On Gardens, Thresholds, and Writing

I bought some plums at the farm market Saturday. They’re not round like grocery store plums, but more oblong. Maybe from local farms, but the farmer I got them from sometimes has stuff from other places. None of the other vendors had plums; they’ve moved on to apples. There’s also still a lot of watermelon, so I bought a watermelon with yellow fruit inside. The plums, if I wait until they’re soft, until they’re almost too soft, are sweet. Delicious. I love plums. And never buy them because usually they’re always disappointing. 

I’ve been listening to Elissa Washuta’s interview with Jordan Kisner on the podcast Thresholds. I discovered the podcast when K. mentioned it during our Sunday writing group meeting in zoom. She suggested the episode with Eileen Myles, which I did listen to and loved, and then listened to a few others. I love hearing these writers talk about writing process, inner anxiety, their inward and outward journeys along various writing paths. No one has the same process but what’s not always said out loud has to do with a faith or silent motivation to keep going, to keep doing the work, regardless of outside factors or internal worries. Something deeper pushes the writers and their writing, especially when they don’t know what it’s going to be, where it’s going. 

There is often something messy, or unclear, or even something reacted against negatively. Myles talked a lot about saying “No” to ideas, opportunities, potential changes to whatever “status quo” in her life at various points. As if saying No is part of her process, and in the conversation it seems to become clear that it may be a real and important part of that process. Listening, I thought, I do that. All the time. I don’t like things to change sometimes, even when I desire change more than anything. I don’t like things to shift, especially not unexpectedly. I tend to see the negative, to critique before I reflect, in so many things. And reflecting on that, I think maybe it’s not always bad but part of my process: for thinking, for analyzing, for considering, for adjusting and transitioning, and for writing. 

All of the writers talk about “thresholds” of various sorts. Elissa Washuta writes in her recent book, White magic, and talks in the interview, about getting sober and beginning to work through her many traumatic experiences, including sexual abuse. 

She shares reflection on her journey writing the book as part of the transition into and through sobriety over a number of years, of the difficult and emotional move away from Seattle and her Cowlitz homelands, and how using “form” in essay writing can help one deal with content that is messy or unclear. I interpret this as about how one can both contain content to a formal structure, in a way, and let the content go where it will, allowing the writer to get at difficult material while resonances or connections arise even if one doesn’t know what those might be ahead of time. In more lyric kinds of creative nonfiction, there are some more “formal” kinds of forms like braided essays or hermit crab essays. And there are ways to push those forms further, to invent or mesh forms together. In another talk I heard Washuta give, she said that she used forms less in White Magic than in her earlier book, My Body is a Book of Rules. But braiding and structuring the essays in White magic, from my own writing perspective, often feels like certain kinds of structures both help construct parameters around the content and allow the content to discover its myriad possibilities. 

In one long essay made of short pieces that are more like stand-alone flash essays than sections, sometimes overt and sometimes subtle resonances or connections float between them. The 50-page piece is titled, “The Spirit Corridor” and begins in second person: “You’re standing in front of two doors.” The narrator explains that one leads to Heaven and the other to Hell, but you don't know which is which and can only ask one question. “What is the question?” Wahsuta writes, “I don’t know and I don’t care. I’ve been looking for a different door.” Individually titled sections of the essay are about different kinds of doors–"crying room” doors, “forbidden” doors, “dream” doors–riddles vs jokes, Mark Twain, symbols in “astrology, tarot, and witchcraft,” and other topics. Throughout the whole book she weaves layers of personal story, Indigenous history, history of coal miners, Catholicism, witchcraft and so much more.

We’ve been eating a lot of tomatoes, coming in all at once in late summer and early fall, the basil in the garden already finished with the cool nights, so I overpaid for a small basil plant from the grocery store. Sliced tomatoes with olive oil and balsamic, cherry tomatoes and corn salad with red onion and sometimes with mint or parsley or basil, sometimes with feta. Tomato pie, pizza with with pesto from the garden basil and roasted tomatoes. Some of the tomatoes have started going bad. We can’t eat them fast enough. Meant to make some sauce but didn’t get to it. It’s fine. I’ve put my anxiety about it aside. We’ll enjoy the summer tomatoes while they last, and like the early spring lettuce, the strawberries and peaches and cucumbers, we’ll have to remember them fondly until next summer’s harvests. 

