SORTING SUZANNE'S STUFF

Some nice comments about one of my recent poems by my friends Barbara and Peace Sanchez prompted me to glance through my file of my own poetry yesterday. (Before I go on, a thanks to Sky, Peace's sister and the mom of two of the world's most adorable little girls, for her great email as well.)

Here's a piece from February 2009, written during a period when I was intensely decluttering my arts and crafts supplies. It was really fun to write a big miscellaneous overabundant poem about overabundance and a visually shaped poem about visual art supplies, as well as to work the line lengths as they sprawl out and then constrict again. The turn toward ruefulness of the final line happpened unexpectedly, yet felt right. There's something so cathartic about making art from experiences fraught with frustration, and also about making a little fun of oneself. Might just be coincidence, but shortly after the poem was finished the studio decluttering process seemed magically to take hold. I've had absolutely no time to bead or collage of late, but all the little bits and pieces for those activities sleep peacefully awaiting their wake-up call, and fit perfectly into the limited space I was willing to devote to them. Ah, the power of the written word!

STUFF

Stuff everywhere:
no longer stuffed

anywhere, burst of bright sweets from a reft pinanta,
sparks from a Roman candle, bugs scurrying
wild in a sudden glare: paper and cord,
beads and brushes, sketchbooks
and inks,

evicted
from albums, armoires,
bags, baskets, bins, closets,
cupboards, drawers, folders, tubs, totes
(all, mind you, gorgeously labeled, color-coded, styled)

onto counters, floors, tables, sofa, bed; no surface, no plane,
no mesa for that matter, would seem wide
enough to hold this vivid
clutter; this is a
diaspora

of sorts,
minor and mostly
benign but an uprooting
nonetheless, a material nation expelled
from its longtime homelands by a (minor and mostly)

benign) despot queen beset by mental coup, creative
apoplexy, itchy feet, bottle neck, hot flash, hot
need: as antic as her own court jester,
as possessed as Ahab by
his dream;

her dream,
just as madly pure
and maybe as elusive, glimpsed on far
over the flotsam, jetsam, chop: space to make
art, not just own art supplies; time to play; room to move

and remove; the clear decks, fresh start, clean slate
that she has rarely seen.


"Stuff" poem © Suzanne Fox 2009. Please do not reproduce without permission.

SIMPLIFICATION FOR STUFF-LOVERS

The Zen Habits blog by Leo Babauta is one of the more successful blogs there is, currently visited by over 185,000 readers and often counted among the country's top one hundred blogs. It collects all sorts of interesting perspectives on life clarity and choice. (It's not exclusively or even Zen, despite the title.) A recent browse there turned up a nice guest blog by Barrie Davenport of Live Bold and Bloom titled "How to simplify when you love your stuff." If you're a creative person with clutter on your mind or in your closets, take a moment to click here to read the piece. It's a nice perspective on the theme I spoke of in my June 4 post, "Simple is not the same as minimal," containing some interesting questions to ask yourself about your stuff and some welcome reassurance that serenity, simplicity, and an uncluttered spare room are indeed posssible even when you just can't live without your collection of 1940s pincushions (or whatever your personal possession passion happens to be).

SIMPLE: IT'S NOT THE SAME AS MINIMAL

When you think about clearing out or decluttering, don't confuse function and style.

Clear, unclogged, functional, open, simple to use, and easy to maintain describe the experience you have in, and with, a space. Minimal, empty, modern, Shaker, and Zen just describe its look.

Your creative space can feel everything named in that first group of word without looking like any of the words in the second.

My friend Dolores' Manhattan apartment was a case in point. Her apartment was small, her interests were many, she taught piano lessons at home, and she had already lived six decades of rich, varied life by the time I met her. It's not surprising that she had a lot of things, and that they were packed fairly densely in the restricted space. Yet Dolores' apartment wasn't problematically cluttered. Things were in their place no matter when I dropped in. The cupboards and closets she opened were orderly, the pathways clear, the furnishings old but well maintained. Her piano lessons were given and enjoyed in comfort. Dolores struggled with a whole lot of life challenges in the years we both lived in Manhattan, but feeling hampered or confined by her stuff wasn't one of them.

Don't shame or blame yourself your house or studio doesn't look like a Zen monastery or a home from a lifestyle magazine. Accept your own personal style, taste, and preferences without judgment. 'Test' your spaces based on how free and comfortable you feel within them, not on how they look.