It is not only your seat in the classroom that you are trying to find…to establish. It is also, more importantly, your place…

The thrill of the first week, the first semester has, as B. B. King sang with the sway of the head and the stroke of the guitar, gone away. Since then I have been reflecting on my behavior and engagement, examining my fit and function in the classroom and beyond. This semester I am feeling out of place and awkward. My voice seems much louder than necessary, cracking and stretching at the corners: threadbare and thirsty. The sound never quite articulates the meaning. The words seem insufficient and the logic they hold unravels in midair. I raise my hand and lose the point I intended to make. I am reaching…reaching, in every sense of the word.

I have tried out all these ideas and techniques, wore them like jackets from a thrift shop. I have traveled roads less and frequently taken. Felt dexterous, confused, challenged, hesitant, confident… Been gawked at, laughed at, criticized, and, even, complimented. My final destination, if there is one, has always been, will be somewhere “where the sidewalk ends.” As I try on and test out different ideas and techniques, I am mapping my way to and constructing the meaning of the what, where, who, and why of my life and career.

It is like that song by Lauryn Hill: “I had to lose myself to love you better.” In that loss of self, in the loving, I am finding a fit, a place…

…together in the struggle…

…until next write…

Posted by Chad at 9:58 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I began January with intentions of being more creative, with an image I wanted to examine and express through oil pastels and rice paper. When the color touched the canvas, I still had not finalized how to capture or perceive this image or the ideas behind it. I sketched outlines and tore up several versions before deciding on a form and reaching a state of mind that would free the image as well as the ideas. As my hands moved across the canvas gluing and drawing, I knew, intuitively, that I had failed to give the piece a life all its own. I had hung too closely to what I thought it should be. I drove instead of being driven and did not accurately depict the mauve, turquoise, and cobalt pulsating and blazing within the sky. I looked at the picture I created and saw an image lost in translation, words waiting for a page of their own. I should have written this, sifted and shifted it until the sentences aligned themselves like the squares on a Rubik’s. I gained perspective.

While sitting in class discussing paradigms the following week, I realized how art helped me to process and perceive life. Through the artwork, I had a media to give the images and ideas texture, dimension, and contrast. I could see it shaped in pastels and paper, provoking, portraying, and distorting. It was alive with meaning depending on the perspective. Similarly, a paradigm provides a lens, language, and logic for perceiving, speaking, imagining, interpreting, and acting. Each day in class, at field, and at night in the library, I am exercising my knowledge and use of paradigms, developing my skills as a clinician, an activist, and an artist. I am learning the many ways to process and perceive life. Whether through psychodynamic theory or oil pastels, a picture emerges that is accurate but misleading, beautiful but dangerous, whole but partial. There is always more to see, to know, another form it could take.

What I once viewed mistakenly, I see clearly, burning and illuminating, like violet and sapphire, into a life all its own.

Posted by Chad at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)