“When artists give form to revelation, their art can advance, deepen
and potentially transform the consciousness of their community.” ~ Alex Grey
Words that Nudged History
Margaret Ayer Barnes was born this week, on April 8th, 1886, in Chicago Illinois. Barnes was interested in women’s education even before she began writing. She helped organize the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers in Industry, a summer residential liberal arts program for working women with little or no formal education. After hurting her back in a car accident at the age of 40, she began writing short stories, plays and novels. She won a Pulitzer prize for her first novel Years of Grace. While often conservative in her views, her proto-feminist ideas championed women’s rights for independence in American society.1
Dear Reader,
This week I’m settling into new kinds of knowing. It’s coming up on a year since my cancer diagnosis, and I know, in a more visceral sense, that I am mortal. And that the “I will”s we profess regarding our hypothetical crises, may not correspond with the actual decisions we make when a crisis is undeniably real. Here, now.
I would. I will. ≠ I am.
I’ve believed there’d always be time to prioritise writing. There’d be time to learn to trust myself, while letting criticism drift by without trying to grab it, and wrestle it into submission. As someone with a bipolar diagnosis, the middle way has always been something of a quixotic goal. Now, it’s an imperative.
I stop several times during the day and breathe. I’ve learned that, when I’ve been pushed to the edge of breaking, I’ve been able to give. Not to give in—just give.
When my youngest first went into the military and had to submerge himself through a hole cut into the frozen lake, he told me that the key to dealing with the cold was not to fight it. To relax, and accept it. Maybe we do that when we are pushed so far that we know any other response is absurd?
But taking that wisdom back into a normal day to day, 9 to 5, is hard. The drive towards forgetting is more powerful than I want to admit.
In Charlie Kaufman’s original script for Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, the characters have each other erased from their memory 15 times. I don’t think of this as fate, as much as a demonstration of how important it is be able to evolve from our experiences. Good and bad, right? I liked the movie, but think I would have enjoyed the movie that never came to be, better.
I’ve always appreciated Kaufman’s absurdism.
Literature
Last summer, a pair of lapwings nested nearby, in an area where three pastures meet. They moved their chicks from field to field until they fledged. I was looking forward to seeing them again this year. They returned, but are nesting somewhere else. I saw some down near the beach a few weeks ago and think they might be nesting there, in the fields that run up to the dunes. When the weather clears up, I’ll take my opera glasses and see if I can find them. Meanwhile, I’ve been reading about the birds in David E. Perry’s In the Garden of His Imagination. And listening:
Visual Art
I’m nowhere near New York, but I’d have loved to have gone to the P.P.O.W gallery to see Guadalupe Maravilla’s exhibition Si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana. (If You Don’t Heal Today, You’ll Heal Tomorrow is also the title of a well-known children’s song.)
I can imagine what it would have been like to be in the room with these sculptures. So big, demanding to be touched.
Quotes from Colossal:
Dating back to the late 18th century, retablos are small devotional paintings created to thank God or a saint for their protection during a particularly trying or dangerous event. In his show, Si no sanas hoy, sanarás mañana, Guadalupe Maravilla (previously) conjures this tradition as he nests narrative works inside spiny mixed-media sculptures that address the indelible impact of childhood trauma.
Maravilla’s works are particularly timely given the increase in migration from Central and South American countries, along with Israel’s ongoing war in Gaza that has killed more than 12,300 children. Positioned on a blush wall with gold linework, “Letter to the Children Retablo” speaks to such atrocities as he recounts the tragic loss of a six-year-old friend named Luna as he fled the war in El Salvador. He writes:
To those children experiencing war, I hope to meet you in the future and hug you. In the future I hope you are receiving & inspiring love in your communities. That you’re healing. That you formed a new family. That you become leaders. That you are saving the trees and the oceans, that you find a cure for cancer. That you solve many of the world’s problems that we caused. That you that you show us and teach us about what is humanity supposed to be, because we lost we that…I have failed you, America has failed you and the world has failed you. You are my family, you will always be in my heart. I’ll see you in the future.
Short Film
This short poetry film brought up memories of Kyoto, and of walking under Fushimi Inari Taisha’s red gateways on a sweltering day. I had to watch it several times, to leave my memories out of it. I’m pretty sure that my tourist’s mental snapshots are not what the directors wanted me to get out of it.
I often have to read poems several times when they bring up personal things for me. A bit like swilling the wine glass with water several times between different bottles, diluting the remnants over and over, in order to taste the new wine, untainted.
This poetry film has been described as a visual epitaph for the poet Hikari-san, whose name means light. She’d published online videos where she read other people’s poetry, using ASMR. The film was directed by Casey Warren and Danielle Krieger, but I’m having trouble tracking down the details for proper credit due all of the artists involved.
As far as I can make out, the poem read aloud in the film was written by the contemporary Japanese poet Shuntaro Tanikawa: “Epitaph for the Poet’s Tomb”.
More about Shuntaro Tanikawa.
And finally, to come full circle:
How happy is the blameless vestal's lot!
The world forgetting, by the world forgot.
Eternal sunshine of the spotless mind!
Each pray'r accepted, and each wish resign'd;
Labour and rest, that equal periods keep;
"Obedient slumbers that can wake and weep;"
Desires compos'd, affections ever ev'n,
Tears that delight, and sighs that waft to Heav'n.
from ”Eloisa to Abelard” by Alexander Pope (Oh, what a dramatic story!)
Have a great week!
https://www.literaryladiesguide.com/author-biography/margaret-ayer-barnes/
About birds: Have you run across an app called Merlin? It identifies bird calls all over the world, depending on what you want. Run by Cornell University bird studies. I’ve used it in USA and Japan, much of Europe, etc. Yesterday, for example, I heard eight different birds tell each other a hawk or eagle was overhead (well, that’s what I decided they were saying after I saw the big one drifting above us).
Have a great week!