The Pits

Ripening fruition of love

Three Peaches

Love is a high inducement to the individual to ripen, to become something in himself, to become a world for himself for another's sake...--Rilke, Letter to a Young Poet

Three small pits pocketed. Peach pits flew home with me from the temples of Paestum, Italy last month. Pits from the not-so-ripe fleshy fruits picked from waxy green leafed trees growing where once blushing roses bloomed at the altar of Aphrodite. 

Earlier in the summer, I planted three peach trees in my Germantown garden in Upstate New York. Three is a number used routinely in fairytales.

The Greek philosopher Pythagoras postulates that the number three is perfect. The number of harmony, wisdom, and understanding. The noblest number. The holy trinity. Three is represented by the triangle. The triangle is the strongest shape. In numerology, it signifies creativity and charm. "People who resonate with the number three in their lives are creative souls who find joy in artistic endeavors." I was born in March, the third month of the year, making me number three. 

I'm holding three pits in my hand, my hand in my pocket, imagining future stone fruit and the pits I fall into when contemplating my creative selfhood.

Aphrodite is often illustrated with a peach in hand. It's thought to have symbolized fertility and desire. It was also associated with the God of marriage, Hymen. (Now you know why your hymen is called such) and the English name Peach originates from Greek: Persikon malon, which actually meant Persian apple. Peaches are my favorite fruit. The best peaches I've eaten grow a mile down our country road at Pott's Peach Orchard. 

Love Boss

I think I am in the third stage of selfhood. Not the crone. Instead, a return to a self hidden from sight, selfhood seeded in me. A Self defined better by the number three than by 21st-century womanhood. An Artist self. And I am returning like a triangle spinning its three angles to become a circle, a crown, a fleshy, soft-skinned, peachy keen round shaped artist (also a little fuzzy on the face these days).

Ignite

Once upon a time, I was asked to contemplate how my name informed my identity. At that time, I did not know I carried the name of the goddess, Eos, from Greek Mythology, but I knew my name wasn't Katy or Nicole, and when I said my name: Dawn Breeze, it evoked the senses. Fun fact: Eos (goddess of the dawn) was cursed by Aphrodite for sleeping with Eros. She was cursed with ceaseless passion. I relate.

Later I would find my name scripted in my favorite poem via a fallen fragment by the great Persian poet Rumi In the poem Rumi wrote:

"The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you. Don't go back to sleep. You must ask for what you really want. Don't go back to sleep."

I felt winded when I found my name, Dawn Breeze, lying there. Winded, like God rattling something awake in me. This was at the age of twenty-eight, the age I declared I was an Artist. Something I was afraid to say. Something I was scared to be. I was not a mother yet, still a maiden. Still trying to understand what it meant to be an Artist but excited to be one. Being an artist was an antidote to being asleep.

Being an Artist was something others had been saying I was since I was born. But my middle school I had learned that being an artist was synonymous with poverty and disrespect unless you achieved greatness via painting the likeness of fruits in a bowl. I was not sure I wanted to be the Artist everyone said I was. Not to mention there were no famous women artists, at least none I was shown. So in the hurry scurry of teendom, I determined I would pursue glamour via the fashion industry vs. fine art. I wanted to be rich and famous. I wanted a successful career. Things that would save me from my circumstances (picture poor smart girl raised in  broken dysfunctional home). I learned quickly there is nothing glamorous about being at the bottom rung of a classist enterprise that puts profits into men's hands created by slave labor. Disillusioned and dedicated to finding a place that promised creative potential, I moved Upstate in my mid-twenties. 

Upstate, I found myself pulling over to the side of a country road and weeping at the wonder of violetlapped sky, curves of cobalt mountains, and glistening silver ripples on the river. The beauty of the place moved me. Inspired me. Shortly into my new residence, I started making mixed-media artworks instinctually. Daily expressions of joy deftly brushed and splattered on paper and canvas. This playful activity led me towards a reclamation and declaration of myself as an Artist. It was a brave announcement. 