I have a 20-page essay I’ve been sending out, getting rejected, revising and sending again for more than a year now (two years now maybe). One journal I sent it to gave me written comments from three readers. This was an amazing gift, it seemed, since most journals barely personalize rejection notes. This journal, though, I realized later, was publishing work much more linearly narrative than the essay I had sent. I read a number of essays in the journal before sending, but I also had been thinking of my essay as pretty narratively straightforward, apparently more so than how it has been read. So I was dismayed to read not very useful comments, one reader in particular crude and cutting in their remarks about the essay being hard to follow or understand. I was frustrated. But instead of making it more “easy” I’ve played with revisions to “clarify” or refine in other ways. I’m not sure what that means except to say the essay is doing what I want it to. And even though it hasn't been accepted, reading at times complexly layered writing like Washuta’s helps me think about the negotiation between intent, personal discovery in writing, intuition, audience, and revision in ways that also help me feel more confident as a writer. I did a lot of gardening and writing this summer. And now it’s time to move forward into fall.

My book, Geographies of Identity: Narrative Forms, Feminist Futures was published in November of 2021, as we were heading into another disastrous Covid winter. So much of life was still happening away from crowds, a lot of teaching and many creative reading/publishing events largely held in zoom or asynchronously floating in cyberspace. Although everything was exhausting and overwhelming at that moment, it would be a long time before things would start to get better, and for me and so many others, the exhaustion accumulated. Even now, though much has been recovered, much has not. We’ve lost so much. Teaching and publishing worlds are not what they were. Life for many has not really gone back to pre-Covid “normal,” whatever that even was. We’ve also gained some things like different kinds of flexibility maybe or better online tools, maybe developed new ways of finding community because of zoom, and more. Personally, I also feel like I’m still always picking up pieces from some earlier version of my life, or parts that got waylaid during those Covid-intensive years. 

I didn’t have a reading or publication event for Geographies of Identity, haven’t done a lot of PR to share it too widely. But if you or your students are reading or thinking about avant-garde poetics, innovative prose writing by women, cultural and textual identity, narrative and experimental forms, you may be interested in delving in. Even better, the book is Open Access, so you can download it from the publisher, or from many academic libraries, for free. This link to the JSTOR version allows you to download individual chapters, and includes introduction and chapter summaries. The book is divided into three sections: Landscape, Crisis, and Possibility and each section includes a mini-introduction to the main concepts and ideas. The book’s initial introduction offers a historical overview feminist, avant-garde, and cultural poetics theories and practices in conversation with writers such as Rachael Blau Du Plessis, Julia Kristeva, bell hooks, Susan Stanford Friedman, Kimberlé Crenshaw, Judith Butler, Fred Moten, Harryette Mullen, and others. Here’s a summary overview of the book:

Geographies of Identity: Narrative Forms, Feminist Futures explores identity and American culture through hybrid, prose work by women, and expands the strategies of cultural poetics practices into the study of innovative narrative writing. Informed by Judith Butler, Homi Bhabha, Harryette Mullen, Julia Kristeva, and others, this project further considers feminist identity politics, race, and ethnicity as cultural content in and through poetic and non/narrative forms. The texts reflected on here explore literal and figurative landscapes, linguistic and cultural geographies, sexual borders, and spatial topographies. Ultimately, they offer non-prescriptive models that go beyond expectations for narrative forms, and create textual webs that reflect the diverse realities of multi-ethnic, multi-oriented, multi-linguistic cultural experiences.

Readings of Gertrude Stein’s A Geographical History of America, Renee Gladman’s Juice, Pamela Lu’s Pamela: A Novel, Claudia Rankine’s Don’t Let Me Be Lonely, Juliana Spahr’s The Transformation, Theresa Hak Kyung Cha’s Dictée, Gloria Anzaldúa’s Borderlands/La Frontera, and Layli Long Soldier’s WHEREAS show how alternatively narrative modes of writing can expand access to representation, means of identification, and subjective agency, and point to horizons of possibility for new futures. 

