Gus seems pretty fearless sometimes, but he knows when to move. This morning, Red was right behind the sheep, Fate was cruising alongside them, Gus was standing in front of them.
They were in a hurry, with two border collies up their asses (and Maria with her new Iphone camera) and Gus shot out to the left just ahead of them. A good herding dog needs to be brave, but also smart.
Sunrise is a gift to me, it is different every day of my life, and I am rewarded every time I go and see it. Maria was having her period, she told me, and she made some crack about blood. What I thought was well, no sex for a few days.
So I was thinking about women and their periods this morning, something I have never written about but often wondered about and rarely talked about.
Like many men, I was raised to think of menstruating as something that was dirty, a kind of taboo, a secret. Never once in my life did I hear any member of my family, male or female, mention it. Once I came across some tampons in the bathroom wastebasket and I asked my father what they were.
They were none of my business, my father said. They were something about women and their bodies that I should never mention again or refer to. It wasn’t something men talked about.
In my first marriage, which lasted 35 years, it never came up either, not once.
I had the vague idea that once a month, women had their periods and it was messy and sometimes painful and not something I should speak about so I didn’t. The tampons I came across once in a while did not seem appealing.
Every now and then, boys would refer to it, so would older men, but always in a vaguely disgusted or unnerved way. Men often joke about how periods affect women and their moods. It is common for men to say women are having periods if they are upset or emotional or angry.
It was certainly never mentioned as something that could be beautiful or celebrated.
Maria and i do talk about her periods, we don’t hide the subject, but I never bring it up, and she often refers to it as something uncomfortable, something to be endured or suffered.
This morning, she came from meeting with a friend and she walked into my study, and she said she had this revelation, it was interesting and important (this is one of the things I love about her). She told her friend that she was having her period in a sort of oh-when-will-this-be-over way. A lament or intrusion.
Her friend surprised her by saying how great it was that she was having a period, how wonderful it was.
Nothing was closer to life and the earth and fertility that having a period, she said, and it was one of those powerful things about being female that other people, mostly men, had turned into something else.
Are periods ever mentioned in school, or in movies or most books or TV shoes? Are they ever discussed among friends or at dinner tables?
I told Maria that in my experience of living with her, it seemed that women often had to unlearn so many of the things they had been taught. So did men, a different story.
I love the idea of women and periods, I know it can be uncomfortable, even painful, and I would be reluctant to romanticize it. But the idea of being fertile, of giving life, is a sacred thing to me, and not something to be hidden.
Much of Maria’s life, and the lives of so many of the women I have come to know, is about learning to see themselves in a different way than our society sees them, or teaches men to see them. I call it the education of unlearning. It is often more revealing than learning itself.
I believe many men are terrified of women and their periods, and that they are also terrified of women who have been trapped in the dogma of others (as Steve Jobs would say), and are living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other opinions and values drown your own inner voice, he said.
Women have unnerved men farther by creating their own movement and demanding that they be seen in a different way. For many men, this is the end of life as they have known and understood it, just look at Congress.
But something that is painful or difficult – or even unappetizing – does not make it dirty or unmentionable or an unwelcome intrusion. Without periods, there would be no life, none of us would be here to read this. I have no trouble embracing that.
I think the way many men – and many women – have come to see the miracle of the period is the result of other people’s dogma, other people’s thinking. Maria was much struck by what her friend said, and she was eager to tell me that this was a completely new and important way of looking at one of the most powerful personal elements in a woman’s life.
She said she wanted to write about, so I knew I had to write about it, also. She said that was fine.
As a man, this is not a club I can join, or define.I can’t tell women how to think about anything. Perhaps when women relearn the power of the period, men will inevitably come to see it differently as well.
Maria surprised me this morning, a morning I was already thinking about this subject.
She opened my eyes also to the way in which I have been taught to look at women and their periods. This may have been one of the first conversations about periods I have ever had with a woman I love and live with. I can’t recall another.
My daughter and I have never once discussed it.
I’m grateful to be alive, and if women didn’t have their periods, I wouldn’t be.
If Maria chooses to undertake some re-learning, I will also.
I can’t speak for other men, but I have work to do here, I know the conversation lit me up, it felt liberating and joyful. A good start.
I don’t usually like pictures of myself, but I was impressed by this portrait, taken by Maria, the very first photograph she shot on her new Iphone 8. I have always said that the best portraits are of people you love, and this one caught some emotion in me that I can’t quite even identify.
She wrote about the meaning of this kind of picture on her blog this morning and I recommend that anyone interested in the creative process read it and think about it.
Three years ago, Maria and I had the only really awful fight of our ten-year relationship. It came on Christmas morning when I gave her a present, the then new Iphone 6 plus. I was impressed by the camera in the phone and it’s video capacity, I knew that as a visual artist she would be pulled in that direction.
I knew, as Steve Jobs predicted, that this kind of device led us in directions we could hardly even imagine.
Maria rarely feels entitled to anything, and she never buys anything for herself.
The idea of accepting such an expensive and significant gift traumatized her, it was exactly the sort of present she thought she was not worthy of and could never afford. We had an awful battle about it.
