Still Life
Inspiration or Distraction?
After the alarm clock blared at 5:00AM, I reluctantly rose. I descended the stairs and did all of the things that needed doing — set coffee to brew, packed lunch, drove circuit to town and home again.
Ugh! I am not sure who is more ready for the school year to be over. I suppose it’s the student who was testing household solutions as to their base and alkaline properties — and trying to memorize the proper masculine or feminine pronouns to German vocabulary words at 10PM, but c’mon — my job is tough, too.
At 6:08AM, I sat down to write my morning pages. All serious writers have heard of them, yes? Well, in the off chance you haven’t (I hadn’t until just recently), they are an exercise in getting thoughts out of your head and onto the page.
It’s my interpretation that this activity makes space for inspiration to swoop in and guide the days creative efforts.
I’m uncertain if Julia Cameron was the originator of this exercise, but I did recently read about it in her book, The Artist’s Way.
After dragging my feet, I decided — I’m game. I will sit down and write steam of consciousness every morning.
Today is day eight.
Like many new habits or exercises, the morning pages have been a chore.
After the first day, I trimmed the recommended three pages down to two. I cannot remember the last time I wrote three solid, legal pad sized pages by hand. It took me nearly half an hour.
To date, much of the writing has been nonsense — or complaints about writing the morning pages. Oh — and there has been lots of “I don’t know what I should write about”, too.
I read The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg several years ago. In it, he states that it takes twenty one days to effectively establish a habit. I know it has worked for me — at least twice.
Upon waking, I down sixteen ounces of water (myriad of health benefits) and I write at least one hundred words every day. I’ve only thirteen more days to go with establishing the morning page habit. agony(?)
Hopefully then, my brain will simply accept it as what I do.
So today, my first sentence was,
I am feeling less resistance to the process today.
Hmmm…interesting.
A few moments later, I looked up and sunshine was gracing my workspace. I took note that it was warming my back. I looked at the eclectic mix of items anchored by a placemat on my kitchen table and thought, I could write about that.
I could make the still life interesting.
There are stories there.
You tell me — was I using it as a distraction or did inspiration come knocking?
So here is the photo — and the stories behind the subjects.
I’ve owned the coffee mug for over a quarter of a century. I have three others just like it. I drink coffee out of them every day (another habit!). I purchased the mugs at a home party, you know — where somebody, usually a woman, comes into your house and tries to sell you and your nearest and dearest family/friends stuff — (crystal, jewelry, candles, purses, spices, etc).
Just about every woman who worked in the office of my first grown-up job, hosted a Princess House party in the early 1990s. We lovingly called the sales woman Princess House Liz.
We actually started inviting her to come to our other social gatherings. Eventually Princess House saturated the market, the parties stopped and we lost touch with Liz.
I politely decline all invitations to home sales parties now.
I purchased the candy canes at Christmas. We had great interest when they were new and gobbled one after another, but by December twenty fifth, they became just another piece of our environment — unnoticed.
I moved them from a living room shelf to the kitchen table yesterday. If they are not gone by weeks end, they are destined for the trash.
The candle was a gift — or a re-gift. When I worked at the school, it was customary for the children to give their teachers small gifts at Christmas and year’s end. I’ve not worked at the school for four years. I do not burn candles often. There have been a couple of near misses with burning down the house. Enough said.
Ahhh — Lilies of the Valley. Against sound advice, I planted them in one of my flower beds. They are garden bullies that gobble up space and are tough to control. I spend too much time trying to curtail their spread, and recognize they were a purely emotional decision — another instance where emotion trumped good sense.
My mother had a patch of them that grew alongside the house I grew up in. My father hated them, for the reasons stated above. He would mow them down when my mother was not looking.
It’s nostalgia — a piece of my history — that keeps the lilies in my flower bed.
So the question remains — did I use the still life as a distraction or inspiration?
I’ll choose inspiration.
When given a choice, I’ve come to learn it makes good sense to put a positive spin on things — if only for my own happiness.
I’ve tried really hard to make a habit of it.
