Unruly, Tangled, Untangled Data

I spent much of the day yesterday writing research.  Writing about data.  But it was strange because the data in this case is, primarily, my family history.  What I want to do here, though, is take liberties with the data and just play around with the material and think about some of the intersections and try to be... unrestrained.

It is juncture. The juncture between summer and early fall. It is a time for vata and vata is everywhere around and in me.  It was in the dry rocky terrain I negotiated up and down Manitou Springs Incline yesterday.  It is in my inability to focus, sit still, and write an dplay with my data. I have been doing my best to ground her.  Hold her still.  Contain her.

But movement is a signature part of my life. As, I'm discovering, it was a signature part of my grandmother's early life.  Although she settled in Redwood City for, what, 60 years now, and lived about her first 18 years in Victor, in between there was a variety of movement and transition that defined her live. I know that the early days of Victor were defining, much like my early years in Defiance defined so much of my life trajectory.

My movement. My trajectory. My vata has invoved a number of states:  California, Missouri, Washing on, New York, North Dakota... Colorado.

Stops (and starts) along the way include: Palo Alto, Redwood City, Defiance, Bonne Terre, Aptos, Santa Cruz, Seattle, Buffalo, Fargo, Victor, Denver.

I seem to hang on to some places more than others.  Places that take me to new depths and heights.  Places filled with memories--both light and dark.

Right now, between Victor and Defiance is a long trail that winds through mountains, rough and rocky. Steep and treacherous, but full of an uncontainable energy. Yet, I'm trying my best to harness it in a way that allows it to grow and flourish.  Between Victor and Defiance time blurs.  It is not chronological.  I move between the present and that past in one step.

Imagine this.  I sit in a building that I know my grandma danced many dances.  I sit in that room taking in a Victorian Olio. Although I'm sitting in space that is 2014, that space holds memories of many eras gone by.  It is an Elks Lodge.  There were near weekly dances there when my grandma was growing up.  She loved to dance.  Before that it was an armory and the militia was housed there when they were sent to squash the union miners, striking for shorter days and more pay.  It is one of those places that Patricia Williams calls "furniture without memories," but here it's buildings without memories. And there are lots of them in Victor.  Sitting in that room in 2014, very few people can remember that time.  I can't remember it, because these were not my memories of my own experience.  Instead, these are memories of my knowledge of that space. A memory created from data. A memory of data tangling with a memory experience, because I decided to sit down in that chair in that building.  A memory generated because I decided to take a plane from Fargo to Denver and drive to Victor.   This project is developing into one that seeking to excavate the memories from furniture, buildings, roads, rocks, mountains, and spaces that have no ability to remember.  All they have are the effects of time, neglect, and care.

And I am creating memories.  Bending space and time to imagine a world in which my grandma lived.  A world in which my great grandpa lived.  A world in which my great great grandma lived. Why do I weave between genders and generations? I don't know.  I do know that it zigzags and relates to some of my data.  The tangible stuff I could find.  Data. Such a rational word. A word that does not convey feeling or aliveness, yet there are unruly tangled up lives in all the documents and microfilm and photos and history books. That is where I find the past and create memories for buildings and towns that have little ability to speak in a language we can understand.  They speak through faded paint.  They speak through sagging ceilings.  They speak through the scuffed floorboards.  They speak through the mountain that is slowly being blown to bits for shards of gold.  But it is people, humans, who interpret these spaces.  Data.

That's why I'm here in Colorado. Data.  And in the process of finding data, new memories emerge.  Memories that tangle up with the data.  Each time I think I have untangled one thread, I find a new pile of thread. Each time I think I've navigated the path and find a clearing, another messy path emerges.

As I finish this trip where it started, in Denver, I will continue to follow the final frayed threads I can access.  Addresses.  Addresses from city directories where grandma and grandpa, great grandma and great grandpa lived.  Part research. Part scavenger hunt.  I am trying my best to walk a few more steps.  To take my time.  To let my vata energy help me move and flow through this city, yet find the grounding and focus to stop. Appreciate.  Feel.  Hear. See. Really see what this city has become in the context of where it was when my grandmother lived here.  I will stand in these spaces in 2014, imagining 1945, 1948, 1950, 1952.  All those years she was here.

Trying to Build a Container

If there was ever a time that I needed a container it would be now.

If there was ever a time that I could pinpoint my creative energy freaking out on me, it would be now.

There's nothing like that moment when you catch yourself moving toward patterned responses to change, shifts, and new ideas.

I could feel the moment it started to happen.  I was walking around Victor, feeling energized and excited to have this experience.  I was able to explore the town on foot and take pictures of the places in which my family lived. This was building on the excitement I had last night as I watched a Victorian Olio in the Elks Lodge. It was a world that my grandma experienced as a girl. It was a world that my great grandfather experienced as a boy.  It was an unfamiliar feeling. As a person who grew up with movement, change, and uprootedness, the idea of locating the rhizomatic fits and starts of my family linked me into something I had not felt before.  It was awesome.

But as I sat on the train for a tour of some of the area's mines, I started to feel overwhelmed by the energy.  It emerged in the form of self-doubt. I am so different from this place, why did  I ever think I could research family I never really knew? What kind of research would this really be? What kind of story could I really tell?  Who do I think I am?  You've been wanting to do this for years and here you are, freaking out.  I could feel it start to soak into other parts of my life.  I started to crave all the comforts and strategies I use to silence those voices. I didn't want to feel the uncomfortable voices.



The voices sort of waned, but then I got back to my room and as I sat on my bed, I started to panic.  I pulled out my notes, the booklets I collected from the day.  I set down my digital camera, ready to log the photographs and fill in all the notes from the day.  But I sat there, frozen.  I felt how much I wanted to stuff away the self-doubt, but looking at my materials strewn across my bed, the self-doubt increased.  Normally, I would do something, anything, to take me away from those feelings.

