KC's 1988 journal excerpts on her Art, Jesus, Roles & Goals

     Last week we went to the Arizona Inn, part of a conference Peter was attending.  As usual my attention was divided between the pleasure of taking a vacation from Phoenix, and my usual set of fears.  Were we spending too much money, was I having too much fun?  Certainly the Arizona Inn encourages relaxation.  It's the kind of place where you can sit outside your room, on your own sizable private patio, while you sip margaritas and soak up the sun.  Meanwhile, inside my head, bees buzzed about.  I'm angry at my own inability to relax, angry at my anger.  So I drove all over Tucson with Miles, buying toys.  It was fun to be careless, to splurge a little.  The bees kept humming inside my head, little questions.  My life would be different without Miles, I find it hard to relax around him.

      When Miles got bored – less and less frequently as he gets older — I'd say, "Want to go out?" and he'd always say yes.  So we drove around Tucson in my aging Buick, exploring. 

      I suppose I've used Miles' short attention span as an excuse to indulge my own short attention span.  A friend of mine, a mother of four, complained to me once about her continual sense of restlessness, a feeling she'd had since her teens, she told me.  I knew what she meant. 

      To me it's the feeling that my reverie is constantly interrupted.  Perhaps it's the inner child demanding attention, demanding to be fed.  And one says, "I'm a grown-up now, I'm supposed to be doing grown-up things, not indulging that child."  I couldn't wait to get out of my parents' house, couldn't wait to take on the trappings of adulthood.  I joined the conspiracy of neglect in the process.  I've been imposing adult styles of behaviors onto that needy child, refusing to give it expression, except sometimes in my art. 

      Perhaps going to the toy store felt good precisely because it gave me a chance to express the child within me.  Perhaps I should let my art do that more often, too.  Art that is strictly business always strikes me as boring.  Primitive art is appealing because it is close to the child. 

      Miles is such a loving son.  Very giving, though he does have the artistic temperament.  Saw the cat just now stocking a bird.  Slammed this journal shut bang! just as the cat pounced.  Cat jumped three feet in the air.  Sick of finding bird carcasses on the back porch.  Tried to catch the damn cat to take it to the pound but it got wise to us. 

      I love art and I love philosophy.  I want to study, but I don't want to be an academic.  I can't sustain the necessary posing.  Well, maybe I should just be myself and not worry about it. 

      When we first came back from the trip I noticed that our house looks both interesting and shabby.  I guess if I wanted "perfect" we would have gotten a new place in a development.  As it is, we enjoy bringing out the character in the place, slowly but surely.  The creative process is slow and messy, something the average person is trained to feel uncomfortably about.  We have a consumer culture that derives a great deal of weight from the cleanliness cult.  The goal is to be as perfect as possible.  No allowance is made for accidents or mess. 

      I think we should turn the backroom into a darkroom instead, the backroom washroom, I mean.  Meanwhile work on the studio is proceeding. 

      I painted a design over the side-door, Mexican-style.  These are the weeks of living dangerously - I just figured out how much money we have left to last the next week-and-a-half. 

      Quality of life matters to me — I'm an artist.  The way things look, smell, sound — that all means a great deal to me. 

     I could fritter my life away on things that have no return – the very thing Christ warned against.  How do I make my life more productive than it presently is?  How do I learn to focus on the tasks at hand and not let my attention get diverted by the never-ending demands of narcissism?  And how do I retain a clear sense of who I am – how do I maintain room for play, for goofing-off — for having fun, which I never had as a kid?  How do I bring all these different aspects into balance? 

      This is precisely where I need God's help.

      That sense of playfulness is one of the things I want to show in my work – it's always been missing before.  How could such a central part of my personality be missing in my work? 

      But of course, the art I did as a kid was censored by my parents.  I didn't really paint to please myself.  Can I give myself permission to paint for me at this late date? 

      Yes, I think so.

      I think I stopped painting because I used to do it to earn my parents love.  Once it sunk in that I was wasting my time, I stopped trying.  And when the type of work I did got rejected by my teachers, not just once, but over and over, I felt convinced that there was no reward, no positive feedback.  I had narrow vision in a time of narrow vision.  The early Seventies was a time of withdrawal, in which people retreated into their own worlds.  I retreated, too, but I wasn't happy about it. 

