Tidbits: Coloring, imagining, and dancing
Lil’ thoughts for the Finding Out community
It’s December. Are you excited or dreading it or feeling a mix of those and other emotions? It’s a complex time of year. Wherever you are on it, I’m wishing you the bravery to take breaks when you need them.
Coloring
A drawing to consider
This month’s drawing is a collaboration with my kid. He’s 5 and half, and he made up this game for bedtime. One of us draws a surprise coloring page (or several), and then the other colors them in. And then we trade.
I am delighted by it, and relieved. I was so worried that he would lose—or never gain—the joy of drawing, something that I see as inherent to a joyful and connected human life, something that is too often taken from us by unreasonable and irrelevant expectations that we get from around us. As I tell the fourth graders who I show the art museum—it’s not about what the drawing looks like; it’s about how it feels to make it, and how it feels to really look at (or imagine) something. What a joy and a relief to get to play this way with my kid.
Imagining
A lil’ quotation to read
I create alternatives. I show that alternatives exist. Probably the sum total of my message to the world is that you do not have to do it one way. We are so single track oriented. But there are alternatives. And it’s such fun. Once you start, it’s enormous. It’s an aesthetic pleasure. To think in a different way. To think of a different way of doing things, to imagine what it would be. —Ursula K. Le Guin
In their book, Loving Corrections, adrienne maree brown leads with this quotation from Le Guin in an essay about how the author’s science fiction shaped brown’s activism. They talk about how noticing what’s wrong with our world isn’t enough. We must also be able to imagine the future.
brown says, “It would be so easy to be depressed and disassociated… [and with these authors as teachers] I see instead that my work must become even more vigilant, more assertive with my vision for a radiant, collectivized, relational future.” We need to feel those tough emotions, definitely, and I am inspired by their encouragement to use our imaginations, too.
Dancing
Something to carry with you
I am swing dancing again! At Grinnell, I went to swing every Monday night for four years. I learned east coast swing and Lindy Hop. When I moved to DC, I found new places to dance, and I learned Balboa from two of the world’s most renowned teachers. Now, after a 10 year hiatus, I’m back at it. Have tried two places here in St. Louis and am excited about both of them. I’m shaking off the dust and sweating buckets. It’s another, gorgeous way that I’m feeling more myself. Reconnecting with a passion from my past is beautiful.
I got paid!
Thanks to you all, I am officially a paid author! Substack pays out every three months, and I just received the first payment. I’ve written on and off my whole life, and have never been paid for it. While you all know of my conscious divesting from capitalism, I feel excited at reaching this milestone.
Last month’s essay
In case you missed it!
Mentioned in this issue: Author Ursula K. Le Guin; Loving Corrections by adrienne maree brown; and three kinds of swing dance: East Coast Swing (with some Charleston mixed in), Lindy Hop, and Balboa.