This was the moment I knew I needed a container, because this is the moment in my research and writing that I generally start to pull in all my procrastination patterns. The things I do to shut out the self-doubt.  Unfortunately, it does not just shut down the self-doubt; it also shuts down the creative process. I lose too much.  I let all the creative energy dissipate off into self-doubt and fear.  The difference this time is that I had no access to those patterns--at least most of them.

There is no cleaning that needs to happen.  There are no silly phone games to play.  I can't call Matt and try to find something to do with him.  I can't ride my bike.  I can't go to my favorite coffee shop.  I can't seek out comfort food.  I can't take Max for a walk.  I can't putz around the house.

I am in this small room in a bed and breakfast that is more like a hostel. I'm in a town that has no coffee shops. It has no real distractions for me.  My work is all that I have around me. So what did I do? After I called Matt to actually express some of how I was feeling, I sat and I filled in my notes for the day.  I did it as I felt the panic wax and wane within my body.  I kept writing.  And now I write a blog entry.  I will then go on to notate my photographs.

None of this feels like a container, but it is containing my energy. I'm getting it down on paper. I'm getting it down digitally.  I'm making space for the self-doubt to co-exist with my work.  I have been letting self-doubt win lately.  And that has caused me to lose some of my creative drive.

Yes, I'm feeling isolated. Yes, I'm feeling ungrounded. Yes, I'm searching for my container. No, I don't know what it is yet. But I do know that I'm building it right now.

Snippets, Sparks, Containers

As of late, I've been experiencing a great deal of inspirational sparks and creative snippets, but I've been struggling with maintaining those flashes. They have been dissipating into the crazy ether of my vata energy.  So much so, that I have not even made it to the blog in a few weeks.  I experience these great moments of inspiration and it's like I have no idea what to do with them.  I feel overwhelmed and excited and ready to sit down and let it all pour out, but then all my focus disperses and I become agitated and unable to even sit still.  I just want to move, or worse, I want to shut it all down with some great numbing activities.  It is becoming clear to me that I need to learn how to contain these sparks and snippets without numbing and drowning them out into nothingness.

Containers

Methuselah

I know what I need is a container.  When I explained how I was feeling to a fellow yogi, she asked me what that container might look like. I was blank.  That is part of my problem.  I have no idea what my container would look like.  Nor what it might feel like.  Nothing. The idea of containers agitates me further.  Yet, I know I need to sit down and think about it.  So here I am.  What does it look like? It would have to be a strong, yet porous container.  Things would need to be able to enter and leave when it was time.  Like much of what I teach about social structures, they need to be solid, long-lasting, firm, yet for that to happen, they must be flexible. My container must be able to sway in the wind.  Yet, it must be something I can hold onto when I feel my internal winds picking up.  The image of the redwood keeps returning for me.  It is a flexible structure.  Methuselah.  An 1800 year old tree. She has survived the elements because she is strong, yet able to take in her surroundings and thrive. She has the ability to expand into the elements even as she protects herself from the harsher aspects of nature.  That is what I want my container to do.

Buildings and bridges
are made to bend in the wind
to withstand the world,
that's what it takes
--Ani DiFranco, "Buildings and Bridges"

Interestingly enough, I'm building a container for my yard.  It didn't fully hit me how the metaphor of the container was working in a very tangible way for me until now. This container will enable me to plant and grow things in a yard that is filled with an extensive root system that limits growth and my ability to find depth. The large trees behind my yard have grown and expanded into my yard.  I refuse to cut the roots and am set on working with the reality of my yard. Matt and I built this container and it wasn't easy. It's not easy to work with and around what nature (life) hands us.  But that is life. This labor of love is very much like the metaphorical container I envision for myself--my creative sparks and energetic snippets. I had not connected the dots between this container and the one I've been struggling to envision within myself. But just now, right here, writing this entry, it has crystallized with a sharp and focused clarity. This container is my container--both in the tangible wood that defines the boundaries of the dirt that will fill it, and in the metaphorical sphere of my internal life. It's not easy to build a container for a life that is filled with ether, randomness, chaos.  The tangible garden container had to be cut in a way that allowed the roots to not throw off the balance of the container and the roots.  The container is by no means linear or perfectly straight.  It had to propped up with small boards in some places and there are some gaps in other places.  Imperfect.  Perfect.  My metaphorical container needs to be similarly developed.  To be open, yet boundaried.  To hold, yet know when to give in to the extensive root system that is my heart and tricky self that often emerges and escapes before I have a chance to know it was alive within me.  I don't want to trap it, I want to capture it for a moment.  Have a chance to hold it and understand it before I let it loose in my world. Like the plants I want to grow in my garden container, I want my sparks and snippets to have their own space to develop, yet connect to the ground below, mingling with the life of those roots and rhizomes beneath the surface.  I want them to have the space to grow and develop on their own and then find their way down deeper.  Then I want to see them draw up and out into the world. To bloom.  To release.  To disperse.  To bask in the sunshine.  That is my internal container.  Although I'm still not sure what it looks like, I am clear now on what it needs to do.  I am clearer about how a container is not to confine but to provide intentional and meaningful space for my best self to create, develop, emerge, love, find joy, and thrive in a world full of roots and rhizomes that I can't control.  It starting to feel more like a step toward freedom rather than a trap.

we get a little further from perfection

each year on the road

I guess that's what they call character

I guess that's just the way it goes

better to be dusty than polished

like some store window mannequin

why don't you touch me where I'm rusty

let me stain your hands...

...let's show them how it's done

let's do it all imperfectly

--Ani DiFranco, "Imperfectly"