I just threw out an art project from a course I took with Osher Lifelong Learning at the University of California Berkeley last Spring. It was a large box, about a foot square and about six inches high with impressions of who I think I am to others on the outside, and the internal quiet space I want to create for myself on the inside. The colors on the outside tended to be reds and oranges, angry faces and happy faces, lots of people, and one fuzzy gold pipe cleaner spiraling up into space (representing stress). The inside tended toward blue and green. I had placed a wonderful metal goddess head (I don’t know who she represents, but I do know she is female) in a nest of swirling blue and green tissue paper with butterflies (stickers) resting in her hair. I loved the box. But I found I was moving it from one place to another without ever finding a home for it. Yesterday I thought to myself, I know what my outside life is, and I also know that I want more internal peace and flow. I don’t need the box to remind me.

It was the act of making the box that was so creative. Eight women and two brave men ripped pictures out of magazines, molded playdough, cut and pasted images and tissue paper onto flat and three dimensional surfaces, all in the name of discovering and describing ourselves to ourselves and a few others. The energy in the classroom buzzed. We learned deep stuff about each other in a kind of safety zone. While we might talk about our pictures, we didn’t have to talk about ourselves, or what the representation in the picture or box meant–unless we wanted to.

Our instructor, an art therapist, had worked with all kinds of populations–kids in jail, kids in therapy, alcoholics, and us oldsters. She was enthusiastic without being cute or patronizing. She was respectful without being standoffish. She was perfect for our group of 55 to 80 year olds. And we flourished. We ripped and we drew. We cut and we pasted. No one resisted an urge to create because we would not be great artists. It was more fun than anything I’ve done in a long time outside of being with my five-year-old grandson.

I’m trying to pare down. The box was one thing that could go. I kept the goddess. She sits looking at me from my bookshelf (another place where I could pare down). I know the orange and red life well. I’ve lived it long and continue to reside mostly inside of it. Increasingly, though, I heed the call of the blue and green, the peaceful goddess, time to just be.