2001-01-28

One time, during the first of many injuries to my left arm, my art teach drew a picture of a rainbow and signed his name on my cast. I must have been 6 or 7 years old and I remember him being the first adult outside of my parents and family-related elders that fascinated me. On my little plaster cast was something he casually drew, a sunny rainbow like the one on Rainbow Brite's shirt with only markers (the stinky, non-washable stuff, none of this washable shit the wussy kids use today). The rest of my cast was the just the sprawled signatures of little kids, a few of whom still wrote letters backwards.

He could make people happy through making things and I thought that was amazing. He could produce things that pleased him as well as others simultaneously. He did his art on the side and was a teacher to share the world of art with little kids. I wanted to know how to do that, to take some other medium as a way of expression and creation.

I've done a lot of things like that. My craft knowledge would give Martha Steward a woody. I own a glue gun, which's all I have to say about that. I took a million art classes during my high school days, becoming an anal master of shading with an ebony pencil. I enjoyed this way to make things that pleased people as well as myself. I also made paper and took trumpet lessons for the fun of it. I believe that I will fall in love with a boy who buys me a trumpet.

Then I wanted to write, and I did that well. I did that in college. College required a shift in what made me happy in producing and a different outlet for the buzz I'd grown in my head. The buzz that makes me want to do something, to create something. I give an outlet of expression to this buzz, to find a medium to conduct my artistic voice, my artistic buzz.

I had fun with that, making fun of the English chicks that couldn't write but only mimic all the greats they read as part of their requirements of their "degree." Learning how truly interesting some people could be, and how people with over-developed senses of accomplishment refused to listen to new voices. I had fun working on things myself, learning bits and watching people respond to my writing.

I took a class with my forever-intellectual nemesis Mary Gordon, who thinks too much of herself based entirely on how many times she's been in the New York Times Book List Top 10. I didn't know she was that bad, though she had rejected every person I found interesting but only accepted me due to urgings from her fellow department members. She couldn't teach, she liked all the brown-nosers, and her writing was painful to read.

And then, my voice went away for a while. Marie made me set this page up and my voice came back, urging me to share things. And the unfortunate fire my family had kind of ruined that, as I never have quiet computer time, never quiet Tara time, never the need to listen to that voice.

But Marie is my little angel blessing me with gifts of the outlet very frequently (I mean, we'd grown up being allies in our crazy joint- non-related- family). She taught me to crochet. One evening we sat on her messy bedroom floor, full of all the wonderful things she collects and brings into her life, and had crochet class. I was a complete idiot, then a surprised novice. I crocheted the most sorry looking potholder ever.

A week later I had a scarf, then another and designing patterns with stars. Within a month, I needed to move onto handbags, lining hand-sewn with "Handmade by Tara" labels. I recently learned how to make hats and now make things for friends that suit them because they were made with them in mind; beautiful things for specific people to have to keep them warm or hold their tampons.

I feel, with a hook in my hand, able to express something in me that wants away to speak. I found another artistic voice that provides my buzz with satisfaction. And I can make people happy. The reciprocal relationship quality of artistic creation and craftsman ship is something I completely love.

Making people happy is a pretty wonderful skill humans were created with. We can have the power to alter the viewpoint of another through so many ways. We can say things, do things, and make things that cause others to respond positively and change how they are feeling.

That is my measuring rod in life, can it makes me happy and can I make it happy. The music I love makes me happy and I let it into my life. If it can't make me happy, I don't need it (Brittany Spears). The books I read make me happy (Harry Potter) and I let them into my life. The people in my life make me happy and I let them in and I get the gift of being able to give them a return on the gift.

My artistic outlets service me in the same way. And when I create I feel better about the world. I have a fantasy of being a mechanic with permanent grease-stains along my fingernails and several pairs of work-pants. I want to be a farmer and raise acres of crispy corn. I want to be a pop star that teenagers lock themselves from their parents in their bedrooms to listen to me. I want to be a coffeehouse Socialist to college students who never knew what the world was like until I told them. I want to write advertisements and sit on a big bank account with which I buy full-page ads in the aforementioned New York Times Book Review discounting Mary Gordon every time she gets on it. Mostly, I want to inspire.

My artistic buzz wants me to get a kick out of life and allow others to join in.