impression

 

Dear Recent History,

You know how a lot of artists and makers really buried the needle during the pandemic?  Churning out all kinds of daily delights?  People made dozens of pairs of socks, they repainted, they made beautiful and poignant music and youTube videos, they planted flowers, they expressed their anxiety in all kinds of wonderful ways.  I did not.  I had none of that kind of energy.  To me, it felt like I was waiting in line at the scary roller coaster, moving very slowly towards my turn in the terrifying little cart; not a time to focus on creative pursuits at all.  My mind was frantic in its existential crisis.

I know somewhere out there, there must be one other person, maybe even five or ten, who felt like I did; too sad to make much of anything.  I didn't really know before that huge global event (the event, I expect, of my lifetime, even though no one even talks about it anymore) that my impulse to make art comes from something like joy.  I wasn't feeling any joy, or even any neutral sort of okayness.  I know some of you are out there; I hope you know that our way of getting through was fine too; it's possible we may have felt some guilt about 'wasting all that free time.'  We might still feel that we ought to feel that, but, with the power vested in me as a human who did not feel like being productive during that planet-wide tragedy, I officially absolve you (& myself) from all that crap.  We did the right thing, which was no-thing at all.  Doing nothing is fine, even best in many cases.

Still, I know you were marking time in some way; I made one of these little marks at the end of each day, in this cherry wood plank that a printmaker gave me.  I didn't start right away, I had to back fill about 38 marks or so; and sometime after the second year, after the vaccines didn't evaporate the virus, I thought, oooh, this is maybe not going to end in any kind of definitive way....

I kept making marks until May of last year; when I caught the dratted crud Covid finally.  After days of illness and finally testing negative, I was so debilitatingly tired that I got disgusted with the project; I was never going to be done making marks.  My Father caught Covid for the third time, this May.  It is printed now, and 'finished' in a sense.  There could be other endings for this board, too: cutting it up, burning it, using the back- saving it until time demands to be counted in that way again.

compassion: a harsh mistress

 

Die Mütter, woodcut, Käthe Kollwitz, 1921-22.

Dear Traveler Through Time On the Head of a Pin,

Have you ever written someone off so completely, at the individual cellular level; like, this person is irredeemable, wasn't worth the oxygen they used, and nothing that ever came from, circulated around them, could have been anything but negativity, only to discover in the tiniest artifact, the smallest gesture, a softening in your self?  Just their red pen writing on the outside of the manilla folder melts your icy battlements?  You suddenly feel:  Oh!  They really do have some qualities, and the whole of my relationship with them has not been just ashes after all!

Well, the feeling passes of course, but my point (if I have one), is that the softening might not be the part of compassion that we are supposed to be aiming for- it might be, it might be that the message is: maybe you don't need to build such a complete wall, such a total severing.

Hear me out, I know why I built it.  It's like the Post-It note you stick on the phone that says "NO!"  It is meant to protect yourself from annoyance and pain, from making the same old mistakes.  So, you build this big edifice out of solid bricks of rationalization, and then the tiniest, slimmest little memory, little piffling thought seeps right through, tunnels right under, and there you are, having lunch again with someone you said you'd 'never' spend time with again.

What might be better, I ask myself?  I think the tremendous effort of being compassionate- which, for the sake of this conversation, will be defined* as 'putting the feelings of others before yours'- is a pretty large burden.  Maybe this is the problem right here, compassion as I have defined it, is asking too much sometimes.  Where is the self?  Selflessness is all very well, but, evaporating into the yielding ether does not always work for me.

 Maybe, and this is completely different project, these letters/blog should be renamed, re-branded (?), "Have You Ever?"  Let it be part of your song for today.

*  A dictionary definition.  An expansive, etymological definition.  A source for more reading on the topic.

poem, print

 

Woodcut print by Bryan Nash Gill.

Dear Ones,

I bought a case, to put my odd objects into, because I felt sad that they were in boxes, and if I am not making these things for me, then who?  As an audience of one, I wanted these things presented in a vitrine, and so they are going into a cabinet.  However, some things are not going to be kept any longer.  

A shoebox of leaf skeletons, although it might be the best thing I own, will be documented and then, tossed onto the wind.  Photographing these things will have to suffice.

Also, a chocolate box filled with fabric snips.  A box of rocks.  Many boxes of shells, coral.  A stack of stamps cut from the RSVP's of my wedding invitations.  A box of conkers.  Seeds and pods.  Winged leaves.  Stems of dried bulbs.

These are the collections that are going, many more are staying: the birds' nests, more boxes of rocks.  Cut scraps of yarn.

All of this saving seems to be what gives me meaning, and that brings me to poem, which I think you should save, in a box, in a collection of poems that bring you meaning.

Tree Rings

There's no choice
near the end
but to curl in
on yourself.

That's all that
remains, but for
that around
which you curl.

- Todd Young.