Bubbles

 

Bubbles

What a cat needs: food, water and a kitty litter box. A scratching post and occasional snuggling depending on the temperament of the kitty. A sunny or warm spot to sit still and to be left alone.

What a dog needs: food, water, potty training which may or may not lead to crate training, then you need a crate, treats to tempt them into the crate and affirmation that they are doing a good job. Most of all they need a schedule. Especially if you are crate training. Wake up at 6:30, go pee and poo, come inside for food and water, play some with owner, then crate time. Mid-morning pee break, some play with owner, then crate time. Lunch with water and pee/poo. Play with owner and crate time. Mid-afternoon pee and play time, then crate time. Dinner at 5:00 with pee and/or poo. Play time with family and final pee and bedtime. One or two night pee breaks between 2 and 4 am. Then back to the crate. One week of consistent training is a good starting point. 

You also need chew toys of various textures as the puppy is teething and will chew on anything with a bit of give: like your shoes, rug, glasses, and corners of boxes, chairs and sofas. They need a collar and a leash and definitely socializing. Which means our Bubbles has already started preschool.

My good friend told me about crate training the first day I got the puppy. I presumed I knew what crate training was: put a puppy in the crate at bedtime. What I didn't know was what to do with the puppy during the day. So for the first two days, I followed my puppy around, every waking moment, looking for signs of pee and poo. At the end of two days, I felt like a sixteen year old girl who had accidentally had a baby. I was confused, worn out and deeply troubled about my new relationship with this being.

Almost ten days has gone by since Bubbles came into my life. And with that I am learning about puppies and dogs.

It turns out I am a cat person. Feed me, water me and leave me alone, I'm fine. I dislike being scheduled, I dislike authority, I dislike chitchat, I don't like groups, I never pick up my phone, and I love my solitude.

My puppy needs a schedule, he needs me to be an authority figure, he needs numerous affirmations and communication, he loves social mixers, I need to be "plugged into" our relationship, and he doesn't like being alone.

I have been looking for various methods for coping with life and its hardships. I have been on the lookout for distractions. Some took on the form of sabbatical smocks, some took on the form of necklace and bracket making/buying, some took on the form of cleaning out the garage and basement, and some took on the form of obsessing over baking and kombucha making.

But they all seemed to come with an expiration date. The spark fizzles, the attention wanes and I am in search of a new kind of high. So I started to focus on chickens. Maybe ducks. Critters that lay eggs and follow you around in the yard perhaps chasing away the cat that poops in my yard. (This part is just a fantasy.) Chickens are also tick eaters and compost makers. I wanted some chickens for my yard. I did research on the best kind of coops, breeds to choose depending on noise level, egg color and docile nature. Balancing my budget and looking into zoning regulations, my heart started ballooning at the potential of this new relationship and distraction.

When I was visiting two of my best friends, I was telling them about the chickens. These friends have two amazing dogs. And this is where it gets fuzzy. Because somewhere between talking about chickens, we started talking about dogs. And before I knew what was happening, a day later, I came home with a new puppy.

My husband tells me that I made puppy faces at him. He tells me that I promised to take care of the puppy. That I would be in charge of the potty training and that he wouldn't have to help with anything if he didn't want to. He told me that I promised to take full responsibility of the dog and all the nitty gritty details. All this is very fuzzy to me. I feel like I have amnesia around this part. What I do remember is that he was so much happier with the idea of a puppy than that of chickens.

The ultimate distraction: I now have a puppy. This feels like a full time job. Mostly because there is the poop and pee fear factor. But I am learning. I am learning to be in the moment. To look into this creature’s eyes and try to see what they see. I am learning to be in the moment. To remember that pee and poo and be washed away, but neglect cannot. I am learning with him the importance of structure, consistency, and using appropriate amounts of authority in order to negotiate love, joy and the order of the universe. I am learning the way of the dog.

Methodical Preparation

It turns out methodical preparation for a project is another form of, wait for it… procrastination.

I have been buying tools, paper swatches, researching printing options, looking at wacom tablets, an iPad stylus, inventing and building photoshoot structures for consistency of lighting and photography, ordering more equipments, tools and materials online, then another trip to JoAnn Fabrics, Utretch, Michael’s, and Lorraines. A whirl wind of busywork all to disguise that I don’t want to draw.

I am creating a picture book for children. So I have to draw. 

The last time I drew seriously was when I was in high school. It was 1983 and I was preparing for the entrance exam for university. I was applying for the design department and for that we had two tests. A drawing test and a color composition test. My last month of preparation before the exams looked something like this.

Wake up at 5:30am. Take the first bus to my drawing studio. From 6:30-9:30am go through a self-imposed three hour drawing test (pencil rendering of a plaster reproduction of a roman sculpture.) Take the bus to second studio where I would study color composition. From 10:30-1:30 pm, go through a self-imposed three an a half hour color composition test. Crit with the instructor, then wash up and go back to drawing studio. Have some food then sit and draw until 11:30pm. Then catch the last bus home, sleep some then start the day all over again at 5:30 am. No one told me I had to do this. No one gave me the outline and said you must do this in order to succeed. I did this to myself. Just to make sure. Because I really needed to get into Seoul National University. I was 17.

