by Nina Camic
Hey, new readers! If you want a quick summary of how it is that I came to blog, read this:
It is the year 2004. My two daughters are away at college (younger one) and law school (older one). Wow. Suddenly I have time to write! Not big stuff. Little stuff. Bloggy stuff. And so on January 2, I start to post on Ocean. I test styles, I add photos. Things evolve.
Over the years, I tell you just a little about my past life. You’ll have found out that I was born in Poland, but due to my dad’s diplomatic career, I spent some childhood years in New York. Eventually, as a young adult, I moved back to the United States. I married, had kids, went to law school. And after a short stint at a law firm, I came back to the University of Wisconsin Law School, this time as a faculty member.
I taught law for twenty-five years and then took early retirement so that I could hatch new ideas and immerse myself in other projects. In the meantime, my marriage ends, my daughters graduate from law schools (both of them!), life moves forward.
I meet Ed. On line, then in person. Ed is his own guy. Ed is Ed. One date and we are together.
I’m done with suburbs: I live downtown. First in an apartment loft, then a condo. Ed is indifferent to the apartment and hostile to the condo. Ed likes life in his sheep shed. He travels to see me daily, but never tires of calling my brilliantly clever living arrangement ...a dump. (Ed: if I wanted to live in buildings like this, I would have stayed in New York.)
Five years after meeting Ed, I pack up my dwindling belongings and move to a farmhouse on his land (just south of Madison). We renovate it. Ohhhh, the farmhouse needs it! A hundred years of issues. But, Ed has skills and he has time. With the help of a small construction team, the place is patched, mended, finished and (in April of 2011) I move in.
Alright. That’s the chronology. Here’s what else you might want to know: I love our farmette (it's not really a farm anymore), but I am very often on the road. Away. Ed used to tag along. I have been known to call him my occasional travel companion. These days, he prefers to stay home and look after the chickens.
Anything else? My younger daughter lives with her husband and their little ones (Primrose and Juniper) in Chicago, my older one teaches right here at UW in Madison. She and her husband have a little girl (Snowdrop) and two little boys (Sparrow and Sandpiper). This makes me a grandma!
That’s it. Anything else you’ll have to pick up by reading along. Curious about my childhood in postwar Poland? Pick up my book, Like A Swallow!
I like you anyway, so quit that bargaining. No problem.
ReplyDeleteThe mystery and magic of creativity lies precisely in this: the process cannot easily be forced. The object of creation "creates itself" within the receptive mind, appearing unbidden at the oddest of times. Those who would woo the Muses must wait patiently for their gifts, and those who wait upon the distribution of those gifts through the work of the creators must wait patiently in their turn. I am in awe of bloggers or any other creators who can consistently turn out good material day after day. My creative juice is by contrast but an alternating current, with flow and ebb of creative power. After a piece is completed, I am usually exhausted and flat. I once worried that perhaps that was it, I would never have much more to say, maybe I would have to hang it up. Now I just relax and drift a bit on the tide until like Coleridge's Mariner, something wells up, from whence I know not, and has to be written down:
ReplyDelete"Since then, at an uncertain hour,
That agony returns:
And till my ghastly tale is told,
This heart within me burns."
(Rime of the Ancient Mariner, S. T. Coleridge)
(Although my tales are not ghastly!) So, dear Nina, your friends will wait upon your next creation patiently and supportively, knowing that your artist's eye and creative soul will never be still for long. All the best.