Chaos and Mess

Last week in a writing workshop David said, "Chaos and mess means thinking is going on."  I wrote it down.  Having heard it before in various permutations, "let's get messy"  or "mess signifies you are really digging in," it is often said to students and about students - and should be encouraged pedagogically.  Out of the chaos and mess - great things can come.

But it is also the story of my life as I look around the places I work.

Piles of books.  A given.  In any room that is inhabited for any length of time.  From the kitchen to the basement to the bedroom.  For all of the time spent with a device in hand or a screen nearby, it is the physical book that I lust after.  Yes lust.

synonyms:

crave, desire, covet, want, wish for, long for, yearn for, dream of, hanker for, hanker after, hunger for, thirst for, ache for...

Maybe someday someone will say:  She lusted after books.  Reading them and making them.

There is a place in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that, in my mind, is the optimal spot for looking at the moon and stars.  The stars are bright and endless, every constellation flung across the sky - the ones I can name and the others (many more) that I can't.  I sit in the dark in the middle of the night sipping bourbon and looking up.  The only sound in mid-summer being the clinking of ice.  No one around for miles.

They look chaotic and messy as well, unless you really can read them - which I can't.  But let's go with the idea of that for a moment.  Chaotic and messy - thinking going on - right?

There are a lot of references to these particular stars in the books in process of late.  

Solve vincula reis,
profer lumen caecis
mala nostra pelle,
bona cuncta posce.*

TETHERED 2015  (mixed media, v.edition of 6)

Tethered is one of those books.  It is a story of longing, motherhood, of travel, of moon and star watching.  It takes place over the course of 21 years.  In the colophon I write, "A solstice moon with a pacifier moving across the night sky..."   It is, I see now, also a story about how quickly time passes in spite of the constancy of some things.  Chaos and mess among them.

*Break the sinners' fetters,

  make our blindness day,

  Chase all evils from us,

  for all blessings pray.

Ave Maris Stella

Hail Star of the Ocean

These days....

The news is so sad and outrageous these days.  My heart breaks.  At these times, when the bleakness of rhetoric and hatred seems impossibly overwhelming, I want to lift up the love I have been blessed with.

Sitting in the backyard tonight as the dusk turns to dark.  This is the time of day when the birds are noisy and the sounds of the neighborhood as it settles in for the night are particular to this midwestern city on the shore of a Great Lake in the summer.  The call of a child, the shutting of a backdoor, the smell of a fire pit, the rustle of the trees.

Looking around this small green space and reflecting on earlier in the day.  A seemingly spontaneous brunch this morning ….originally we planned a small gathering to celebrate grand daughter Muriel’s 2nd birthday.   MiNei and I had talked brunch so she could be here without having to rush off to work.  Joe would be home for the weekend - bonus.  Elijah of course.  MiNei’s mom - Helen, or Tutu to the kids.  She brought them both ukuleles.  Then it turned out that Annie and Audrey would be here - and Teresa came over…Luke is staying with Johnny for a week - so he was here.  Elijah brought a friend - Rohan.  Granny came. We were now nearing 20.   John baked a cherry and apple pie.  Tuna salad, meatballs and fruit.  Lot’s of coffee.  Flowers from the garden - the last of the yellow iris, daisies, peonies - and a couple big striped hosta leaves.

See how easily these familial names are written, the simplicity of a vase of flowers and pie, the casual planning - always able to be flexed to accommodate change?  Could this be your family, just by changing the names and tweaking the menu, the flowers, the place?

And this just speaks to those of us who were physically there.  It doesn’t include everyone else who joined us - either through the objects around us, or the conversations that raised them up, their pictures (readily shared) on our cellphones, or the children they live on in.   

Only a home that has been lived for a long time in can conjure up all the children who have run through its rooms and yard, or yelled about a toy, or wanted a ride in a wagon. Those things still happen, but now it is other children - the children (or grandchildren or great-grandchildren of some of that first group).

The fathers who raised these children…the ones who originally roofed the house and built the studio.  They live on as well.  Luke moves certain ways and Annie and I turn to each other and say “TODD.”  We are all draped in chairs underneath the shade of an apple tree that was planted ten years ago when John R passed and a “weed-tree” that John L brought back from Le-Cache.  The cycle of planting continues as John F digs up plants to take to his yard.  Otis joyously runs bases around the yard in the midst of all of us.  Four generations right there.

And those flowers?  The peonies remind me of my grandmother Marie’s backyard…planted all along the back fence.  The yellow Iris are from that same yard.  Dug up in Royal Oak, planted on 44th street at the house of blue steps.  Dug up again and brought to Bay View.  How many times they have been split and shared - I can't remember.  Same with the hosta from my Mom.  And the daisies?  How many times have I heard my mother in law sing, “I’ll give you a daisy a day dear…” this woman who now struggles to remember each of our names.

....We chase the melodies that seem to find us until they're finished songs and start to play.

When senseless acts of tragedy remind us that nothing here is promised. Not one day.

This show is proof that history remembers

we live through times when hate and fear seem stronger.

We rise and fall and light from dying embers.

Remembrances that hope and love last longer.

And love is love is love is love is love is love cannot be killed or swept aside.

from Lin-Manuel Miranda's acceptance speech at the 2016 Tony Awards.