Archaeology

My time in graduate school at Iowa was not easy. There are lots of reasons for this. So when I left there three years ago and moved to the Chicago area, I packed up my work and packed it away. I needed some aesthetic distance.

Now, three years later, I am teaching Digital Photography to a fresh and inspiring group of students at RMC. I decided that this was a good time to avail myself of those gorgeous brand-new Macs and that super-pricey Photoshop CS2 software, and dig out some of that old work.

I spent almost two hours this afternoon feeding Zip 100 MB disks into the external USB drive and copying over some files. Some of it is work I forgot all about, others are snapshots and other random personal items I completely forgot all about. At more than one point I was laughing out loud, and sometimes I even got a little nostalgic.

More than anything though, I'd like to know what I was thinking with my hair that color red. Cutting it all off wasn't any better, according to the photographic record. I also think I should have maybe started wearing makeup a little sooner. And that gold hoop in my nose was a tad bit too big, perhaps. Mojo was a lot skinnier then, but I wasn't. It was going on six years ago, some of those snapshots, and I look younger of course. But I also look weary somehow.

In all seriousness though, it was good to realize that enough time has passed. I pushed aside into those dark and dusty corners all that work that was borne in struggle and uncertainty, and the memories from that time. The creative process, which had always liberated me, became a prison in those days. Little did I realize that that time in Iowa would be followed by another type of prison, this one involving a cubicle and the .edu boom. But these prisons are not bad things, they have yielded so much growth in me. Perhaps I need a new metaphor? But they were still challenging. Maybe "crucible" sounds better?

At any rate, call them crucibles or call them prisons, but my forges appear to be on a three-year pattern: three years at Iowa, and now after three years in Chicago, another change. Trying to maintain my former level of income AND gain some invaluable experience now as an adjunct and full-time student has worn me OUT this semester. But it feels RIGHT. I'm excited to reconcile my self, all those sides of myself: the teacher, the student, the creative, the capitalist. Going back to Iowa, even back to Maine with some of the work I found, validates me. And I feel it inspiring me toward my next big project. This doesn't feel like a prison or a crucible. At least not yet :)

The good news is that despite my exhaustion at the end of those three years in Iowa, I did some of my best work during that end time. I told my students the story the other day about melting down over the creative block I suffered near the end of my MFA thesis: how I lost it on one of my advisors, wept bitterly for hours, got drunk, woke up, and finished shooting my thesis the next morning. My eyes were so swollen that I couldn't see to focus the camera. I had to put it on autofocus and have faith in what I composed. I love some of that work. I'm looking for those pix, and plan to post a couple here once I do.

Of course, I'm nowhere near in that shape these days, but I do see parallels. I have arrived at a time of change, and it's time to reclaim my creativity once and for all. This blog has been an AMAZING part of this journey back. I also must credit Amity, Chrystal, and Patricia in their own ways,and they know why. But I'm enough of a humanist to know that the real journey is in unearthing all of that past work, peeling back the layers, and figuring out where I've actually been. THEN I will know where I'm heading next.