climbing mountains, opening views

Hamilton Basso, the author I have written a biography of, compared creativity or rather, writing novels, to climbing mountains. Once you've reached the top, you may be done with a book but you see another mountain looming in the distance and you cannot withstand the urge to climb that one, too. And so the journey starts all over again.

I have been thinking about this lately because we have been experiencing some job turmoil on the home front and to stop from self-obsessing or thinking about having to move to Milan or Singapore, I have jumped on my bike and biked up Wild Cat Canyon, a 2.8 mile ride uphill which leads one to Inspiration Point from where you can see the entire Bay Area if you had 360 vision. Every day when I start that climb, all my evil inner voices, those handmaidens of sloth and pride, hiss at me to turn back, relax and mind my own business. Every loop I make is debated by them, but the moment the view on the San Pablo Reservoir jumps into view, the smell of eucalyptus trees becomes more pronounced, and the remnants of fog cool my forehead, I feel euphoric--not for accomplishing the ride but for withstanding those evil women who want me to sit at home and knit sweaters. Living dangerously, daring to dream or seeking without ever finding is not their game. Writing, just like climbing mountains, comes with the risk of falling but if you are not prepared to try or fall, you will never get to enjoy the view either.

When I throw myself down that mountain with speeds that a 40-year-old mother of two should not be indulging in, I feel triumphant and these past few weeks I have experienced, for the first time in my life really, that pushing physical boundaries opens up the mental ones and when I whizz down Wild Cat, I am ready to take on the world again. I have never understood exercising for the sake of exercising or building abs of steel. It is the mind-body connection that is really interesting when you reach the kind of endorphin boost which is comparable to finishing a book that was hard to write. So feeling blue? Climb a mountain, find your view and savor the thrill.

BEING CREATIVE

CREATIVE LIVING

Everyone’s life is his work of art. The way you dress, the conversation you create, the space you live in…all are visible evidence of your unique take on life. I think of creativity as a continuum and we are all at different places on that scale at different stages of our lives. And at each period, we use our ingenuity to take control of our lives without creating chaos in those who rule us. As babies, we need to get our mother’s attention to get fed and as adults we need to figure out how to navigate the establishment to accomplish our own goals and get swallowed up by their rules and restrictions if we are to move ahead in life toward our own goals. That is what it is all about.
I am one of those people is always at the high end of that continuum. This can cause immense problems because I cannot seem to keep myself inside the box…any box for that matter and I must admit those around me would love to just take me down to a packing store and get me contained as fast as possible
I like to think these imaginative solutions I create are the result of being a repressed fifties woman. When I was a child, little girls never spoke unless spoken to. You had to be really original to get your needs expressed or you were simply forgotten sitting down at the end of the dinner table sucking your thumb because there was nothing left on the platter when it got to you or watching your skin get all wrinkled because your mother forgot you in the bath tub.
And I always was very clever. I think one of my most ingenious solutions was breaking out in hives. If I sat at the dinner table and felt smothered by all the lively conversation drowning out my own observations about butterflies of nipping puppies, I would start to wiggle and scratch and jump around as if possessed.
This always re-focused all the adult attention on me and I usually got a second helping of chocolate pie to calm my nerves after my mother smeared me with calamine lotion.
As I got older, I refined my creative solutions but always they were original and very unsettling. I am not very belligerent. As a child I preferred reading Betsy-Tacey books to getting out there and playing tag. In the first place you sweat when you play tag and that would have made my mother furious. My mother would dress me to go outside in a starched pinafore, a white ruffled blouse, long white socks and Mary Jane shoes. “You cannot sit in the house reading books all day,” she would scream (She was usually very frustrated by all the things women had to do in those days before THEY could get out of the house like scrub floors on their hands and knees and wring out the laundry by hand, cook dinner on a conventional stove with no food processor and wash windows.)
SO she would always scream at me instead of society because society wouldn’t listen to her. I always did. “GO OUTSIDE AND PLAY” she would shout. “YOU LOOK PALE. ”
She would shove me out the door, grab my book and hide it in her apron pocket and say,” NOW HAVE FUN…BUT DON’T GET DIRTY.”
So there I was looking like a cut out from a child s fashion magazine staring into space while all the grubby conventional children did what grubby conventional children did to keep themselves amused. They tossed each other around, threw things at one another, chased each other and kicked things.
I stood on the front porch and watched carefully brushing the detritus from their romping exuberance off my Mary Jane shoes.
One little bully whose IQ was obviously three points below that of a demented snail couldn’t seem to understand why I stood on our back porch observing him and scratching my mosquito bites. Instead of inviting me to join the group, he marched up the steps of the porch and smacked me in my tummy. “You wrinkled my dress,” I said and I backed away.
He looked at me with all the rage that little boys need to learn to carry them into successful manhood when they are confronted with the women who scorn them and he spit in my face.
My neighbor was watching this little interplay from her window and she could stand no more of this blatant chauvinistic behavior. ‘Spit back, Lynn Ruth!” she screamed.
Now my tears were so copious I could barely talk, my dress was ruined, and my shoes were spattered. My mother would be furious and I was defeated. I looked at that woman and I said the words that would be my excuse for every failure I ever had from that day forward. “I can’t spit straight!” I said.
This is not a very creative solution, you are thinking and you are wrong. I immediately became the center of attention. All the neighbors who saw the scene were scandalized. The little girls who witnessed my humiliation immediately rushed up to me and dried my tears and smoothed my ruffled pinafore. They looked at that nasty bully with hate and rejection. “Go away,” they said. “We never want to play with you again.”
Which, in the forties, was rejection worse than being denied your x box or trashing your skate board in the twenty-first century
And then the loveliest, best- looking, kindest sweetest boy on the block took my hand and said, “ Come with me Lynnie Ruth. I will teach you to spit straight. “
I looked up at his sweet, caring face and realized that I had won the game. “I love you,” I said.
Which is another way we used to control men….in those days of course…and win the game.

