On Gratitude and Sabbaticals

Picture it.  This morning driving to the library - a regular occurrence if uninterrupted internet is needed - I was looking up at the sky at an eagle soaring overhead and nearly smushed a wild turkey meandering across the road.  This image, my friends, is a profound life truth -although I am at a loss yet to put it into language.

But it seems an apt story for the first "official" day of my sabbatical year - even though I have been enjoying the concept since May.

Sabbatical or a sabbatical (from Latin sabbaticus, from Greek sabbatikos, from Hebrew shabbat, i.e., Sabbath, literally a "ceasing") is a rest from work, or a break, often lasting from two months to a year. The concept of sabbatical has a source in shmita, described several places in the Bible Leviticus 25 for example, where there is a commandment to desist from working the fields in the seventh year. In the strict sense, therefore, a sabbatical lasts a year.  (Wikipedia)

The idea of rest - other than a rest from the grinding down that a 15 week semester entails - is not really the focus of my sabbatical.  Nor should it be.  The idea is the bliss of uninterrupted work.

Paul Cronin begins his book, Werner Herzog:  A Guide for the Perplexed (conversations with Paul Cronin) with a quote from William Faulkner:

"An artist is a creature driven by demons.  He doesn't know why they choose him and he's usually too busy to wonder why."

The process Herzog describes is a familiar one, in terms of often being assaulted by ideas.

The problem isn’t coming up with ideas, it is how to contain the invasion. My ideas are like uninvited guests. They don’t knock on the door; they climb in through the windows like burglars who show up in the middle of the night and make a racket in the kitchen as they raid the fridge. 

I don’t sit and ponder which one I should deal with first. The one to be wrestled to the floor before all others is the one coming at me with the most vehemence. I have, over the years, developed methods to deal with the invaders as quickly and efficiently as possible, though the burglars never stop coming. You invite a handful of friends for dinner, but the door bursts open and a hundred people are pushing in. You might manage to get rid of them, but from around the corner another fifty appear almost immediately... Finishing a film is like having a great weight lifted from my shoulders. It’s relief, not necessarily happiness. But you relish dealing with these “burglars.” I am glad to be rid of them after making a film or writing a book. The ideas are uninvited guests, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t welcome. 

It seems to me that I often use teaching as a way to push my ideas "out the door."  This is not always the best thing to do - and I have plenty of colleagues who manage to maintain their studio practice AND teach.  But that has always been difficult for me.  I love teaching - and students are always the most interesting people - I also love the institution I teach at, MIAD. This is my 20th year there.  (I guess I'm staying.)  So for me, a sabbatical year is a way to let all of those "uninvited guests" in from the journals and books and sketches they have been inhabiting, and deal with them.

At the present I'm sequestered on the edge of the Hiawatha National Forest very near to Les Cheneaux Islands.  Surrounded by fields of Queen Anne's Lace and fir trees I am working and working and reading and thinking and working.  It is incredibly wonderful.