Nostalgia tastes like toffee. Like butterscotch. Like caramel. And that’s the danger of it. It’s confection. It’s empty calories. All sugar and no substance. The longing for something that isn’t real.
Spent all weekend working on a project that failed. Today’s newsletter almost didn’t happen. It’s hasty and haphzard. When it comes to luster, it’s lacking. But…it’s here…
It’s a fine line between a healthy obsession, and toxicity. Between frustration, drive, spite, desperation, and apathy. Between giving up, falling apart, figuring it out, breaking through, and continually spinning. Relapse, recovery, and sobriety, one or all of the above I’m told comes into play. But, maybe that’s just me...
We aim for self-knowledge, to have some level of self-assuredness. A degree of certainty. But is that more of a hindrance than an aid? When we tie ourselves to static identities, what happens when we confront the reality of the way things change? When like everything else we cease to be the same? We are an event rather than a name.
Everything is made of small things. Electrons. Atoms. Nuts. Bolts. Screws. Prayer beads. Everything carries bits of something else. Nothing arrives fully formed. Everything starts as something other, becomes one thing and then another. Shifts. Changes, and then becomes something different yet again.
Somedays we push, and pull, and pry. Most days we blister and ache. We feel the weight of every failed attempt like sediment. Like coarse conglomerate. Immovable granite and bouldering clay. It's heavy. It's hard to carry. It's hard to move, but even a little bit goes a long way...
We "assemble a life from the usable fragments", Lewis Hyde says. Sacred relics of the wreckage, gathered and connected. We experience the world as wholeness when all our pieces have a space.
Repression is a rite of passage, they tell us. It’s called being an adult, they say. It’s all part of becoming a semi-well-adjusted member of a society. Smile. Nod. Stay in your lane. Dress for the job you want. Do as you're told. Pay your taxes and your rent. And, most importantly, stuff all your otherness way the fuck down so no one knows, and no one sees...
We talk about achievement. About goals. Setting them. Reaching them. About getting somewhere, becoming something. But what happens the morning after? What happens the next day? After the parade, the party. After they sweep the confetti away. What happens when the big moment fades? Maybe it's never been greatness we were after, but a baseline standard of enoughness brought to our days.
Something happens when you're unhurried, when you escape from acceleration and speed. When you give way to haste-less activity.
Something happens when you tarry, when you linger, when you pause.
You were never trying to escape your life, only what you thought it was supposed to be. Your real life has always been in the attention you give to slow things.
We collect the instances of what's expected of us. Air-quotes-normalcy. Air-quotes-conventionality. Air-quotes-respectability. In other unsaid words, side-eye-conformity. It’s the breakfast of champions, they say...
It is a rare bravery to face the factors of our lives that have fallen down, fallen short, and fallen apart. It's being present with unflinching resolve. It's grieving without giving up or giving in. That's what gives us a chance. A chance to be new and renewed. A chance to be deeper and different. A chance to begin and, more importantly, to begin again.
You have an affliction. A malady. Everything in the world, all its equipment and armaments, its slings and arrows, its sticks and stones, its words that always hurt you, that break your heart and your bones. Osteogenesis imperfecta. All your inner structures turn brittle, little, and weak.
You put yourself together. Bit by bit. Part Sometimes you do it with clarity and precision. As if by a manual. As if provided with a step-by-step guide. At other times, in total darkness. In the midnight hour. Grappling with esoteric secrets. With hieroglyphics. An impenetrable mystery. Like Ikea instructions for building anything...
Better starts with dissatisfaction. A holy discontent. A decided refusal to never relinquish the possibility of what could be to what has been. To never accept the current state of things. It starts with a willing rejection. It starts with a conscientious objection.
“It is so much more comfortable to think that we know what it all means”, Anne Lamott says. But, sometimes the really magical, top-shelf, good shit, sometimes WE PROGRESS when we realize we don't know a goddamn thing. I came to collage to stop overthinking...
"The ongoing challenge of the creative life is how to balance the outward sharing of one’s gift with the inward stewardship of the soul from which that gift springs." - @mariapopova
You have a condition. A sensitivity. The symptoms are invisible. Whether you were born with it or came to it. Something in your genes or something that happens as you age. Who knows? Who’s to say? It’s a kind of osteopenia. A loss of inner strength. A kind of poverty. You can’t rebuild quickly. A reduction of volume, of mass. An inadequate density.
Super excited about Monday’s newsletter. I made a piece of art for a fellow writer's poem last week, and I “try” to write alittle bit about my creative process in making it and the way collage relates to my creative proces as a whole…I know…it’s kind of a lot…
Barry Lopez says that “At the heart of the lifework of many artists I have known is a simple but profound statement: ‘I object’”, and I’d say this is living proof of it.
On the packaging.Hidden in the terms and conditions. Who knew it’d be so foretelling, so prescient? “Some assembly required.” Like a chant. Like a mantra. Like the Rosary. A testament to how you’d spend your time and your days. A lifetime with tiny pieces. Trying to fit them in. Trying to figure out where they go...
This is a stuning piece that resonates with me in ways I can't put into words. Thomas Merton says that “those who cannot be alone cannot find their true being and they are always something less than themselves.” But over time with overuse the kind of withdrawal that makes it possible can become its own kind of lessening.
Is there anything that makes you invincible? Can you coat yourself in kevlar? Some new invention of polymer chemistry? Ballistic panels and stab protection. Blunt force resistance and polycarbonate shields. You try to be normal. You enter the world in riot gear. Defensive. Fragile. Scared...