WE LIVE IN A SELFISH WORLD

As a child, I was taught to give to others and to share what I have with those less fortunate. That philosophy has faded in our "Me first" world and that is not totally a bad thing. My determination to be selfless results in a lot of passive-agressive behavior that sends double messages to people and creates anger and stress in me. I find myself furious at friends who are only taking me up on what I offered to them. For instance, I live very near the San Francisco Airport. I have told innumerable people to let me know if they need me to pick them up at the airport. I tell them I would be happy to take them home. My assumption is that considerate people who care about me would never ask me to drive them farther than a few miles from where I live. They would respect my hours and my commitments. This is a wrong assumption. The first violation of this concept happened when a dear, dear friend asked me to pick him up at 10 pm and drive him in to San Francisco. I hated to say no so I got in the car, arrived on time and waited a half hour for him to get to the pick-up area, another 15 minutes while he gabbed on his cell phone, and then drove him home. I got back to my house well after midnight. He never offered to pay for gasoline and he didn't even say thank you. All he said was good night.
His was the model of considerate behavior compared to the next woman who not only insisted I pick her up when she returned from Italy ( a trip I could never afford) after I had once refused. She wanted me to drive her to Half Moon Bay even though the trip is now a very long one clogged with traffic. However, her plane was delayed and she arrived at ten pm. I encouraged her to take the shuttle to MY house because I never dreamed she would really do it. She did. She waited until I returned from a comdey gig and expected me to drive her home through the fog ...an hour's drive now that Devil's Slide is closed. I could hardly believe she would ask anyone, much less a woman of my age to do this for her. It occurred to me than that it is I who made these people believe I have nothing better to do with my time than chauffeur them from one place to another. I berated myself for my inability to say, "No. I can afford neither the gasoline nor the time nor the energy to take people twenty years my junior all over the peninsula. How can you ask me to do this?"
The answer is because I offered to help them out.
My neighbor down the street heard that I have extra room in my freezer. I had told her she was welcome to store food there assuming that she would put in a chicken, or a few boxes of frozen veggies, no more. I believed she would respect the fact that my own food had priority over hers. How wrong I was! This morning I awoke to find my freezer completely re-organized to make room for a large box of shrimp, several chickens and God only knows what else in what was now a packed freezer running on overtime to keep its contents cold. I could find nothing I wanted to use for supper; I could not even move the box and bags she had packed in there because they were so heavy.
All three of these people are kind, giving, lovely human beings . The miscommunication has to do with my basic philosophy being totally out of date. I have always believed my first obligation is to others in society...this means that I neglect the very pressing needs I have to write, paint and create on a variety of levels. These three people believe that their first obligation is to themselves as human beings to take care of their own needs no matter how shallow and irrelevant they may seem to others. My first buddy believed that his saving shuttle fare was more important than my getting a story done for my magazine or writing a blog like this. My Italian traveler thought that saving $98.00 she could easily afford was well worth making me forget my fatigue at the end of a very long day of performing, writing and doing my own chores. The fact that I was tired, had not eaten and could not afford the gasoline she wanted me to use to drive her to Half Moon Bay did not even occur to her. She is kind and giving in a multitude of ways but never when it inconveniences her. The freezer lady has done innumerable wonderful things for me. Yet, she is always very quick to tell me when she is too busy to help. I owe her freezer room if she uses discretion in how much she takes, but she will not. I owe that young man endless favors for kindnesses he has done for me but I cannot assume he will respect MY time as I respect his. The Italian traveler is as loving and kind a friend as I could ever want. All three are living the Me First philosophy to their advantage. I am very tempted to do as they do...not try to help someone in need...not try to sacrifice myself for someone else in small, comfortable ways ...not care that a person is stranded at an airport, wants to take advantage of a sale, needs my help delivering for her. But I DO care because of who I am. When I deal with people IN MY GENERATION I never feel abused. Gwen O'Neill asked me to deliver magazines for her when she could not because of her replaced knee. BUT as soon as she was able, she took over the job. She let me choose my own time and my own pace because she is in MY generation and knows when something is too much to ask. My darling friend Kerry has asked my help her out but she more than repays me for every favor I do for her WITHOUT MY EVEN ASKING. She is not in my generation but still she cares and is sensitive to others in a beautiful, delightful and refreshing way.
What is my conclusion here? I think it is this: Once I get the measure of the person, it is I who must set the limits of how much time or effort I can give away without sacrificing myself. It is obvious that not one of the three people I described would give one minute to me if it were not easy for them Since I cannot ignore a need when I see it, I must learn to force myself to prioritize my own time. When I make an offer, I must not expect people to be sensitive to my needs or who I am. It is I who must announce the parameters of my favors because I live in this world now and it is a selfish one. It is a place where people are determined first and foremost to make their own dreams come true. I certainly cannot say that is a bad thing. It is my job to adapt my priorities to the attitudes that prevail now, not those that I learned them when I was a child.