I pronounced this new found artist Self on the cusp of my motherhood. 

—--

During my recent trip to Italy, I read good books. (Note: the last time I went to Italy was six years ago an important fact later in this letter and not just because it’s a number divisible by three). One of the books I read was Monsters by Claire Dededre.

Claire’s book tackles the moral conundrum of loving art made by monsterous men. What was most exciting to me in reading it was that I found much of Claire's memoiristic critique centered around The Art Monster from Department of Speculation by Jenny Offil. In Department of Speculation, the wife character says:

"My plan was to never get married. I was going to be an art monster instead. Women almost never become art monsters because art monsters only concern themselves with art…" 

This was a fun surprise to find my friend Jenny’s thoughts referenced by Claire, but really no surprise because Jenny’s thoughts are great! Like Claire and countless other artist-moms, the concept of the Art Monster winded me (that god-rattling truth wind I referenced earlier). When I encountered the Art Monster in Jenny’s book I was five years into parenting my first and only child, well, better stated, my first and only human child. I read it, rattled, because I recognized something desperate in me that had been forsaken and denounced by motherhood. My artist selfhood. 

I met Jenny at this point in my life through my late friend, Rebecca Godfrey, a great novelist and mother of a child the same age as my son. Rebecca was nobly organizing a circle of artist/writer-mothers in the area into a book club, which she admitted was meant to be more than a book club. She hoped it would be a sanctuary for the Selves we neglected in service to child-rearing and wifedom. During the decade from then to now, Rebecca and I curated an exhibit and chapbook called; Girls in Trees. It was testimony to the feral nature of untamed girls, their fierce and precious innocence. We called each other "Monster" endearingly and winked secretly throughout the behemoth project in reference to what Jenny had named—our secret desire to be Art Monsters. During our decade of friendship, we raised our babies into teens and remained tormented by about what it meant to be: A mother, a wife, and an artist with a career. The marvel is that no matter what we did, we felt we were not doing a good job at any of the identities named above.

Claire Dedere does something, or did something great for me in Monsters, more significant than what Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet did for me when I gained courageous momentum to announce my artist hood in my twenties. She helped me isolate and give language to a layer of challenge that goes beyond the challenges laid out to the young male poet Rilke addresses. Rilke writes (Italics mine):

"So, dear Sir, I can't give you any advice but this: to go into yourself and see how deep the place is from which your life flows; at its source you will find the answer to the question of whether you must create. Accept that answer, just as it is given to you, without trying to interpret it. Perhaps you will discover that you are called to be an artist. (Yes–got that memo)

Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what reward might come from outside. (This is hard cuz we all know art and capitalism are not ideal partners…but Ok, let's consider this.) For the creator must be a world for himself and must find everything in himself and in Nature, to whom his whole life is devoted. (Agreed!)"

—Letter 1

The challenge Claire articulated, a challenge unknown to Rilke, is the fear and shame seeded into women and particularly mothers that we are monsters should we desire solitude, or should we desire to devote our attention to artmaking and anything outside and away from child-rearing. Claire illustrates through chilling examples that the greatest monster in our society is not the rapist or pedophile but rather the mother who abandons her child, the mother artist. The Art Monster that Jenny named. This left me rattled (again). Claire named the horror I've felt towards a desire that is monstrous for a mother to say; the desire to care for one's artist self with daily devotion. And because you cannot do all simultaneously (care for yourself, your child, your partner, and your art practice), you suffer doing your best job surviving versus thriving while not admitting the desire for solitude and artmaking.

Claire highlights how this is not a man's problem. A man is not a monster when he leaves his child from 7:00am-7:00pm to pursue a career or closes a door for quiet. A man can be a great father and a great artist. Try to find that equation for a mother. A mother is scorned and shamed for such behavior. Words like neglectful and selfish are used for mothers that leave their children to pursue their projects. I've fought with this painful truism for all the years my son has been alive. (Have any of you seen Oppenheimer? There is a scene that illustrates this unquestioned phenomenon perfectly!)

