Who Needs Dear Abby When I Got a Big Brother?

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I went into a rant. Not about the turkey being too dry, or the fact that it took me hours to locate and dispose of all the hair balls from Betty Queen Elizabeth, so my guests wouldn't find black hair floating in their gravy. I went on a rant about my life as an artist.

My older brother, who lives in San Francisco and is a car designer by trade, was home for the holiday and I desperately needed to vent to someone who I knew would understand where I was coming from. I needed some reassurance that I wasn't the only artist who gets impatient with not getting paid for your hours of hard work, putting your whole heart and soul on the line every day, just so people can tell you to go back and start over - the story isn't powerful enough to be published yet.

What's great about having a brother who is older, wiser and a male, is that he can encapsulate my reeling emotions into a few sentences and make me feel great. Not just good, but great.

With this particular rant I was on, he was totally in his element. I didn't even need to get more than a few sentences out. Apparently, his many years of art school, car design training and on the job experience, added up to a whole lot of advice for me.

He said, "Being an artist means ripping your heart out of your chest, nailing it to the wall, and watch while people throw darts at it. Your heart and soul, your blood, your sweat, your tears, must be in every piece of art you do, and sometimes it will be great, and sometimes it will be shit. And art, unlike 1+1=2, is subjective. That's your life. End of story."

My lamenting turned quickly into laughing. It wasn't that he said something I didn't already know, but watching him pretend to rip his heart out of his chest and throw darts at it in the middle of the kitchen, made me realize that all of us as artists feel exactly the same way at some point. In fact, isn't anyone looking for success going to feel this way? I realized it's not just the life of the artist, but the life of someone who is striving for greatness, striving to better themselves, to challenge the masses, to get somewhere. It's all about risk.

My daughter is a synchronized ice skater, and as I watch the skaters on her team who rang in age from 7 to 12 compete, I see them do the same thing. They go out there, give it everything they got. Sometimes they place high, sometimes they don't. But it doesn't matter. What matters is that they keep going. They keep striving. They keep willing to go out there, rip their hearts out of their chests and let the judges throw darts.

So big brother comes through again. Every day, I push ahead, asking myself if the writing I'm finished with for the day has my blood on it. Did I commit? Did I reveal? Did I take the risk? If not, it's a rewrite. And I will rewrite my stories and I will let the darts be thrown, and I will keep going. End of story.

How I Really Feel About Batman and Robin

Last week I was tagged by a friend/fellow blogger with the following questions. The first question deals with superpowers and so I immediately thought of my favorite superheroes Batman and Robin (60's TV show).

I'm not really a big superhero/superpower fan but I loved watching Batman when I was a kid and not because of their superhero-ness. In all honesty, I watched the show because I thought the guys were cute. Especially Robin. I loved him. I had a crush on him. He was everything any eight-year old looks for in a man: 1)Cute...check. 2)Funny...check 3)Seems to be kinda on your level...like never the boss...check. So you can see where my interests lie when it comes to superheroes and superpowers. Now that I've admitted my crush on Robin, here's what I have to say about the rest of the questions:

1. If you could have any superpower, what would you have?

I'm a bit of a mystic girl. I believe in psychics, astrology (although some argue that is a science), ghosts, you know, all kinds of things that can't be explained with pure logic. So, I'd opt for mythic healing powers. I'd love to have the ability to wipe out illness, sadness, suffering and really bad attitudes. Peace baby. All the way.

2. Who is your style icon?

I have a few, depending on my mood:

Audry Hepburn, Princess Diana and Roseanne Rosannadanna.

3. What is your favorite quote?

I have two:

"In the face of difficulty lies opportunity." - Albert Einstein.

"The best things in life are always a little bit gross." - My brother.

4. What's the best compliment you ever received?

A successful writer told me I have a mind like a writer.

5. What's on your iPod/CD player right now?

Double Fantasy and Milk and Honey - John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

6. Are you a night owl or morning person?

Morning. Always. My best childhood memories are of my dad and I being the only ones up on vacation and going for breakfast at the Howard Johnson's hotel restaurant, just the two of us.

7. Do you prefer cats or dogs?

I'm an animal lover. I don't have a cat because my son and husband have asthma and you know what that means...

