An Embarrassment of Riches

Over the past month I’ve started three blog entries that I abandoned because they didn’t inspire me enough to want to share them with you. I’ve felt like there was a lot to say, but that too much was going on in my world to let me focus on any one thing carefully and completely enough to write about it properly. Rather than produce and polish a variety of small pieces and scatter my energies, I had to devote those expansive but still finite energies to making sense of my own personal soap opera, and my writing for public consumption had to be shelved for a spell.

I spent most of the past night ruminating, twisting and torquing in bed as I overanalyzed my little universe and all that orbits within it. All these revolutions on my own axis helped me realize a great deal. Forgive my switching metaphors abruptly, but I see that I’ve been in collecting mode for years and especially for the past few months. Now, like a museum curator, I need to take stock of the collection and determine which pieces need special handling, which are underappreciated gems, which need to be shared with other collectors and which need to be, as they so awkwardly put it in the art world, deaccessioned.

Collecting things and thoughts, dreams and relationships, inspirations and art project parts, beautiful experiences and thoughts and possibilities has absorbed my attention for some time now. I have trouble letting go of or giving up some of these fabulous entries in my personal life museum, since each new part of the collection represents a new opportunity, a new understanding, a new chance at finding or creating beauty. Each new art project, essay, book idea, friendship or purchase has been exciting, but each has also opened the door to doubt and questions, leaps of faith forward as well as a lack of faith in myself, bursts of great confidence and moments of weakness, a feeling of being overwhelmed, cluttered, presented with much possibility but unable to attend to it all properly. What a roiling, rolling and relentless time it’s been.

This has been a time to gather stray bits and pieces for art projects and assemblages rather like a magpie does, looking for the sparkly bits that catch my eye and work well with other things in my collection, until I have so many delicious art supplies that I can’t find half of what I want among the tasty rare papers, the hand-carved buttons, the bits of gnarled twig carefully collected with a friend or the pens that feel so good in my hand that I never want to put them down. I’ve collected images and ideas, notes and photos, cards and fabric swatches until my source file of amusing and inspiring oddments has spread beyond reasonable confines and overwhelms rather than delights me. The books and articles I’ve gathered to help me research not one but two important writing projects lie next to two biographies of Shakespeare I want to read after I catch up with my New Yorker back issues, my unread short story collections, my books of essays and videotapes and notes to myself. Piled up in too many places are the endless design and fashion magazines I love to flip through for ideas on combining pattern and color, shadow and space, movement and stasis in my art, my writing, my home.

In addition to collecting things and information, I've collected people. I’ve made concerted efforts to meet engaging, endearing and sometimes exasperating new people these past few months and realized anew the importance of prioritizing relationships and art above other things in life. I’ve recognized a wellspring of creative ideas and exciting possibilities within myself and faced fears about braving the unknown and perhaps failing to focus my talents in a way that elevates and expands upon my ideas. This has been a time of expanding and opening up my eyes and ears, considering, cogitating, questioning, and of acquiring things and thoughts, ideas and opportunities, friendships and goals. Sometimes it’s good to open one’s arms to all the possibilities, and sometimes it’s necessary to choose what to hold onto and what to put down. My arms are too full now and the treasures are getting heavy, so it seems this is the time to rest and regroup, to choose and in some cases, to let go of possibilities to make room to foster those most appropriate for my life, my abilities and my opportunities.

So it is that I’ve been choosing and sorting and prioritizing my things, my work and my life. I’ve felt my energies, thoughts and talents scattered all over the place and have worried that it was a bad thing, a difficult thing, a sign of error or an excess of desire for novelty, perhaps a lack of direction or discipline. Now I’m realizing that it was a process of learning and preparation in more ways than I was aware of. I’ve collected too much stuff in hopes of making it into something greater as well as in an effort to comfort myself during a tricky time, I know. It’s not hard to find elements of the excessive and extraneous in my home right now. I’ve had trouble relinquishing things that remind me of my history or of people who have touched me, and I’ve had difficulty saying no to things that might make wonderful art works, sewing projects, inspiration for stories or essays, unusual gifts or decorative displays. I’ve made myself tired writing or talking with or meeting too many new people too late into the night or too early in the morning so that I could learn from them and expand my world by trying to see it through their eyes. It’s now time to sort through the experiences, the thoughts, the books and photos, beads and silks, plants and pillows and papers, and to give some of my riches away and turn others down in order to clear a space in my mind, heart and home for the necessary things.

So that I might have a clearer sense of direction and purpose, I’ve had to make difficult choices about which possibilities to cling to and which to turn from, which projects to put aside, and which treasures to scatter among those who don’t have the luxury of living among this embarrassment of riches in which I find myself floating. Some of my dearest treasures have been friendships that haven’t blossomed as I might have liked, but even those have bred understanding and enlightenment, and I bless and thank each friend who helped me along my journey, even if our paths were sometimes unsteady or poorly lit. I hope the dear people I've met along my path will find joy, humor, illumination and pleasure in being with people who delight them. I wish them all the awareness, confidence, humility and peace that can come with self-knowledge. Each remarkable person who has walked with, sat with, spoken to or written to me during these past months has given me a gift and allowed me to give the gift of myself, my insights, my enthusiasm or my talents in a way which enriched me. I hope each feels he or she gained something valuable from the experience. I know I have. I am grateful to each of them.

Going out into the world to gather these experiential and material riches has taken a great deal of energy. I’m not by nature comfortable pushing my way out into the world or presenting my viewpoints, my art or myself to those not already within my circle of friends. Having the chance to have fine, thoughtful, clever and insightful people get to know me and open their hearts to me in return has been a gift, but sometimes gifts come at a price. To be truly heard, seen and understood may be exciting, but it also means risking being misunderstood, being rejected, being undervalued or being challenged. Learning experiences are enriching and sometimes inspiring, but they also jog loose old fears and expectations and invite navel-gazing and self-critical moments that can shut out the light of the world around. Enlightenment may be a noble goal, but the path to it can be steep and the road rocky. And when two paths diverge in that famous yellow wood, sometimes there really is a right or a wrong road to take or have taken, and it’s not always clear which is which before one gets to the dark and winding bit in the middle.

Gathering, collecting, building and amassing are more fun than sorting, clearing out and making the hard choices about what treasures stay and which ones must go. But once the winnowing is done, true treasures stand out more clearly and their preciousness is easier to acknowledge. And after all the gathering, considering and analyzing, I have some true treasures in my life now which weren't there a few months ago, and which I wouldn't have if I hadn't been willing to dive in, carry more than I could hold easily and ask difficult questions of myself and sometimes of others. And, of course, I wouldn't have some of my greatest treasures if I hadn't also had some outrageously good fortune and been shown some generous and openhearted love and kindness. Part of what I have has come from being a keen-eyed magpie who knows what to gather and how to find the good stuff, but the greater part of what I've been blessed with comes simply from being a very lucky duck. This little hopping bird is fortunate, indeed.

Sometimes it’s more important to gather wits than bits and pieces, and giving away can enrich one more than hoarding can. I hope I can find joy and opportunity in the winnowing phase now; part of me fears it will be a hard slog that makes me face more fears than I can or should. But part of me knows that the only way to get safely past these fears will be to walk right through them and shed them as I do so, so on I go.