I am having that internal conversation about space and intersectionality again. When do we begin to move outside of our normal orbit and move into a new orbit that encourages fresh thinking and energy? Today I am blogging from the spheres. Yesterday I was in someone’s home that doubles as a private use art space and I was watching musical artists perform. In a few days I plan to make my way to Screwdriver Bar, which doubles as a shrine to the Seattle music scene. I view intersectionality as the connected nature of things as they apply to a single point (be that point a person, group, or otherwise). I view these past experiences as a deepening of my understanding that in order to be a creative you have to live a life that takes you outside of your regularly scheduled course and series of events, less you become locked into the doldrums of daily life and unable to step far enough away to see it.
I’ve stepped far enough away from Arizona to recognize that how I live there is not The Way. I haven’t stepped so far away that I know what to do about it. Here are the facts of my daily existence: I go to campus and teach a few days a week. I go to my office every day in an attempt to escape from the singular reality that is the home environment that my kids have created and thus dominate in and through the reality that they have nothing but free time on their hands and in such live and lean more into the environment than I, a daily visitor does. My other kids are also visitors but they carry with them their own reality, which is centered mainly on my car. I spend no less than 2 hrs a day driving them around (drop off, pick up–sometimes multiple times in one day). This leads to a fragmented daily reality in which the times I feel most whole is when I am escaping either to the office or to the bedroom with my partner.
This is not at all sustainable. A writer needs access to the public and needs to be alongside the public. A writer needs a measured and organized existence to the extent that they can reliably have the opportunity to nourish creativity in the moments they are not writing, as opposed to constantly fleeing one version of reality or another.
I realize this. According to G.I. Joe, that is half the battle.