inconsequentials

 

marble green almond

Dear All,

Oooh, the quitting is going so slowly!  I am counting minutes, though, instead of days.  Besides you, there are two things on my mind: what to do, and why do I love fake food?

It occurs to me that the allure of fake food is primarily the everlastingness and the absurdity.  I love that someone would carve and paint marble as carefully as this, and yet, it's completely useless and also frozen, paralyzed in the time of ripeness.  I would fill my house with these kind of baubles, pretending to be something they are not.  

Remember the lovely paper mâché doughnut?  With pink painted frosting and plastic beads glued on top?  Then there are the beaded raspberries for pinning on a hat, and a beaded persimmon that sits in a bowl on a shelf.

But, no, I really don't need another thing that sits around the place looking good.  What I need will have to pass this test:

Does it require or seek external validation?

Is it oriented towards some kind of corporate, colonial notion of progress?

Is it enjoyable?

Here is a video showing you how to make your own paper mâché doughnut, if you feel crafty and making it passes your own test for doing what matters!

Identity Pie

 

Dear Friends,

Today I shall be sharing my secret recipe for Identity Pie.  It's a no recipe recipe, I guess, but as I said before, I want you to enjoy making yours, so feel free to measure exactly, or find another recipe for it.  In any case, this pie will only feed one, so you will have to get together with more folks if you want to make a dinner party out of it.  If it doesn't seem like much more than a list of things, that's because I am trying to include all the things that I did not when I was asked to make it before.

sitting around with a cup of coffee

watching birds, animals, plants, the sea

sewing things like clothes, pillows, stuffed mice

other needlework like knitting, crocheting, quilting, embroidering, weaving

baking bread each week

making fermented hot sauce

being in open spaces

buying lipstick

loving shoes and clothes and temporary tattoos

singing and playing guitar

speaking Spanish & French

writing

drawing

painting

taking photos

shopping

baking

cooking

looking up words

playing solitary games

watching junky, old, television, with questionable white, male protagonists

liking chrome

hating cleaning

liking wine

smoking

considering

apologizing

cutting my hair

appearing knowledgeable

appearing interested

appearing polite

appearing

Mattering.

 

Dear Muttering,

Why do you or I matter?  Well, in geologic scale, we don't.  It's okay to say that.  No, it's actually quite good to say that.  Why?  As insurance against being used.  I don't want, in my desire to matter, to do a heap of unnecessary emotional labor, or to go around working for The Man, our Robot Overlords,  Capitalism and godknowswhat all garbage.  Just exactly why would I try to 'matter' in some ill-defined way which is controlled by the human construct of 'civilization.'  What, I say, might matter to a rabbit?  To a beetle?  A poppy?  A child?  A lightening strike?  A puddle of mud?

Yes, yes, I know, it sounds too romantic for our world of contemporary knowledge; it's just another way for you to put your head in the sand, you say.  But, I do feel that a map, a guideline, a test, is a very handy item to have as we travel through the seasons and years.

One thing I am going to use to shape my meaning and my mattering, is this mantra:  I will not be told to clean things.  I have a coffee table filled with magazines that tell me what to do, and most of the admonitions revolve around cleaning.  Declutter, degrease, simplify.   Exfoliate, shed, let go of.  Organize, dust, deep clean.  Store, fold, be mindful.

These actions do give a nice sense of being in charge, and they seem to need doing, so that's a nice feeling.  A feeling of mattering, a feeling of having control over dust, objects, wilted leaves.  But, mightn't it cause me to focus only on the dead and dying?  Are you simply, in life, making a mess or cleaning a mess?  That seems a bit thin, doesn't it?

Here I am at the end, again, and I still have not given a list of things that I like to think (pretend?) make me who I am.  Up next, the fourth and final episode in this discussion: baking an Identity Pie.

Not Doing

 

Dear Reader,

Recall our last discussion- on what we should do, and by extension, what we should not.  I am going to put some space here, in which you should consider the question, let it sink in; selah, in the musical pause sense.

Ready?  I will go first; I think we should try to do what we like, even though that will mean a certain amount of secrecy.  I would also add that I want to work to be less secret.  What does that mean, you ask?  I am not sure, but I think it means that I will tell you what I am thinking and feeling without filtering it so much that I mediate myself into your acceptance.  Hmm, that makes it sound like I am spoiling for a fight!  Maybe I am.

Okay, you next.  What should we do?

Recall also my pathetic wheel of identity, as I tried to craft a persona that said "I matter and this is why."  This topic will be broadened in our next meeting, titled, Mattering.