      There's nothing wrong with wanting to be loved.  What's wrong is wanting to be loved on one's own terms.  As long as I insisted on getting my parents love – or some projection of them –I was doomed.  They were the type of people who define others according to a narrow ideology.  So were the liberals I encountered at school.  The last thing in the world I needed or wanted was to be defined by someone else, someone egotistical enough to think they have the right to do so. 

      Of course the teaching profession is tailor-made for people with that particular personality disorder. 

      So how do I learn to love myself – reward myself?  As in, love others as you love yourself?  How do I take care of myself, become responsible for myself? 

      How can I learn to paint for me, because I want to? 

      What about the drudgery that accompanies creative efforts — how do I inspire myself to plough through that?  Do I hold out visions of good pay, prestige, satisfaction with achievement?  This begins to sound like "Wealth: your divine right." 

      What about the pleasure of problem-solving?  Every time I start a picture, I think, how am I going to get on paper what I picture so easily in my minds eye?  That, for me, seems to be where the real excitement lines. 

      How do I deal with the fatigue of trying to pursue my art and take care of the family and the house?  The money worries and the parental responsibility?  How do I juggle all these things?  Where do I begin?  Or do I just plunge in? 

      Perhaps I feel guilty about my love of problem-solving.  My family wasn't big on that type of thing.  That would be putting on airs. 

      The practical problems aren't going to go away, but if that's all I live to solve, I won't feel as if I'm living at all.

      Maybe that's the point — we're defined by the types of problems we address, or seek to solve. 

      I know that my parents saw us kids as extensions of themselves.  Therefore, our only purpose was to solve their problems.   Daughters weren't of much use, so my father raised me and my sister as substitute males.  He didn't do this out of any early feminist leanings — he was the most chauvinistic man I've ever met — but out of a refusal to accept our femininity. 

      I know I would have been an artist anyway — he only confused me about what type of artist I would be. 

      Here I am now, 34, trying to make a fresh start.  Trying to deal with the past at the same time I'm trying to create a present. 

      For the last couple of days I've been working on a pencil sketch — today it started to come to life.  Slow, hard work.  I notice I get frustrated fairly easily, still, after all these years.  I have to be more patient, let the picture come to itself in its own good time.  I think this sketch might make a good painting.  Oils?  I don't know. 

      I need an easel and some paints.  It's been a long time since I did oils.  And I've thought of using tempura, too.  I don't know.

      Can I stick with this — and the other paintings I'd like to do?  I hope so, I really want to make this work. 

      More work on the pencil drawing.  So far, so good.  I'm thinking of calling it "Thief", but that may be too melodramatic.  On the other hand, the picture quite frankly seeks a dramatic moment. 

    I feel depressed.  And for the last couple of days it's been uncharacteristically rainy and gray.  Is it that simple? 

      Anyway, as far as the picture I'm working on goes, it's coming along great.  Better than I expected.  I have to keep telling myself to be patient as I work on it.  I've worked every day this week, going a little bit at a time, patiently building up the details.  What I wonder now is, when did I lose the ability to work that way?  I suppose when I went into my teen years' Grand Awakening.  It feels so good to work the way I do best, patiently.  But that patience has to come from an interior place of balance.  Trying to keep up with all my parents' expectations really laid the stress on thick and toppled over my fragile self-esteem. 

      I guess when I started to do well this activated expectations in them that must have always been there, like a sleeping dragon. 

      What made it worse was the way they couldn't make up their minds.  They didn't really want me to do too well, surpass them too much.  They wanted my success under their control.   It was very wrong and it screwed me up for years.   I was foolishly anxious to please, but of course I got more and more irritable as this whole scenario played itself out. 

      I don't like people crowding me.  I go into a deep freeze when someone makes unreasonable demands on me. 

     Now maybe I'm finding a better way of dealing with unreasonable demands.  People make those all the time.  I'd end up in a state of suspended animation if I reacted to every demand that way.  I've got to learn how to say, No, something my parents never allowed. 

      Perhaps this is an important turning point in my life.  But here are no fanfares, no parades. 

      Perhaps the image I have for myself is inadequate – and that's the point.  God wants — and knows — what's best for me.  It would feel like a tremendous relief to turn my cares over to God.  Too often I mix up worries and responsibilities.  I think that when I'm worrying I'm being responsible. 

      The fact is, I will lose everything eventually — perhaps not so eventually – so why should I try to control every aspect of my life? 

       Everything I do is a contribution to this image I have of myself.  What is that image?  Does it come from God or is it a false idol? 