To some people, these tools are toys. To us, they are the enabling machinery of our work, our creativity.
I insisted this was a creative tool, not a toy, and that it would open doors for her and present new paths for her work. It was a long and hard day, but she relented, and those of you who have followed her work know the results.
Photographs and videos are a major part of her work now, new forms of art for her to pursue and expand.
My own family had its problems, but my mother always supported my writing and creativity, she always made me feel that I was talented and had things to say. Maria did not have that benefit.
Steve Jobs opened my eyes to the creative possibilities of technology, I remember how my first iMac made writing so much easier, freed me from typewriters and ribbons, carbon paper, copying machines and stores, mounds of paper.
I could edit a chapter in minutes, not days – all those erasers, all that white-out – and focus on the creative part of writing – writing.
I object to the idea that I am an Apple geek, I am no geek, I know nothing about how computers work or about programming. I’ve written 26 books on Apple computers and haven’t the slightest idea how they work, nor do I care. But I follow Apple products closely, I have managed my entire creative life – books, blog, photographs, communications – on Apple products.
Jobs great idea – one of them – was that people like me, creative people or wannabees, could use these tools to expand their creative vision and range. You never knew where a smart phone or Ipad would take you, gates swung open again and again.
“Your time is limited,” Jobs wrote said, “don’t waste it living somebody else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma, which is living the result of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other opinions drown your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition, they somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
For me, words to live by. And I do live by them and am grateful for the tools which make it possible. I have watched Maria follow her heart and intuition – that is what her art is about. For us, everything else is secondary.
Maria and I share creative lives, but we are different. I am a writer, she is a visual artist. I used words, she uses quilts and hanging pieces and potholders.
We express ourselves in very different ways, but in one area, we have converged – photographic images. They have become a major part of both of our lives.
I’ve watched in joy these past years at seeing Maria grow, in strength and confidence and creativity. Her quilts and fiberart is sold all over the world, she sells just about everything she makes instantly.
She has made powerful connections with thousands of people, many of whom are devoted to the kind of work she does. I watched – sometimes uneasily – as her photographic skills grew and developed. Once in a while, we compete for the same image, the only part of either of us that ever competes with the other. We usually end up laughing.
Competition is very good for the soul, it makes both of us better. You just have to be mindful about it. I have competed my entire life, it is almost second nature to me.
When I read about the new Iphone 8 camera, with its radically enhanced portrait and focus capabilities, I urged Maria to buy one, I didn’t go out and buy one for her, she has evolved far beyond that. It would seem patronizing today, not supportive.
She agreed, reluctantly and nervously. But I had to order it, she couldn’t quite do it.
She started to do that old thing – I don’t deserve one, they are too expensive, I don’t really need one. Blah-blah, I call it.
Every creative person is different, but there is a point with photography where one suddenly goes from being a person with a camera to being a photographer, someone ardently committed to capturing the images and power of people, color and light.
A photographer isn’t just recording the images of life, he or she is capturing emotion and feeling – just look at that photo of me.
Everyone with a smart phone can take pictures now, but not everyone is a photographer. Maria is a photographer now as well as a fiber artist. When a friend send her a portrait taken with a new Iphone, I saw the gleam in her eyes, something clicked it is familiar to me: I want that. I need that. I am entitled to that. I can do great things with that.
She had come so far since that Iphone 6.
And I must say the Iphone camera is a thing of wonder, there is very little my big Canon camera can do that the Iphone 8 can’t. And some things it can do better. Maria will get to some new places, and quickly.
I suggested Maria skip the part where she thinks she isn’t worthy, and just acknowledge that she is, and she did that. It was time to shed that skin, that was the old Maria, and she knew it.
When the phone came, we set it up together – Apple’s set-up is an amazingly simple process – and then she turned me and snapped a photo of me sitting in my chair. It was a striking portrait, and then she went outside and took three more wonderful photos, of the barn cats and Fate.
It was very exciting to see Steve Job’s vision come alive in my living room.
Creative tools are essential. Every lens I buy challenges me, permits me to see the world in a completely different way. Every computer, smart phone, pad, that Maria has gotten has taken her forward. Every device is another chapter not only in her creative evolution but in her sense of herself as a worthy human being and a talented artist.
Maria will do some big things with this new tool. I do gulp sometimes, I admit it, thinking, “oh, Lord, can I keep up with this, can I keep on moving forward?” I am also overjoyed to see it.
She is already taking some amazing pictures and she hasn’t even figured out how to use the thing.
So the next chapter begins. We do not obsess on our phones all day, we don’t play games or spend much time on YouTube. We have work to do.
Maria is not one to chat on the phone, or follow the news, or yak with friends. Her Iphone 8 is used almost exclusively for creativity (and music). She doesn’t shop online (she doesn’t shop anywhere) or check her bank account. She has no apps.
She is off and running in the next chapter of my life. And I’m not worried about me. I’m waiting for the new Iphone X, out later this year. I intend to be where the future is, checking my bank balance, and chasing after images that capture the feelings and color and light of the world.
She looked at me nervously, wondering if I might be jealous or uncomfortable about her new camera. She will figure out soon enough that nothing in the world could make me happier.
Now, we can do it together.