And from the Introduction:

For the purposes of grounding this project within current conversations about formally innovative writing by women — avant-garde, language-centered, feminist experimental writing, or non/narrative writing — I refer to The Feminist Avant-Garde in American Poetry that examines “the work of modern and contemporary women writers who contest issues of gender, race, history, and sexuality in innovative poetic forms.” Elizabeth Frost is in part responding to studies of American poetry by women that “tended to focus on a poetics of personal experience, frequently grounded in identity politics” and subsequently “marginalized avant-gardism in feminist poetics” and she examines the work of poets who share a belief that language both shapes, and can take part in changing, consciousness. As she writes, “each [poet] weds radical politics to formal experiments.”

I’d love to know if you’ve used this book in your research or teaching, or if you know of colleagues or grad students who have used it. And let me know what you think: has it been helpful in some way? I’d be happy to talk more with you or your students, and I’d love to get some commitments for reviews: if you’d like to write a review, or know someone who would, I can get you a hard copy.

A Return to the Blog

I haven't written here since 2021. Looking back, I see a number of posts about Covid, or Covid diary writings, more than I remember having done. Lately I've thought about posting via substack, and then I thought, I'll come back to this blog and keep substack on the burner for now. That is all to say, I am always writing and 99.5% of it has not been and won't be published. Since Jan 2023 I've focused hard on getting back into submitting work for publication, I've organized my days with more time and discipline for writing, and I've accomplished a lot. At least in terms of words on the page, I've produced. In terms of publications though, very little has come out of the time and money spent on literary submissions (poems, flash and long creative NF essays). But because I spend so much time writing and thinking about writing, I want to do some of that here. I know that getting lots of rejections is supposed to be a kind of good news: "I must be submitting a lot to get so many rejections, yay me!" and that getting rejections that say they liked the writing, enjoyed reading the work, it went through many rounds of consideration.... but, we don't have a place for it, those are also supposed to be encouraging: keep sending! submit to those places again! it just takes perseverance! Sure, yes, I get all of that. And it's also in the end so discouraging. 

I have a long essay I've been sending out and revising and sending since late 2022 or early 2023. I mentioned my frustration with feeling like I don't know what else to do with that essay during an online writing workshop class recently, and the instructor talked about putting work down for a few months and then coming back to it, re-seeing it. I say things like that to my own students. I do it myself. And it's still hard, it's been many more than a few months, now heading toward the end of 2024 and that essay seems completely over, or I'm over it. I thought it was the start of a whole book project, and all summer I've been distressed about what it means that I can't publish that one essay, that I won't be able to write or publish a whole book of essays. 

But writing doesn't only mean publishing. Something else I've *learned* or more accurately been reminded of, during that same workshop class, is that writing takes a lot of time. A couple of the writers whose work we read came to talk to us during the class in zoom. They talked about how long it took from beginning to write the book--whether or not they realized it would be a book at that time--to when it finally was accepted for publication (and then finally in print). And, what's in the book may be different from earlier pieces published in journals. Although some collections of essays I've read include many that were previously published, some books may be written *as books* with less focus on publishing excerpts during the process. Which is to say, there are many paths. 

My goal (one of my writing goals) for the summer was to have a *clear* idea about how to proceed with this book project. I'm not sure I've got that, but I was just listing/organizing the many short and long essays I've been working on over the past couple of years. I have (tentative, preliminary) ideas about how they might fit together as a book. I have ideas for continuing to write--expanding pieces already begun, beginning new ones--and trusting in the process. Writing takes time, and over time one might be able to *see* the writing coming together. 

The long essay is about rivers and cottonwood forests in NM, about the ranch where we stay for a month in the spring, that we've traveled to for the past few years. Other essays in *the book* will be about MI, water, lakes, etc. and sometimes cherries. Here's a link to one short piece, "Linger Here," that did get published. Thanks for reading :)

Covid Diary Dec '20-Jan '21

 Jan 18 2021 

It’s like futuristic here. 2021. I’ve been addictively watching Star Trek Discovery. Sometimes the storylines don’t make sense, the writers trying to get from one plot point to another. But I’ve become obsessed, nonetheless. Or it’s a combination of staying up too late in response to and as distraction from the relentlessness of Trump and Covid  news, a kind of denial depression, like if I keep staying up then I won’t have to go to bed and start again tomorrow… and the addictive nature of any good show with strong characters and that always ends with a cliffhanger. And I always can’t help thinking about how the show was made during Trump’s presidency. Especially during the season where the ship and crew slip into a parallel universe where the same people exist but it’s like the evil version of everyone and everything, where individual competition and winning are the highest goals and there’s a lot of killing to get or remain on top, where everyone is their own worst self all of the time. Of course one might argue how American this idea is even before Trump, but still it feels like a sci-fi manifestation of the exacerbated long term consequences of Trump culture in which everything turns rotten, and hate, lies, violence, and distrust consume everything.

