The World Made By Hand- a Book Review and Tangents

Our little part of Vermont sits in the corner butting up against Berkshire county in Massachusetts and Washington and Rensselaer Counties in New York. So, when I picked up James Kunstler's World Made By Hand I knew the setting intimately. Kunstler, who is more known for his nonfiction books takes draws on the ideas from much of his other writing, including the Long Emergency.

The idea behind the novel is that oil has run out, the United States has been ed in Washington DC and Los Angeles, and there has been two epidemics that have wiped out 1/3 of the population. But that is just the background. The story focuses on one small town in upstate New York and what life is like there. Told through the eyes of Robert who is a carpenter (at least at this point of his life) we see how, in a time when there is no power, no cars, and no centralized government, how the world of this small town evolves. While the plot of the story is driven by various conflicts and adventures Kunstler spends most of his time describing how, in a world without all of the modern "necessities" people get things done.

After reading the first third of the book one night I had to put it down for an entire week. I would get up in the middle of the night and think about the best way to use the land the family cabin is on, I made a list of all the skills I need to learn, I even figured out details about what strengths different family members had how they would be useful. I had to put the book down so that I could refocus myself. After a few days I went from the stressful 'Oh my god this is going to happen tomorrow' attitude to seeing that this isn't immediate but it is possible one.

Last night I picked up the book again last night and finished it. The stress of the week before had subsided and I was excited to find out about the characters. While it isn't a complex emotional story Kunstler does manage to make a reasonable transition from nonfiction to fiction with this novel. I've reviews that criticize his white only setting of the novel but I think it makes sense, he wanted to focus on how things would work, the only diversity is religious. But every book can't be everything, it is just one story so I forgive him the limits he put on the story. It would have been a different book if there were cultural differences that had to be addressed. This is a work of fiction it doesn't have to all things for all people.

The stress that World Made by Hand has left me with has transformed into an excitement that I haven't felt since childhood. While I know none of this is going to happen tomorrow or next month I get a thrill from imagining what exactly life would be like. As a kid I would spend hours imagining so many different realities for myself. What if I was a medieval knight on the road what would I bring? What would it be like to live in "olden days" (Little House on the Prairie)? These questions would fill my mind for hours, including much of my school days. But now I understand that it isn't just if these events happen to prepare for them but that some of these skills and approaches to life might actually be better for me.

All you hear about lately is local food and going green, change for saving our planet has been co-opted by fashion and popularity. What so much of the discussion about these changes forgets is how it affects us as people, right now. We've started making all of our bread products (with a few exceptions) this means that I spend up to an hour a week kneading dough. Not a big deal, except for me it is one of the best parts of my day, sure I could use the mixer to do it but there is something balancing about it, I look forward to it. A lot of these changes involve slowing down and taking more time to focus on ourselves, our families and communities, something that hasn't been important for decades. We live in a country where fame and excessive wealth is considered the apex of achievement. Children are spend more time with nannies and tutors than their own families so that everyone can spend their time 'getting ahead'.


Personally I'd like to slow down a little and spend more time focusing on being a family and enjoying our lives. Of course, that involves financial security but I am not willing to give up our happiness for a financial number that grows inversely to the amount of time we spend together or at least doing things we love.

Art and Cratf part 1 Art

[Thanks to Abi for letting me use her computer and play with the chickens]

A few weeks ago as I sat in a figure drawing workshop waiting for the model to arrive I was talking to the woman sitting next to me. She is ninety and has been an artist since she was eighteen. Still she makes her way up the four flights of stairs in an old factory building to her son’s studio for our weekly workshop. She was telling me the story of their home on a hill in New Jersey. When she and her husband were looking for a house they drove around the area and he sat in the car with the kids while she checked out the house, if she liked it he would come up and check the yard. That was it, they chose a house that way and bought it on the spot and stayed there for over thirty years.

She talked about how the house was perfect for raising boys, which she had three, with a field in the back and the combined open space with the neighbors they could wander freely. She credits the space where her children could watch the living world what helped two of her four children to become artists. The garage was turned into a studio for her where she would paint and draw all day. Often her husband, also an artist, would come home and look in at what she was working on and tell her that it had been the same thing as what he had been working on that same day.

The conversation drifts from art to music to a discussion of ways of increasing the amount of people who come to our workshop. Right now it is small six or seven people at most (I am the youngest by at least forty years), the problem they have is that when they advertise people show up expecting instruction and the members aren’t there for that, they come together to pay for the artist (and I think for all of us it is nice to get out of the daily routine).

The model comes in and we talk with her a little while about poses and timing and then we draw. There was something particular about that model that was very calm; I found that I did not want to use any gesture lines only smooth shadowing and contour lines. My choices were all about what I wanted the sketches and drawings to look like. I spent the entire three hours discovering what sort of line embodied this woman. There was no purpose to what I was doing beyond the image I was creating; I was creating a piece of art.

After an hour the model is done and I am walking down to my car I feel a buzz of energy, I have spent the last two hours working on one single drawing. I felt as though I had just started and there was so much more that I had to do to in that drawing. But it was late and I was tired, despite the buzz of energy. I drove home scarcely listening to the news on the radio even as news of the cyclone was still new.

I take the time once a week to draw the human body not because I want to eventually do large oil paintings of people; in fact I haven’t done an oil painting since college. I draw from life because as I learn the human body I begin to be able to see the world better. To understand how to put other things down on paper in ways that makes sense to my eyes. Like so many other things in my life I know I need to understand myself, or at least my form, to understand the rest of the world.

