Sketching identities

July 12, 2014

When I was in grad school I had to make a list of my non-negotiables. I had to decide what I was unwilling to give up in any certain circumstance. Specifically, in going abroad, I was supposed to decide the things that I wouldn't be willing to live with or to live without.  Electricity, personal safety, adequate sleep, clean water, and clean clothing were of the most common answers in the class. While adequate sleep is high on my list, none of those responses are my first priority.

My main concern, whether at home, on a Caribbean island, in the desert, in the mountains, or in a hut in Africa?  my sketchbook and a good pen.  

It's a need. A real need. 

I have to have it. 

I know.  It sounds insane. I know it does.

But, to me, it's my greatest material possession in this world.

It's my identity. 

I fill my sketchbook, over a period of years, with all of the good and the true and the beautiful in my life.  

I write when people that I love say funny things.  

Like the time when stelly said, "it's not fun to poop your pants."

Like the time when joy said, "I was trained to fall asleep in any church.  This church."

I write when people that I love say live-giving things.  

Like years and years of listening to Jon Tyson.

Like when I woke up to my niece staring directly into my eyes so she could say, "before I go to school I just want you to know, you really mean a lot to me."

I draw my life in the pages. 

If you, your words, or some remembrance of are in my sketchbook, it is because I love you.

I can skim through the pages and remember, in an instant, where I was, what season I was in in my life, what I was doing at the time, and what I was feeling at the time.

It's like a portal to the past parts of me.  It can take me anywhere I ever was.  It reminds me of all that I never want to forget.  About the world. About me. 

It gives me an escape when I feel trapped in any moment. I can open it, flip through the pages, or draw something new. I can leave the moment and go anywhere else that I dream to go. 

I take it everywhere. Always. 

I have every sketchbook from the time I was in the seventh-grade. All of them. They are the fabric of my days, tied together with a literal binding. 

I say all of that to set the stage for my greater thought. 

I use my sketchbook, especially when I'm in a new land, to find common ground. When I pull it out and start drawing, I stop being the foreigner and start being another human. 

People will gather around me, ask to see the drawings.   When they open the book they open the door for conversations.

Without fail. 

Art ties everyone together. 

On this trip, specifically, I was skimming though the pages with several new friends and came across the words of my professor, Dr. Corbitt. 

He's all over my sketchbook.

He used to live in Kenya.  He's the reason that I am where I am, literally and figuratively, for infinite reasons. 

He's an important man in my life. His words hold weight in my heart. 

These words, these ones I ran across the other day, were the closing words to a story he told our class in grad school.  

He said, "we have been given names and we live up to the names we have been given. But, we have the power to change our names."

I wrote those words in my sketchbook.  I think about them often. 

I think about the names that I was given as a child, as a teenager, as an adult.

Some gave life to my soul.  Some still make my stomach turn. 

I think about the names in this community.  Names for women.  Names for children. Names for orphans.  Names for impoverished. 

I wonder who will tell them that they have the power to change what they've been called.

Whether beautiful or ugly, we live up to what others think of us.  

We all do. 

But we also choose who we are going to be, we choose who we surround ourselves with, we choose the names that we allow others to speak into our lives.

I've been given my names. I've lived up to them. I have the power to change them.  

Same with you. 

I've been privileged enough to have people in my life that empower me to change my names.  

It's beautiful to be able to remember those words, especially when I'm half a world away from home.

It's important to remember that I have a responsibility to speak those words to this community.

It's why my sketchbook is a non-negotiable.