In real-life-time, Trump supporting white supremacists have been planning to arrest politicians and take over the government, or at least the US capital. The protest that never was a protest but always maybe intended to be a riot shut everything down on Jan. 6, Trump instigated and encouraged it, and now we’re all wondering how Biden’s inauguration will go in two days. They won’t go away when Trump leaves but kind of like a nice surprise many of them have been shut down across social media platforms and denounced by corporate and other entities (and most importantly some entities have taken money away from Trump, from his ability to fundraise, and from Trump politicians and other supporters). They won’t go away but there are ways to fight against their having free reign to organize, spew hate, and encourage violence with the help of technology and no regulations on anything, if only those means continue to be utilized. 

And today is MLK Day. Falling between the Jan 6 white supremacist insurrection at the capital and the inauguration of Biden and Harris. Trump has been one of the most hateful and vile racists in office. And his actions have called attention to the perpetuation of white power in this country since before it was declared a country. White power in the most literal and general sense. White men built this country with slaves and via genocide, stole lands and tried to destroy cultures of Indigenous people, imposed rigid forms of Christianity and white supremacy. MLK's words are as resonant today as ever:

I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro's great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, "I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can't agree with your methods of direct action"; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man's freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a "more convenient season." Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection. (MLK "Letter from Birmingham Jail")

And although January so far has been mostly cloudy and dark, damp and heavy and sad, there have been moments when the clouds break and the sun comes through. I’m speaking literally. Call it a metaphor if you like. I haven’t been able to write things in months. Not really. Haven’t had any creative thoughts. Have mostly lost the ability to consider how one might be creative in writing or making art of some other kind. But right now, at this moment, a bit of sun is coming through the window. I’m sitting here with words and I wiped some of the dust off from the top of my desk. This desk I, in fact, use a lot, for teaching work, for union work, for zoom. But not in some time for writing. Today, though, I’ll start with a list. Focus on one project at a time. Write down some reflections as Covid lingers aggressively and 400k people have died. An uncounted number live with the suffering of Covid, or with its long term and sometimes mysterious effects. It seems impossible to think about going forward or know what comes next. So at the moment a ray of sun as they say, a poem, start there, just one poem at a time.

Dec ‘20-Jan ‘21

It seems like I lost the whole month of Nov. Maybe not surprising considering the elections and post-election rest and recovery. Post election sigh, joy, and fatigue. A setting down and letting go of four years, in a way. A small break from the unrelenting tightening of stress and fear. But the Covid, heavy and still getting worse, takes no timeouts. Whitmer shut stuff back down just before Thanksgiving, told everyone to stay home, don’t gather in large groups, stay safe. There was backlash. And our numbers went down. We turned from red back to yellow on the Covid map. While other places looked set on fire from Thanksgiving into early Jan. By mid January, the rise is slowing in most places. So much trial and error and more error by places run by people who refuse to keep each other safe. So much safety in a mask. And so many selfish and hateful people.  

It feels so long ago already, spending time by the lake, our last camper-trip in mid-Oct--in mid-east-Michigan--was lovely and cold, and harder to spend time just sitting outside. In winter now, from home, there’s not much of a view, but it’s quiet. There are dog walkers and joggers and less traffic than ever. Sometimes I remember to turn on music while I’m working, when the quiet becomes too loud in my head. 

I never watch daytime TV or TV news but it feels good to have Trump’s voice mostly gone from the scene for a brief time in December. He’s been stewing about the election, but right now there’s less coverage of it. I know it won’t last. He’s not finished. In January he’ll roar his ugly head like never before, impossible to imagine, but true. Every time the worst thing happens we wonder what more worse could still be on the way. Somehow we’ve endured this outrageous presidency and administration for four years. Somehow the worst pandemic we’ve seen in our lifetimes happened at exactly this moment, during this Trump reign. And we wake up every day wondering what will be next. When it happens it will again feel impossible to deal with, and we will deal with it and we won’t in retrospect (or even immediately) be surprised. 