Even if a lot of my pieces are abstract I still use what I know from figure drawing to create it. For me all of my pieces are all about finding the balance on the page. When I am working on a collage it is almost like a puzzle to find where each piece belongs with in the balance of the page and the feelings I want to express on it. To me this is art, using a visual medium to create a balance in a specific space.

Of course a specific space does not need to be limited by the edges of a piece of paper. When Christo put up his Gates project in New York’s Central Park he was doing the same thing, limiting his space and creating an emotion with it. To be sure his works have more dimensions because not only do they deal with the visual effect of the pieces but also with the human elements of people interacting with them. Each artist creates these parameters for their works.

The boundaries of art are not limited to the visual, but I can not speak about them with much personal experience (I have already talked about writing quite a bit in this blog). What I understand about the creation of art is that it is a relationship one that leans as much on emotions and imagination as it does on technique. I remember being told in college that a piece of art work is never done but I do not believe this; sometimes it is possible to find the balance and then, if you leave it alone, you are done.

Here is a list of some of the artists who have been inspirations to me for a long time. I am not including any artists that I have discovered lately because I have not sat with them long enough to be influenced, regardless to my attraction to their art.

Sonia Delaunay

Georges Braque

Jasper Johns

Alexander Calder

Faith Ringgold

A Quick Note

I know my blogging has reached a snail's pace. I actually have a few entries written but right now I am stuck blogging at the library where I can't up load them. Luckily some friends have offered that I can use their computer to get on line. I don't usually pre-write my entries so this has been an interesting experience.

For those of you Alder fans who have been complaining about the lack of pictures. I promise you that he is cuter than ever and that you are totally missing out... but of course you'll see soon.

As for the rest of our life... well you'll just have to wait and see when we figure it all out.

Have a great weekend.

For Mother's Day

Yesterday while Alder snored in the back seat and I drove through the hills that straddle Vermont and New York I listened to this Mother's Day piece by Eve Schaub and was moved to tears. I don't usually get teary from stories or movies- I'm a cry out of anger or injustice sort of gal, but this did to me.

I give this to everyone of you out there who is a mother or has had one.

Enjoy your Mother's Day

love
Stacey

Motherhooding

Getting ready Halloween 2005

Meredith had a wonderful quote on her blog from Elizabeth Gilbert: "When you sense a faint potentiality for happiness after such dark times you must grab onto the ankles of that happiness and not let go until it drags you face-first out of the dirt. This is not selfishness, but obligation. You were given life; it is your duty and also your entitlement as a human being to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight."

To me this is what motherhood can seem like. Some days it seems as though life with A is just a series of actions that waiver from making him happy and getting stuff done. Those are the days where it is a struggle to find the balance of joy or contentment for both of us. I know and understand what I need to give him for happiness, the things to do with our days and minutes that will make him smile and be at peace. But there is a certain sense of unrest that I feel sometimes when there are things to get done or ideas I want to get down on paper or projects I want to start. Days like that I am not a good catch partner, I can not bring myself to love every dandelion he brings me.

I miss alone time when there wasn't a list of things to get done. I miss when the creative process was always the first on my to do list. But I am learning how to include him in my process, when I bake bread he has his own dough to knead and roll. He has his own drawing space, that he goes to when he wants to draw but he wants me there with him, not drawing my own things but sitting there just watching. I want to be him there, I would scribble and draw excitedly. Instead I watch as my linear son is more interested in lining the markers up and balancing the tops on the table.

So I am learning to search out the things to do that we both love to do. We go for long walks, throw sticks into streams, make mud, we bake and we sing silly songs. Still when we come home and we are sitting on the floor stacking jar lids I turn on the radio and occupy my mind with the world through public radio. I am engaged in both directions but I am also full of guilt that I can not love spending every minute in Alder's world.

What is the secret to entering that world? I know I go there sometimes, and the day goes by smoothly, we both get things done to fill our souls but it is a mystery how and why those day come together. Other days I rush to negotiate time alone to finish just a little of what needs to get done, never getting all the way through to creativity. This blog , most days, is my is my creative outlet.

Yet I agree that we need to holding onto happiness, because it is a fight that we are in. A fight with norms a fight with expectations and with loss of autonomy. So I try every night to look back and see what worked, where we were both happy, and I try to hold it close to me and try to live in it so that the next day I can bring these moments back and add more of them to our day. And maybe, just maybe, I'll have the energy to write a few pages or make something after he goes to bed tonight.

Just a Post

Maybe I should take a break from posting about our saga of choice making. I think I will instead I am going to talk about the other parts of our days, the beautiful bits. Of course everything is a little slow in posting since our internet access is limited to a 2000 laptop at the coffee shop. Still it gets us where we need to go, a little like an old and dependable car.

Instead I'll ask you guys what you want me to talk about, why not.

Leave a comment with ideas!

That Green String

It's still tied to the whole in a snap
the top one on my jean jacket,
that green string.
Back when everything was in doubt,
like now,
we would all knit on Thursdays
at the bar with our beers or wine
by our sides.
We all seemed to be in transition
new lives shifting
new friendships.
The tumult of uncertainty and
winterness was everywhere.

New England cold in Colorado.
But those Thursday nights there
was a bit of lightness (of heart)
and new adventures planned.
Still days were counted in between.
In a long lingering conversation
(of art and books and politics and music)
we wanted to remember how engaged
and warm it felt.

So each of us cut from our skeins
a little bit to tie where they might be remembered
through the hole in my top layer
a bit of cotton a bit of cotton still remains
each time I see it my mind echos
with the warmth of beer and friends
'there's always knitting' said with humor and love.