I battled this inequitable artist-parent equation by heroically fighting for other artist mother's needs, by creating residencies, exhibits, publications, workshops, etc. at Instar Lodge. I found a way to feel safe from my own feelings of monstrosity if I applied my artistry to serve others in need versus a personal practice. Many years ago, my therapist said we often find ourselves giving others what we need to give to ourselves. Yes, of course, but if satisfying my need for solitude also confirms I am abominable versus providing support to other artists, which makes me worthy, what is the better choice?

I don't want to over-simplify the difficulty I had and still have in claiming and naming myself as an artist over and over again. I recognize there have been more obstacles than motherhood alone. But, I do want to thank Jenny Offil and Claire Dededer for giving language to some of my unnamable artist mother anguish. Recognizing myself in others helps me not remain in quite despair, but instead inspires me to make space again for a personal artistic practice and evolved identity as an artist now.

—--

When I returned home from Italy, my Ipad played a flashback to my summer six years ago to date. I saw that I emptied my art studio, held a backyard studio sale, and moved out of it. I graduated from Goddard College with a Masters degree in Interdisciplinary Arts. I organized a massive art exhibit fundraiser with over a hundred female artists for Planned Parenthood, and I did this all holding my son's hand during the month of July six years ago (also the last time I went to Italy). Looking at the photos, I can remember the feeling of exhaustion, being winded…

Being winded is a feeling I've felt most of my life from relentless patriarchy gut-punching, an invisible manhandling of my divinity.

(Note: Barbie, the movie, illustrates a simplified version of this complex patriarchy paradigm quite well)

As I watched my life slide past my eyes in photo’s I thought about all that I didn’t know yet then. I didn’t know I would build a fellowship program for young people to be empowered to find their creative calling. I didn’t know I would rebuild my artist studio space either.

When I rebuilt my artist studio I thought I no longer needed a fine arts studio and so I made a library and small bedroom in a newly constructed barn. It was a room for myself. A place for retreat. A place waiting for my return. A place Virginia Woolf so rightly knew all women needed.

—-----

In fairy tales, the main character is often asked to identify what they really want, and their third wish is usually the wise one. Rumi instructs us to ask for what we really want in his poem (my poem, wink wink)

The breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

Don't go back to sleep.

You must ask for what you really want.

Don't go back to sleep.

What do I really want, I ask?

Before I would answer: 

1. I want a successful career

2. I want marriage and a child 

Note: as an eighties child, the patriarchal script persisted; the only difference was ordering desires, as I had Working Girl in mind so career was first then child.

Working Girl (when hair was big work)

Now, like the character in the fairytale who has had their earlier two wishes granted but still finds themselves in the occasional pits of despair, I answer with my third wish:

3.  I want to be the beauty I love. Beloved. Artist.

Returning to the Artist that is I or turning into the Artist that is I, like an ecstatic Sufi twirling their divinity in endless circles, is what I want. Roses, peaches, sunrises, sunsets, the nut of me… all that I love…

I want more of it. Buried in my passions, buried in me, are secrets I will share (as Rumi tells). I want to nurture and cultivate more of what I love.

Now home, holding my three hard peach pits in hand, I am determined. I will care for the pits that cradle precious seeds of future fruits that will grow in my garden. Sweet stone fruits that Aphrodite, goddess of love, held in her hand. I will grow the fruition of love, which is also the uppercase I in this sentence. 

I write this letter from my old-new studio, my room of my own.  I look forward to what I will be, come fall, when I begin visiting this new Artist space with daily devotion.

"You have not grown old, and it is not too late

To dive into your increasing depths

where life calmly gives out its own secret."

Rilke, Book of Hours

(Note: To all of you who read along with me I ask you to bear with me. This process of turning into oneself is a turning over and over and over again process. I forget (forsake) and find my self again. Transforming again and again and always finding my original self coming out from under a shell. I am instar. I am turning more radiant. I am becoming ripe and juicy with each turn.)

Butterflies & Peaches

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