8. What's the meaning behind your blog name?

Artichokes aren't a passive food. Life is like an artichoke. Like an artichoke, you can't be passive about life. You have to keep at it, peeling away the layers to get to the heart of it. People are like artichokes too. And the Aristotle part? I'm a writer and lover of philosophy. Say no more.

Thanks for visiting, and now check out a few of my favorite blogs on writing:

Liminalesque

Patricia J Murphy

Georgia Mc Bride

City Girl

I'm very excited to have been accepted into the Certificate of Creative Writing program at the University of Chicago. Once a week I hop into my car and head into the city to indulge myself in the study of creative writing.

It's exhilarating to go into Chicago once a week. I spent most of my adult life living there (ages 19-35) and loved every minute of it. But there came a time when having kids meant moving out to sprawling suburbia. And as I drive myself back and forth every week, I know that although the truth might hurt, I'm not a city girl anymore. I would have lived in denial, thinking that once a city girl always a city girl, but a year after moving out of the city, I had an encounter with a Marshall Field's saleswoman that clarified my standing as a suburbanite.

Two months after my son was born, my parents babysat for us so hubby and I could go into the city for the day. At this time, Marshall Fields was still around and we decided to do some shopping there, a little reminiscing. I had found a cute purse that I wanted and went up to the cash register to pay for it. Hubby decided to get some air outside while I paid for my cute little purse. As the lady behind the counter folded up the bag that she had carefully placed my new purse into, she looked at me with a big warm smile, "You must be one of the people from the PEORIA bus."

WHAT??

I started to shake. My eyeballs felt swollen. I couldn't breath. I couldn't even speak. I shook my head in protest. "No. No. No, no NO. I'm not from PEORIA. I just moved out to the suburbs a year ago. REALLY!"

Clutching my hunter green Marshall Field's bag I spun around and raced out the revolving door, almost knocking everyone over in my path, including two small children. I ran up to hubby, on the verge of tears. I could barely speak. "I...I...she...the lady...thought...I..."

Hubby grabs my arm, a look of panic taking over his face. "Oh my God. What happened? Did you get mugged? You're shaking."

Still nodding, I somehow found the strength to get the words out. And as I said them, postpartum hormonal floodgates opened up. "The lady behind the counter thought I was from PEORIA!" I screamed.

Now hubby thinks I've gone nuts and this whole 'having kids' thing has really taken it's toll.

"So?"

"SO? SO? ME? FROM PEORIA? DO YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS?" My arms are flailing, the green bag flapping, people shielding their faces from me while walking down State Street.

Hubby tries his best to get a grip on what happened and where his wife went to. "Apparently, I don't...because you seem to be pretty upset and I have no idea why."

"Of course you don't know why. You're from ROCKFORD!" I start pacing around, sweating, rubbing my forehead, trying to figure out how to reverse this curse.

Hubby grabs me by the shoulder and directs me to the window. Standing under the awning he tries to understand (bless his heart). "You're gonna need to explain. Is this a new mother thing? Do we need to go home?"

"No! We don't need to go home. I just need a minute."

"Okay..."

After a few minutes, I was able to calm myself down using the Lamaze method that I DIDN'T use during childbirth. I explained to him what it means to a 'city girl' like myself, to have been mistaken for someone from PEORIA.

My arms outstretched, shifting my feet, I revealed the secret code to him. "It means that I've slipped. I've gone backwards, not only in the world of fashion, but this is a CHARACTER issue. Going backwards in fashion implies that I'm backwards in my thinking, in my life. That I'm not up to par mentally. I've regressed in every way possible. This isn't about the fact that I LOOK like I'm from PEORIA. This is crisis! This is my wake up call. If I continue on this path I'll be old and grey and in a rocker in six months flat and there's no way I'll ever be able to catch up. I'm doomed!"

Hubby says. "Let's go for a drink."

So we left Marshall Field's and hubby took me straight to the nearest bar. Three drinks later we were both laughing about the whole thing - but for completely different reasons. And when I got home, my entire outfit, belt and all went into the Goodwill pile. Even my underwear.

But as I discarded that outfit, the truth was, I couldn't discard the reality of my life. I had been a city person and now I wasn't. It wasn't part of my character anymore. The Marshall Field's lady confirmed my status as a non-city dweller. And that hurt.

The hard thing about life is that it always changes. The good part about life is that it always changes. As I visit the city once a week, I'm reminded that it's still there. It's still going, and there's always a chance I can go back to living there and being a city girl once again.