A New Year, A New Me?

Maybe I'd better try for a more me me.

On the one hand, I want to be a new me… different in some significant ways from the old me. What I dimly realize however, is that it’s not a new me I’m aiming for, it’s a more me me. So much of what holds me back are the adaptations, the add-ons, accumulated over a lifetime in response to fear, suffering, trauma.

Which is natural. Coping mechanisms are not only helpful; they are inevitable. What is a living creature if not a bundle of responsiveness to current conditions? The problem is that we so often become a bundle of responsiveness to conditions that no longer exist. Habits of self-protection, learned and remembered in the body, are practically hardwired. Some of these habits, along with their initiating fears, may come to us through the ancestors.

A sticker I made a long time ago. It was a riff on the slogan: ARMY. BE ALL YOU CAN BE.

So how do I evolve? How do I move from here to there—a more integrated and intuitive there. A less fearful there. A more passionate, self-confident, and determined there.

I like the analogy of a snake shedding its skin, or any situation in which a protective covering has become too small and tight, and must be discarded, leaving a more vulnerable self with room to grow. Which feels dangerous. Which is dangerous… ask a soft-shelled crab.

If there is anything that unites us with each other and with all living beings, it is the innate desire to avoid pain.

If there is anything that unites us with each other and with all living beings, it is the inevitability of pain.

Anyone who thinks that it is possible to become more integrated, more aware, more deeply feeling, and more committed, without having to deal with one’s own crazy, terrified, grief-stricken self, has been watching too many ads on social media made by people who promise to make you into a better person in just thirty days if you give them your money.

And the still-dominant, largely unexamined belief system in our culture, that people must be forced to improve, have to force themselves, using shame, blame, and guilt (if not violence), misses the point. The point of what works and what doesn’t.

The problem with SHOULD…

SHOULD, as applied to oneself, requires a split self… the one who says should and the one who is doing what the other one does not condone.

I am no good at making myself do things. I rebel. I can only work with myself gently, until I am able to understand what I truly want. And while this seems slow and inefficient, the results are better, more durable. Because what we’re going for here is integration, stray bits and bobs of self remembered by the whole. When I use the word ‘remembered’ I mean re-membered. I mean that what has been cut off, disconnected, discounted, shunned, is invited back into the community of the energetic body.

The most effective thing I can do is acknowledge the direction I want to go in, which means admitting to what I want, maybe even committing to what I want, and then something beyond my will has to move me in that direction. Will matters too. Will is basic and necessary. It’s not enough all by itself. Real interior movement requires longing, which is a form of prayer.

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Daisi & JANE

I plan to share some process around the new iteration of my webcomic, Daisi & JANE. I still don’t quite believe that I can do it. I am aware that commitment is a requirement. Gotta figure out what I truly want.

I drew this a long time ago. The characters are already who they are, though they may have had different names. And the treatment is much more ‘cartoony.’ Perhaps I will make my way back to this, but for now my drawing is more fleshed out.

Below are photos of beginning sketches, done on paper in pencil. I have to scan them, and then work with them digitally. Everything is a question now. Well, not everything… I made a decision to put all content into square boxes that are not connected to each other by anything except placement.

This cuts off a huge amount of creative possibility that exists when a whole page or panel can be broken up in a variety of ways. But since I want to share this online, and a printed-on-paper version is far in the distance, I want it to be as flexible as possible for social media and different sized screens.

And for better or worse, limitations are a form of freedom, as it says so beautifully in the I Ching, Hexagram #60, Limitation: (excuse old-fashioned sexist nouns/pronouns)

A lake is something limited. Water is inexhaustible. A lake can contain only a definite amount of the infinite quantity of water; this is its peculiarity. In human life too the individual achieves significance through discrimination and the setting of limits. Therefore what concerns us here is the problem of clearly defining these discriminations, which are, so to speak, the backbone of morality. 

Unlimited possibilities are not suited to man; if they existed, his life would only dissolve in the boundless. To become strong, a man's life 
needs the limitations ordained by duty and voluntarily accepted. The individual attains significance as a free spirit only by surrounding himself with these limitations and by determining for himself what his duty is.

What I love about this quote is that it makes such a clear distinction between the limitations of should and the limitations of love: The individual attains significance as a free spirit only by surrounding herself with these limitations and by determining for herself what her duty is.

Pencil or ink? How far to go on paper before transitioning to digital drawing/painting? lf I could get drawing on a screen to feel as good as drawing on paper I might start there, but so far, I haven’t been able to do that.

Character design… what do my characters look like? This is an ongoing quest. Not only in the sense of personality, who they are, but also, where do I want to land on the cartoon spectrum… a nose like this or this or this?

When I look at these images sequentially, I see so many problems, so many things I want to change or fix. And yet. I have to take time into account if I am going to make a ‘body’ of work. Each individual panel can’t be a masterpiece; it has to be part of an evolving whole.

I’m planning to give myself the space to experiment in multiple ways, to try things, instead of believing that I have to have consistency at this stage. I’m interested in feedback, too.

Why share this process?

A few reasons… examining the details of the artistic process is a way to suggest the less obvious and more complex process that we are engaged in by being alive. A process of relationship between interior and exterior, immune to diktat, finding itself step by step. A process in which there can be no answer that does not take the whole into account, and there can be no answer because there is no answer; there is only the mystery of creation.

And what a fascinating mystery it is! The life force energy that finds its form by moving. Verb, not noun.

Another reason I want to share this process is because it helps me. It helps me stay grounded in the experimental present instead of a fear place where I think I have to have it all figured out before I share it. It helps me keep going. It helps me to focus on the particular and not on the everything everywhere all at once which is my tendency.

I will get to a place where I trust the work to speak for itself. I already trust it. In sharing process I’m not explaining the art; I’m explaining myself. This is a practice for me of self-awareness and honesty.

Stay tooned.