Still at this moment in December, I relish the calm (which in January will seem like the calm before yet another fucking storm). And I wait to be able to write again. 

I did some writing in the winter, last winter, while Covid was just starting to infiltrate and before we really knew what was happening—except for a cruise ship, an outbreak in WA state, and China. In February I went to Georgia for three weeks to write and spend time with other writers and artists at Hambidge. Driving home right after MI started shutting down for the first time, just before St. Patrick’s Day, was scary and surreal, in a way that felt literal vs how sometimes people throw around the phrase “it felt surreal.” 

But it’s also true that I’ve watched a lot of zombie and apocalyptic TV shows and movies. I mean, I guess I recognized that Covid was not the same as zombies. Still, in Georgia I had just finished reading Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, a literary dystopic story about securing and restarting society in the US after the zombie apocalypse, beginning with NYC. The main character is on a small team, one of many, charged with going building by building to take out random leftover zombies. There is a government of sorts, maybe in DC or somewhere, giving orders to the military-style operation in NY. There are refugee camps of survivors off in the distance. The whole book basically takes place post-catastrophe and while clean-up is in process, so it often feels hopeful in a way. Though a savvy reader, and one who’s read Whitehead before, will be anxious the whole way through about how it will end, or at least how the book will finish, and in which direction the story will go. And of course there are glimpses of the end that poke through the hope along the way. 

In Georgia, I read Zone One at night in my little cabin with no internet, and then every afternoon head to the main building for wifi to get the news and find out what’s happening with the election primaries in early March and to see the virus begin to spread and eventually to see places start to shut down. It was like a kind of sudden slow motion. I never believed the colleges could close up and go totally online so quickly, or that they would stay like that for two weeks, let along for so many long months. I couldn’t comprehend what was just starting to happen in NYC in real-time vs in dystopian fiction. But in fact it was all a bit too slow. Experts in viruses and disease were probably trying to tell us how bad it was in China and how fast it would spread once it got here. And they could have told us how, in other countries, in some Asian countries in particular, where they have had real--or threats of--viral scares before, they immediately turned to wearing masks, for everyone across the board. Instead, here, there was denial about how bad it was even though many people saw what was happening, and it took a long time to get anyone to recognize the importance of masks. And now we’re still arguing about it. Thousands of people are dying, right now, and we’re still arguing about masks, even while it’s so clear that it saves lives. But time and again we find we are a country that prefers to let each other die, or in which the white people with money and power don’t mind whatever happens to the rest of us.

Covid diary Oct 14-16

 Oct 14

At the campground, it’s down to us and another camper that’s just like ours but with a color scheme and inside curtains that makes it look “vintage.” It may also have a checkered tile floor inside, but I can’t remember since I once looked at the pictures of those for sale online. It’s a new version of our camper but it’s made to look old. Ours we bought used in the spring, after things started to open up after the shutdown. Strange timing, to get a covid camper, even though we were already in process with that plan well before. Now everyone is doing it. In any case, it’s colder here now and the fall colors are deep yellows and browns and starting to fade. The small inland lake is quiet and calm except for occasional fishing boats going out from the launch just down the hill, and the shots of duck hunters in the early morning and evening. There’s also traffic noise from the main road just beyond the campground, but the lake and colors are so lovely it’s hard to complain. In the news the covid numbers are still going up around the country, especially in WI and the Dakotas. It’s still going up in MI some too and the republicans want to take away all covid safety mandates and let the herd reign. They are back to the herd thing. Just let people get sick and die and eventually the covid will fade away or something. Just let it run its course and eventually things will even out. That other places have tried that and it was catastrophic. And in any case, the choice between doing things that everyone knows make us safer, that are little trouble really, and the other choice to just let people get sick and die because a few are too selfish and troubled by caring about anyone else. It’s the same story. But if they are going to keep going on about being oppressed, then the rest of us should keep going on about how they don’t care if everyone around them dies. Or has long-term consequences from the virus, much of which we don’t know a lot about yet, though a lot of which we do. In the other news it’s the Barrett thing and the continuing Trump things and Gary Peters is almost getting beat by a pc-looking-on-the-surface Republican bought and packaged by Devos and the Kochs and other big money Trumpers. They hate that Whitmer got elected and they lost Snyder from the payroll. And they’ve been trying to get rid of the Dem senators for a while. Michigan: Pure corporate greed, white militia supremacy, kickbacks to self-serving legislators who wield their power for no other reasons than their bank accounts and to destroy the lives of others because they can.