      For a long time my self-image was a product of my parents' self-image.  Their expectations and projections created my ideas about what I should aspire to.  Then there was also the genetic factor.  I inherited a look, a set of talents and weaknesses, and a temperament.  With all these givens I was still very much an individualist.  But in reacting against them on some issues I was letting them determine the flow of thought and deed. 

      I think that if you believe Jesus is with you, you don't ever have to be really lonely.  And that's the lesson I learned (none too willingly) as a child.  To be totally alone is rare, but it's something we all fear.  During the years after my brother's death I felt pretty close to being totally alone, but I survived by clinging to my belief that Jesus was with me.  So I was never totally alone. 

      Ideally I see myself as someone created to serve God – I think we all are.

      What do you want me to be, God?  How do I find out?  Am I in the ballpark now or way out in left field?  If you want something radically different from what I've been doing, will you give me the courage and the patience to change? 

      If I've made too many wrong turns will you give me hope so that I don't despair out of frustration when I have to retrace my tracks? 

      Do you want me to be a part of the system or do you want me to observe it?  Or change it? 

      What I hear from Jesus doesn't lead me to want to buy into the system's philosophy.  But if I openly resist it, I know I might get hurt, perhaps destroyed. 

      It seems like no sooner do I get identity of my own that you ask me to hand it over to you, God.  I keep hoping that I'll get to do some humble little job, something where you won't pay too much attention to me or make unreasonable demands on me.  I want to go running in the opposite direction, away from you and your plans for me. 

      But then I think, who in the world would I trust to tell me who to be?  I could borrow from this model and that model, but I don't want to be a clone of anyone else. 

      And if I follow Jesus' lead?  How would that change my present choices? 

      Who am I then, in your eyes?

      1.  I'm a mother.  A biological fact. My son is seven.  I take care of the needs he can't meet and in addition I provide guidance with love. 

      2.  I'm a wife.  A sacramental and legal fact.  I'm my husband's partner in life and love.  We share responsibilities and joys. 

      3.  I'm an artist.  A fact of talent and performance.  A fact of personality. 

      But there's something else.  God gave me other gifts, less easily definable, more mystical, I suppose — or more psychological.  Gifts of the soul.  Here is where society has nothing to tell me.  Here is where God tells me what my responsibilities are.  I've used those gifts to make myself a better wife and mother – and I hope, artist.   Is that enough in God's eyes?   Enough at this point? 

      Learn to do the small things well first, Jesus said.  I've gotten pretty good at the wife and mother thing but the artist thing needs work.  The artist thing is closer to the soul.  Art can be an expression of the soul – to some extent it always is, even commercial art.  Art can bring soul into the marketplace where otherwise it wouldn't exist. 

      Isn't it my ego that want's something grand – wants to be a hero in your eyes, God?   The grand gesture, the noble hero? 

      But then should I settle for too little?   No.  I 'm clear on that.   In my previous jobs I settled for too little. 

      The religious education I had taught me to be uncomfortable with the marketplace.  But the marketplace is our society's arena for action.  To sit outside the marketplace as a means to be "holy" means being a hermit.  Or a Saint Francis of Assisi. 

      I can't pretend I feel totally comfortable in the marketplace. 

      What if St. Francis had decided to create beautiful fabric designs for rich customers of his father? 

      Boy, in society's eyes, I know I'm way out in left field. 

      And maybe in God's, too.  One can't be a hermit and remained married.   Or be a mother.   The hermit thing is out at this point in my life.  I don't get to be simon-pure. 

      Back to the marketplace then. 

      Maybe I blew it in terms of what you ideally wanted from me, God.   Or maybe not.   Maybe my ideas of the ideal are my own inflated projections.  After all, I believe you brought Peter and me together to love one another and help one another. 

      Art can make the marketplace a more humane place.  Working would help me pay for Miles' education in later years and help Peter with the burden of financial responsibility.  In later years I make get to be a hermit, anyway, when I'm a lot older. 

      Perhaps in these years I can improve my skills, learn to be more courageous.  I doubt God wants cowardly hermits. 

      I don't believe that God calls me to be irresponsible towards my family. 

      I have this image of myself working at home in obscurity, turning out little masterpieces that get discovered (by whom I've no idea) after my death.  That sounds pretty crazy to me. 

      The system of specialization.  The lessening of personal responsibility.  The codependents nightmare.  The world is falling apart and I have to save it – control it. 

      The rules are changing.  Responsible.  Able to respond.  The dictionary says, Responsible implies holding a formal organizational role, duty, or trust.  Another synonym besides answerable is trustworthy. 