I did this for about a month. On top of the fact that I had been in “training for the last year.” This was just the final cherry on top of the “MUST GET TO THE TOP OF THE MOUNTAIN” routine. Then we took a bus to our university of choice and took the test. I did well enough and I got into the school of my choice.

My relationship with drawing is fraught with anxiety about performance, being good enough, and almost always about being judged.

No wonder all of my perfectionists have escaped. All 1001 of them. Time to let go. How?

I think I am overthinking everything. The robust machinery of “mass-production” is constantly nagging at my elbow saying things like “production value” and “economic effort.” Fuck it. I keep forgetting that this is about relationships. My relationship to myself, my relationship with my child, my relationship with all the children out there who feel lonely—lonely because they feel like that they are the only ones who look like them, who feel like them, who think like them. All I am trying to do is put on my little light to say, “I am here, and I understand what you are going through.” Just like this blog.

So I say, focus on the love. Focus on sharing. I can only be who I am, and I am going to have to honor that.

New rules of conduct.
1. Have fun. If I am not having fun, something is not right.
2. Start with what comes easy. Path of least resistance is not a rude thought.
3. Notice what I keep away from and resist. And ask that part questions.
4. Have small, short, achievable goals to start with. There is a Korean saying about collecting dust to make a mountain. So do a little everyday.

The History of No Play and All Work (Also known as the Ant and the Grasshopper)

한국어는 아래에 있습니다!

When I was a child, I read the Aesop’s tale of the Ant and the Grasshopper. It tells the story of the ants who work all day long and all night long, throughout the spring and summer season, sweating it out, gathering food and packing it away. The grasshopper is happily singing and playing his fiddles, all the while laughing at the ants for not knowing how to enjoy the summer’s day. Winter comes and grasshopper is all but dead until the compassion of the ants saves the life of the grasshopper.

This little tale engrained in me a fearful work ethic that fueled my non-stop-must-work attitude. It created in the mind of an eight year old “you play = you die”. This developed into “you fail = you will be homeless”.

Fear knows no logic, so this paradigm went on living in me, unchecked, until I was in my late thirties. That is a long time to believe in “you fail = you will be homeless”.

Then one day a friend of mine came over for dinner. She was a physician. This friend was working in the emergency room and was in the process of creating protocol for homeless people who came in for help. In telling this story my friend came to say something like, “in many cases the homeless are either going to be addicts or mentally ill...” and a little alarm bell in my brain went off. I stopped her and asked her to repeat herself about the homeless being either addicts or being mentally ill. She did as I asked. I don’t think I pushed her to add anything like, “a typical person, without anything catastrophic happening to them, usually do not become homeless because they don’t write up a good end of the year report.”

Suddenly, I felt like I got a “get out of jail free” card. The carrot, or was it a threat, was gone. It vanished. It was never real. I find myself again as Don Quixote.

Since then I have been working on the “play” part. It has been about ten years. I still find it hard to calm the nerves of the Generals inside of me who think about the threat of death and homelessness when I play. But having a child helps. Watching him play gives hope and faith in how we can be creative, productive, compassionate, and joyful all through play.

내가 아주 어릴 적에 메뚜기와 개미라는 이솝 이야기를 읽은 적이 있다. 개미는 온종일 열심히 일하며 곡식을 모으고 메뚜기는 노래 부르고 춤추며 개미들의 미련함을 우습게 보았다. 겨울이 오자 메뚜기는 죽어가고, 개미들이 불쌍히 여기는 바람에 겨우 살아남는다는 이야기였다.

이 교훈은 내 머리 깊숙이 자리를 잡았고, 이후 어른이 되어서도 “놀면 = 넌 죽는다”를 알게 모르게 믿어 왔다.  “놀면 = 넌 죽는다” 는 “일을 하지 않으면 = 넌 집 없는 노숙자가 된다”로 변했고, 이 비논리적인 사고는 40세가 다 되도록 점검해 볼 새 없이 나의 “쉬지 않고 무조건 열심히 일하기”를 불 질러 왔다.

그러던 하루 의사 친구가 놀러 왔다. 그녀는 그 당시 응급실에 근무하면서 그곳으로 찾아오는 노숙자들을 위한 프로토콜을 만드는 중이었다. 이 프로토콜을 만드는 과정을 이야기하며 잠시 지나가는 말로 “노숙자들은 대게가 중독자이거나 정신질환을 앓고 있는데…”하는 대목에서 나는 정신이 잠깐 나갔다. “노숙자들은 대게가 중독자이거나 정신질환을 앓고 있는데…” 아하. 나의 두려움은 근거가 없는 두려움이었다. 연말 보고서 하나 잘하지 않았다고 해서 곧 노숙자가 되는 게 아닌데. 또다시 나는 나의 돈키호테를 만났다.

그 이후로 나는 “놀기”에 대해서 연구 아닌 연구를 해 왔다. 이 “연구”를 해 온 지 10년이 되었는데 아직 잘 안되는 날이 많다. 군복을 벗은 내 안의 장군은 고개를 흔들며 “노는 윤수”를 걱정한다. 하지만 아이를 낳아 기르면서 놀이에 대한 희망이 커져 간다. 놀이를 통해 경험할 수 있는 창의력, 기쁨, 연민 등을 보며 희망과 믿음을 키워간다.