dogs.

Last night I read Week 2| Recovering a Sense of Identity. Again, there is much that would have been meaningful for me twenty years ago, but is less so now. I have few Crazymakers or Poisonous Playmates in my life today; one thing illness does is weed out the people patch.

What resonates for me — ambiguously — is Skepticism:
skep·ti·cism also scep·ti·cism  (skpt-szm) n.

1. A doubting or questioning attitude or state of mind; dubiety. See Synonyms at uncertainty.
2. Philosophy.
   1. The ancient school of Pyrrho of Elis that stressed the uncertainty of our beliefs in order to oppose dogmatism.
   2. The doctrine that absolute knowledge is impossible, either in a particular domain or in general.
   3. A methodology based on an assumption of doubt with the aim of acquiring approximate or relative certainty.
3. Doubt or disbelief of religious tenets.

Yes. I am certainly a skeptic. Have I mentioned that the subtitle of this book is A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity? Cameron says:

One of the things most worth noting in a creative recovery is our reluctance to take seriously the possibility that the universe might be cooperating with our new and expanded plan . . . That door is ever so slightly ajar, and outside we can see a great deal of dazzling light. out there in the dazzling light are a lot of new ideas that we consider too far-out for us, and so we keep them out there . . . Setting skepticism aside, even briefly, can make for very interesting explorations.

Uh huh. And here is the ambiguity, and the ambivalence. In some ways my life has been a long path with spots of dazzling light, quickly turned away from. In others, a long search for dazzling light. In short, I’m confused.

On one of the participant blogs (I forgotten which) the blogger shared an idea to make an artist’s altar. Skeptic that I am, I’ve had a writer’s altar for a very long time. Many of the things on this altar were gifts; others were found on the ground, or at tag sales, or in galleries or shops. It’s a wild gathering of images of the feminine divine. It’s in my study, where I used to do most of my writing. I had a ritual of burning incense or sage for a few minutes at the beginning of each work session, to bring me to attention.

Since I wasn’t up to going out this week, I decided that my artist date would be to pay attention to my altar [click photo to go to larger Flickr image]:

Tomorrow, or later, more about attention. Wish me a good night’s sleep. I could use it.