      I'm answerable for my decision to be a wife and mother.  I'm answerable for the use of my talents. 

      My art always sprung from my relationship with God.  It seems like something sacred to me.  Maybe I'm confusing skill with expression.  The skill can be used for stained-glass windows or ads and telephone books.  The skill can be used badly or well.  The self-expression can be a minimal or major factor in the work.  

      Perhaps what troubles me is the loss of the sacred in our society.  The values of the marketplace don't belong in the temple?  But Jesus hung out with the members of the marketplace rather than the members of the temple for the most part. 

      Perhaps what I most admire in Renaissance art is the smooth blending of sacred and secular. 

      The more I write the more I sound to my own ears to be neurotic on this whole subject.  I suspect I ought to keep working, keep studying.  Stop worrying.  Trust God.  There is no Church to be my patron.  I needed a father, a good father.  Someone to lead me into the world.  Because I never had that successfully I'm left adrift. 

      I believe in the goodness of life.  I believe that even [in] the midst of chaos God can draw forth our creativity.  In fact, without the conflict, life would be flat, un-alive.  Jesus represents creative chaos. 

      Part of me wants a cozy safe spot where can I huddle against the storm.  Part of me is a risk taker, ready to take the plunge. 

       Did a watercolor today in the midst of a fairly deep depression. 

      The watercolor is of Peter and Miles at the carnival.  Peter looks jovial in the picture, Miles wistful.  The perspective is faked, but the overall mood I intended comes across. 

      I should do more watercolors.  I'm not slick with the medium but I handle it pretty well, well enough to sell some.  

      I think I've changed more radically than I realized.  Painting is becoming a steady, regular part of my life.  I've started saving money.  I work even when I'm depressed.  All significant changes. 

      A heavy, damp blanket rests on the city today. 

      I feel a small sense of gladness, something that burns in the heart like a votive candle.  How strange it is!  This emotion comes unbidden, flickers but feels hot, an undulating warmth. 

      It sounds melodramatic to say it, but I feel as if I'm moving toward my destiny after many false starts.  Not that I have any clear idea as to where I'm headed, just more certain that this is the right direction.  Certainly to work steadily on my art is right, even in the face of great doubts.  Which I've always had and suspect I always will. 

      The generalist in our society occupies a difficult position.  As soon as one steps outside of one's specialty, one's on dangerous ground in terms of responsibility.  I've been confused on this subject for as long as I can remember.

      Some of it is that I have a horror of narrowing my vision – the thought of being rustled into some specialty has always given me the creeps.  It would be as if someone had clipped my wings.

      I've had to spend much of my life analyzing constantly — analysis has been my diving bell slowly rising, protection against the emotional bends. 

      I've reached a point where I feel like I can cope more freely with life — faith has its place, after all.  You couldn't possibly begin to analyze every eventuality.  Was it lack of faith that led me to intellectualize endlessly in the past?  Perhaps.  I had no accurate model of love to lead me into life with trust.  Now that I've learned love and believe in imperfect love being better than nothing, I want to put analyzing capacity into more useful pursuits.  Which means a narrowing of focus, something I feel frightened by. 

      I don't know where to begin – the choice of what to analyze first is an act of faith. 

      To focus means withdrawal from a multitude scenes, to lose one's sense of infinite possibility within oneself. 

      Why is this so hard to do?  Is there a godlike self-image that must be forfeited in order to accomplish anything in this life?  Are the series of seemingly useless, purposeless mortalities precisely the point about human life?  Particularity over possibility?  Something gets extracted out of chaos after all? 

      The most pressing question behind my experience of my brother's early death was what was the point of his life?  I wanted to discover the meaning behind limits. 

      As an artist I love the structure of making definitions.  But as I got into adolescence I felt overwhelmed by a sense of wasted effort.  Why bother?  Why define this way rather than that?  Perhaps I was just picking up on the atmosphere of relativism that had settled over the academic world.  By parents, with their prejudices, seemed too certain of their rightness.  My teachers seemed certain that they were right, too.  How could everybody be right?  I drifted into reality, marriage, work, child.  Talk about getting down to basics, the realm of common sense.  All the polemics in the world couldn't make a marriage work or put food on the table or comfort a child.  I wanted my analyzing serve these humble needs.  I feel a sense of confidence – give myself an A for the results. 

