go on an artist's date weekly

... boils down to this: (1) I need to go somewhere; (2) I need to have my weekly artist’s date; (3) I decide to walk there as my form of transportation; (4) I allow FAR more time to get there than I need, so it feels luxurious; (5) I stop to smell the flowers (a habit picked up from an important person in my life of the feminine persuasion); and (6) I pull out my cell phone and take pictures if I see something particularly appealing to my aesthetics or that prompts a meditative state…

... now that I’m still a kid, I continue to love them. It’s just that the toys have changed. A trip down to Fry’s Electronics (far enough from me that it takes on a pilgrimage quality) brings out the “Oh… wow!” in me, and, if not in the company of others, I can spend hours just looking. In my current “I don’t need anything else” frame of mind, the experience can still indulge my curiosity and fascination for the new and the unusual.

_{And I made it out of there without spending more than $9. :-)}

... with no specific destination does the trick on this. Grab a book, get on a bus line that I don’t normally take, and sight-see, look out the window, come back to the book, breathe and be present… Simple but enjoyable for me.

... technically is not an artist’s date, since I did not go there by myself (solitary activity being one of the requisites of an artist’s date). That caveat aside, what a show! It’s dinner-and-a-show, with a circus-like environment and performances by gifted acrobats, contortionists, vaudeville comedians and what-have-you sometimes just a few feet away from you. In the course of a few hours, your imagination is fired up, you are transported, and you walk out feeling not just like artistically and culinarily you’ve been satiated, but also wondering what the heck can you do on a daily basis to be more like these people…

... that I discovered on one of my H.I.P. walks and which presents a perfect opportunity for an artist’s date. Lots of things to play with, and as soon as you do, whichever kid spies you playing with it wants to come over and try it. (Figuring if an adult is having this much fun, it must be worth it.) Gradually the parents start to get in on the fun – it’s as though I have to set the example that adults can have fun too before they allow themselves to do it. I’m sure that beyond an artist’s date idea, I could turn this into a movement/commercial enterprise: GrownupFunsters.com. “Are you so caught up in your bills, your job, your propriety that you can’t ride a swing? Are you so scared of what other people think or that someone you know sees you cut loose that the very thought paralyzes you with terror? You need to loosen up with GrownupFunsters!”

Anyway, it took me back to age 6 or 7, which was not just fun but accomplished its Artist’s Date purpose…

Yesterday I went to see my literary hero, Tom Robbins, speak at Elliott Bay Books. I had just found out that he was speaking there, and they told me at Elliott Bay that the tickets were all gone. “But you can try the standing-room only, starting at 6:45.” I thought that the series of coincidences was such that I should really try going. A friend of mine, herself a fan of his writing, decided to go with me as well. It turns out that we were fourth or fifth in the SRO line, and when all was said and done, when the crowd that had tickets was already seated, there were eight chairs open… two of which, front-row right, went straight to my friend and me. He’s a very entertaining speaker, and was there promoting his latest book, B is for Beer – a sort of fairy tale written for kids but meant for adults. Since it features a little girl trying out daddy’s beer behind his back, someone in the audience asked him, “Should I read this to my kids?” He replied something to the effect that the book does not encourage or condone drinking by kids, although it might encourage them to go for “far more dangerous things” alluding, perhaps, to a breaking from consensus mentality…

Most fascinating place for me ever since I read “Red Rackham’s Treasure” in the Tintin series as a 7 year-old… Plus, it’s very meditative to just sit in the Seattle Aquarium’s underwater dome and watch all kinds of critters swim around you…

... when I go into this specific Half Price Books store. I want to browse ever aisle, read books on subjects I’d never entertained before, explore and slip back into the sense of childhood wonder. And that’s what an artist’s date is about. “Think adventure” says “The Artist’s Way”’s Julia Cameron when talking about Artist’s Dates. This place did it for me this week.

... is meant to add something to the well of creativity. Something seen new, something that stimulates the imagination, or the sense of wonder or awe. Of course the ultimate artist’s date is to take off for some distant land, but I can’t wait for that to happen to renew myself artistically. So, often I leave home, walking and thinking that perhaps I’m going to go to a specific place, but on the way there, a street begs to be explored, a different turn beckons, and a new discovery awaits somewhere not anticipated.

Yesterday was one of the exceptionally sunny days in Seattle, and mid-afternoon, rather than work on the novel, where I found resistance, I thought: why not do now the other source of resistance (the artist’s date) since I’m actually feeling up to that?

I walked toward the ferry landings in downtown Seattle, then on a whim walked South, to a noisy and industrial section. This is in direct contravention of my rule to look for serene streets during these walks. But somehow it felt right yesterday. After an hour of walking, I passed a place with a big sign that announced itself as a bar or tavern… though peeking inside, it was completely gutted, and looked more like a saloon than anything else. It looked closed for quite a while, years perhaps. On a window there was a sign taped on the inside, which I read with interest. “Seattle is forging ahead” the title said. And below,

“In a single generation Seattle has gone from a frontier village to a great world city with more than 350,000 people…”

A bunch of statistics on how Seattle was growing by leaps and bounds with all kinds of public and private improvements and then, at the bottom:

“Plan to visit Seattle in 1924.”

That definitely stirred the imagination. 1924. My grandfather had been a field hand, San Francisco-bound, somewhere in 1915. Some years later, he returned to the Old Continent. In 1925 my father was born. What would my grandfather, whom I’ve never met, have thought of Seattle at that time? Would he have imagined that the son of an as-yet-unconceived son of his would’ve been living in that city in the country he visited, almost a hundred years later?