take joy

hmmmm…for the last few months, something has been stirring in the depths of my mind. It is now finally coming to light…

About a month ago, I started watching two documentaries on the artist/eccentric Tasha Tudor. She is an children's book illustrator. She also…lives in a time of her own. You see, Tasha believes when she dies, she will go straight back to the 1830's. She lives her life then, as close as she can to the habits and conditions of the 1830's. She lived without running water or electricity for six years while raising four small children. Now she continues to spin her own wool, work her own looms. She gardens, she knits, she cooks on her wooden stove. She paints, she draws, makes dolls, makes clothes, makes cheese and butter and on and on. She's somewhere in her 90's now but somewhere in her 80's, she decided it was time to be interviewed and documented.

Her videos are called Take Peace! and Take Joy! and once I got them, I watched them. And then I watched them again. And again and over and over till it was a ritual.
I knew something was going on in the back of my brain as I watched these videos. I had no idea what it was but it was happening back there. Something very slow and very deep. At times, it was tough. I felt obsessed and a fanatic for watching these videos daily for I'd say, two months. I knew though, something was stirring. I was watching this woman really closely. And I mean closely. I was watching her do something. Something…but what was it?

And now, only a few days ago, it started to dawn on me. The idea was very slow at first but now it's spreading through. I was watching Tasha Tudor enjoy her work. And not just fun work but ALL work. Even the hard work, like weeding and lugging around buckets of manure. She enjoyed all of it. You could tell. She was 86, trotting around and glorying in the process. The process. She loved the process of work. She liked the outcome but she loved the process. That's why she had three million projects. She said, “I don't believe in hurry,” and you could tell. At 86, you don't hurry. You can't. And she doesn't. She meanders around, doing things, sauntering barefoot with her dogs tagging after her.

And then after that, I started noticing things. Kinda scary but they were adding up. I started noticing people enjoying their work. I even started READING about people in books who enjoyed their work. They enjoyed ironing. Not for the straight clothes in the end but for the ironing. The process of it. And this keeps happening everywhere I looked and look. People enjoying the process of work.

Well…I knitted my brows. I still knit my brows. It is dawning on me that work doesn't have to be the hell-land, spawn of despair ordeal I thought it out to be. That it always has been.
I have started to enjoy my writing. Believe it or not, I haven't enjoyed writing. I felt it was my vocation and that I could be good at it sometimes but there was no enjoyment there. I liked it when people liked it but otherwise…who the fuck cared? I didn't care for writing. I did it because I felt I had to. And that's still there, of course. But…but…there's a window now, isn't there? I read in “Art and Fear” (which probably started it all, really) that creating art isn't about the product. It's about the process. Enjoying the process. And that's what I have come to. And slowly but surely, I'm getting towards there. And the landscape inside of myself is getting wider. I hopped a fence and am walking into a bigger area. It's scarier than…well, it's damn scary but is it interesting. Not having the eye glued on the end perfection opens all sorts of places.
I keep hoping that sitting down to write will stop being so terrifying. That the love-hate relationship will end. It hasn't yet. But…somethings are beginning to open up. I need a few more keys, a few more steps in the process…

I've also been reading Richard Rohr who comments on the product-result drivenness of the West. The obsession with success and results. And then he goes on to say that prayer is not about results or success. It is not about product. It is about relationship. That also keyed me in…I thought…wait…work is a relationship. And relationships are not about the end project that leads to money and fame.
I have no idea, none whatesoever how I could ever pull apart perfect product from writing but I do know that I want something more. And that I intend to go straight towards it. Again, I have no idea but I intend to pursue this. This relationship. This joy in the process. Ending this fixation on the perfect end. And we'll see…