      So am I ready to graduate onto more challenging matters?  I guess that's where I'm at now.  And why do I feel such a strong sense of fresh beginnings?  Perhaps because [?] I laid a foundation for the rest of my life with the analyzing I've done so far.  For awhile I got onto the wrong track, extending the scope of my analyzing beyond the immediate parameters of the family – to Peter's brother, my sister, my friends.  I went through those mazes only to come to a dead end. 

      What sort of problem-solving is appropriate then?  Where am I most needed — and most useful?  I might have as much as fifty or more years ahead of me.  I want to put those years to good use.  Maybe I should start with the basics of science and history, see where I feel most drawn.  Or should I trust myself to art alone?  But what is art for art's sake?  Somehow that seems like such an empty exercise. 

      The idea of service dominates my thinking.  Perhaps that is where my analysis should begin.  Jesus said He called us to be friends, not servants.  A friend occupies a position of trust, of creativity. 

      I feel that I may be wrong in my attitude about art.  But to do something good out of intellectual fealty to the idea of goodness is a far cry from true engagement of the heart. 

      So my art has to struggle up through layers of intellectualizing.  My feelings count — as a friend's do – but they are unknown to me.  No wonder I feel this oppressive sense of not knowing what I want.  No, what I want is not the issue — I may well not be able to have what I want – but I would at least like to know what I feel.  That seems so repressed, so lost to me right now. 

      I know I do good work, so what's the problem?  There's a picture I want to do, but I feel on the edge of hysteria because I can't find anything.  Am I on the verge of a nervous breakdown or is this just more of the usual frustration?  Maybe I should calm down and take things one step at a time.  I need the photos I took down in Tucson, which seem to have disappeared, as has the film I bought this weekend.  I remember putting away everything but the film.  Why do I set myself up this way? 

      I'm really having trouble getting organized.  What with finishing my degree this summer and all the consequent paperwork, I've been letting things slip in other areas of my life.  I'm too dammed impatient, for one thing.  And always prepared to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. 

      Why don't I like myself as I am? 

      Why can't I accept who I am?  Why am I so full of bitterness and anger?  Why do I have so little faith in myself?

      After a childhood of having good and bad spelled out so clearly, am I still looking for someone to define life for me as easily as my parents did? 

      I guess I want someone to tell me that I'm good as forcefully as they told me I'm bad. 

      What is faith, if not choosing to walk in a certain direction, the one direction that seems most appealing. 

      I need to believe that I'm worthy of love.  But I have to accept working to win it, too. 

      I think if I'm going to paint nature, I'm going to have to go out of the city to do it. 

      I'd like to join the local art league, be involved with art on that level.  I'd like to study philosophy and computer science, be a professional.  I don't want to be famous; I'd like to be respected.  I put a high value on privacy and space. 

      If I go to school I should take it semester by semester.  I can take art as recreation, study languages, philosophy, and blend in computer science.  I've got the whole rest of my life ahead of me. 

      I know I do good work, so what's the problem?  There's a picture I want to do, but I feel on the edge of hysteria because I can't find anything.  Am I on the verge of a nervous breakdown or is this just more of the usual frustration?  Maybe I should calm down and take things one step at a time.  I need the photos I took down in Tucson, which seem to have disappeared, as has the film I bought this weekend.  I remember putting away everything but the film.  Why do I set myself up this way? 

      I'm really having trouble getting organized.  What with finishing my degree this summer and all the consequent paperwork, I've been letting things slip in other areas of my life.  I'm too dammed impatient, for one thing.  And always prepared to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. 

      Why don't I like myself as I am? 

      Why can't I accept who I am?  Why am I so full of bitterness and anger?  Why do I have so little faith in myself?

      After a childhood of having good and bad spelled out so clearly, am I still looking for someone to define life for me as easily as my parents did? 

      I guess I want someone to tell me that I'm good as forcefully as they told me I'm bad. 

      What is faith, if not choosing to walk in a certain direction, the one direction that seems most appealing. 

      I need to believe that I'm worthy of love.  But I have to accept working to win it, too. 

      I think if I'm going to paint nature, I'm going to have to go out of the city to do it. 

      I'd like to join the local art league, be involved with art on that level.  I'd like to study philosophy and computer science, be a professional.  I don't want to be famous; I'd like to be respected.  I put a high value on privacy and space. 

      If I go to school I should take it semester by semester.  I can take art as recreation, study languages, philosophy, and blend in computer science.  I've got the whole rest of my life ahead of me.