A Hippie Artist Introducing Herself to Steemit

Hello Steemians!

My name is Ann.

I'm quite a newbie when it comes to Steem and crypto, having known about it through @sagescrub. He is, as some of you know through reading his posts, very enthusiastic about Steem. After hearing him gush about this community, I couldn't help but be drawn in!

Ok, but this is supposed to be an intro about me, right? Right. Firstly, I'm not very good at intros. I've always felt a bit awkward going about it. I've written and spoken about myself many times and there's a version of me in each of these introductions, but each one could not really represent the nuances, depth, and fullness of being. Still, there's beauty and joy in simply sharing. So let's start with the usual - the labels of identity.

I am an artist.

I think I've been an artist most of my life, though it took me a long time to accept and embrace this part of my identity. Some of my earliest memories were of copying comics as a child and making my mom draw the Monkey King for me. At 11, I made my own zine, which included made up puzzles and drawings of the Little Mermaid. In high school, I made a watercolor mandala that impressed my art teacher, and she encouraged me to pursue art as a career. When I came home to share this with my family, they laughed and said, "Art is not a career. It's a hobby." And that was the end of the discussion.

Yet, art remained in my life. Even when I dutifully pursued a medical career, I was still inexplicably drawn to art. I'd give all my cell drawings and plant illustrations meticulous detail - which I scanned and used in digital collages in my art class. Whenever I could I squeezed in art history, life drawing, still life painting, oil painting, photography, calligraphy, watercolor, literature, flower arranging, wreath making, and more into the "hobby" part of my life.

It would take me many more years and many more "careers" before I began to learn this hard earned lesson: "To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else - means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."- written by my favorite poet, e.e. cummings.

I am a hippie.

A full blown tree hugging, back to the land, peace on earth hippie. You know, like the hippies who rallied at civil rights protests and antiwar protests and who started the environmental movement and the organic food movement.

I discovered this late in life at a place that changed my life, called Camp Joy Gardens. In my mid thirties, I guess I had a sort of midlife crisis. I suppressed many sides of myself (like my creative side and my free-spirited side) in order to appease a deep-rooted insecurity of wanting to be accepted and fit in (my parents divorced when I was 1 year old and I came to the United States when I was 11). Without really knowing it, overtime, this snowballed into a dormant anger that needed expression. My dad called this time in my life "an implosion," because it was not an overtly expressed thing and because it happened seemingly out of the blue.

I began to systematically cut out everything in my life - I cut out my close family, my loving partner, and my secured and meaningful job (I was a Marketing Manager for a nonprofit at the time). Without much warning and any practical or logical reason, I dropped everything and left to go to Santa Cruz where I began a farm apprenticeship. And there, at Camp Joy Gardens, I worked on my empty canvas - choosing only the colors I felt, only the composition I believed, only the visions I dreamt. I shut everything out so that I could begin again with only my voice to express.

When I came to Camp Joy, I was still deeply engrained in a pretty typical suburban mindset. And yet, I took to the farm like fish to water. Camp Joy is literally a product of the 70's. It was built in '71, from scratch using reclaimed wood from an army barrack, which they were PAID to take. There's a nostalgia there from a time I didn't grow up in (I was a product of the 90's), and yet I recognized it like an old familiar house I grew up in. Everything, down to our singing of Toni Mitchell's "Big Yellow Taxi" resonated with me, like a missing piece of myself. And it's quite strange because I'm Vietnamese, only a generation removed from the Vietnam War.

It was - it is - the best experience of my life. A transformative experience that I needed to grow. Camp Joy itself is a kind of mythical place in my mind. I'll have to go into it another day, but for now I'll say that unlike any other farm, there's a lot of flexibility there, a lot of room to be whoever you want to be, and it was the perfect place for a hippie artist. I bloomed there, in every possible way - physically, mentally, emotionally, artistically, spiritually. And I found a new purpose there, which as fate would have it, coincides with @sagescrub's path as well. Our combined vision is to create a permaculture flower farm - a place that hopefully would be just like Camp Joy in its function and values.

I'm a woman.

Or perhaps more appropriately termed, "Womanist" - a word coined by the great writer and literary critic, Alice Walker.
"WOMANIST:

1. From womanish. (Opp. of “girlish,” i.e. frivolous, irresponsible, not serious.) A black feminist or feminist of color. From the black folk expression of mothers to female children, “you acting womanish,” i.e., like a woman. Usually referring to outrageous, audacious, courageous or willful behavior. Wanting to know more and in greater depth than is considered “good” for one. Interested in grown up doings. Acting grown up. Being grown up. Interchangeable with another black folk expression: “You trying to be grown.” Responsible. In charge. Serious.
2. Also: A woman who loves other women, sexually and/or nonsexually. Appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility (values tears as natural counterbalance of laughter), and women’s strength. Sometimes loves individual men, sexually and/or nonsexually. Committed to survival and wholeness of entire people, male and female. Not a separatist, except periodically, for health. Traditionally a universalist, as in: “Mama, why are we brown, pink, and yellow, and our cousins are white, beige and black?” Ans. “Well, you know the colored race is just like a flower garden, with every color flower represented.” Traditionally capable, as in: “Mama, I’m walking to Canada and I’m taking you and a bunch of other slaves with me.” Reply: “It wouldn’t be the first time.”
3. Loves music. Loves dance. Loves the moon. Loves the Spirit. Loves love and food and roundness. Loves struggle. Loves the Folk. Loves herself. Regardless.
4. Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender." - From In Search of Our Mother's Gardens.

I love this definition. Especially because it's created by a woman. A minority woman.

I feel a lot of anger for women and I realize I don't know how to express it. I was sharing with @sagescrub the other day that I know a lot of women, myself included, who can't fully sneeze or fart. Instead, we HOLD it in. So how can we express a really deeply rooted anger stemming from thousands of years of oppression and counting? What women need is to be allowed to be angry. Because they should be angry.

I just read the other day that one of the reasons western women give birth laying down (only for the last 200 years compared to various positions prior) is because King Louis XIV LIKED to watch his mistresses give birth (source). That's just one historical example that still have echoes in our supposedly progressive society. (A woman should also have much more than 2 weeks to go back to work after birth because motherhood IS a job). We're far from equality because it's not about a woman who can do "what a man can do." To reiterate what Alice Walker wrote, a womanist is one who "appreciates and prefers women’s culture, women’s emotional flexibility (values tears as natural counterbalance of laughter), and women’s strength."

I could go on and on as this is a huge issue. To wrap it up, being a woman is a big part of who I am and it's important for me that men and women recover a lost tradition that had been passed down from women to women - healing, nurturing, birthing, moon time, cooking together, social bonding, crafting, oral tradition, our relationship to Mother Earth. These are women's birthrights and our strengths. And to lose these traditions is a huge lost for all of society, not just women.

Phew. I have to say, this is my first post and already I've got so many tangents to followup with on future posts. I know that was a bit long-winded but I hope it is at least an entertaining read and fodder for thoughts and discussions. I look forward to sharing some of my artwork in future (shorter) posts and other philosophical insights!

Signing out. Happy new year! Peace, friends.