In the woods, many of the birds have gone. There are some blue jays and others I can’t recognize. But the loud birdsong of summer is over. The warm early morning sun holding out until mid-afternoon. Dinnertime like midnight dark, though one can see a sky full of stars without actually having to stay up to late.

Oct 16

We’ve moved to another campground. Our little trailer that’s comfy and keeps the heat, to a degree. Down to 30ish outside last night and I got cold in the early morning hours and couldn’t warm up. At least the sun’s out again today, after clouds and rain since we got here two days ago. Another deserted campground in mid-October. Another big camper in the other loop, so we have this loop and the lake view all to ourselves. Though at the house right next to the campground, the owner is running his leaf blower, keeping his fancy cabin in the woods lawn clean of stray leaves.

This lake is part of a series of small lakes, inland just west of Lake Huron, scenic and beautiful, surrounded all around by trees even though there are a lot of houses, some large big money houses, with Trump signs, the small houses away from the water also replete with flags and more cult décor. These lakes though, only a few of them so far and maybe more to come, are now listed as contaminated with PFAS. The thick soapy foam lining the edges of the beach and blowing up onto the land in places. The chemical levels exponentially higher than the small safe limit. These and other small inland lakes with expensive houses literally dangerous to use except to view from afar. They say it’s safe to swim, just don’t touch the foam. And don’t let your kids or dogs touch the foam. Maybe don’t let your dog even drink the water, or just don’t drink it when there’s foam nearby. I don’t know. I don’t want to swim in water from which appears foam that can kill me. The UP always looks like a better option when you come to think about most things, except it is certainly even colder up there right now, compared to this which is really already past the limit for outdoor enjoyment, except for walking, layered up and moving at a good pace with the dog.

Covid diary Oct 5

 

Trump has the covid. Some of his staff, some Republican senators, his press secretary, have the covid. Spin that Kayleigh, you terrible example of, and for, blond women everywhere. Yes many white women are ridiculous. But that also means that some are not. And even some blond women are not so terrible and ridiculous as T’s current press secretary might make us seem. But her act may not be working as planned… T is down in the polls with white suburban women voters, likely Kayleigh’s main audience, her ivy-education used to perfect lies and manipulation, her barbie outfits and smooth subtle curls making sure she doesn’t look threatening in any way. 

The other night I watched The Artist is Present, a documentary about Marina Abramović, the performance artist. This is a strange transition from Kayleigh McEnany, or maybe not, though T-world performance is of an entirely different sort. And watching the film felt like a way of responding to, or processing, this world dominated by T., who is a culmination of so much that has come before. 

I only learned of Abramović recently, a few months ago, at an arts residency, from another performance artist who follows her work closely. So closely she (the person I met) became part of Abramović’s piece at MOMA in 2010. I hadn’t known what to make of the art. Only having glimpses of some of her work before watching the film. Her work has often been intensely physical, subjecting her naked body to violence or other physically demanding challenges. When I started watching the film, I still didn’t know what to think. But by the end, like so many of her real fans, Abramović has pulled me in, I become captivated. I know lots of art experts and critics have written and commented on her work, and I’m sure there’s all kinds of interpretations and explanations, reflections on motives and political messaging… I haven’t read any of that. I don’t know if I will. But as a writer, I’m fascinated by the total physical bodily experiences that so much of her work focuses on. The Artist is Present. To me it’s about the physical body/bodies in physical space. And mental and emotional presence. The main work during the MOMA exhibition was Abramović sitting for eight hours a day (6 days/week for three months) at a small table, and where visitors could sit in the chair opposite her and be with her at the table, in that space. She sat still, closing her eyes between visitors, so that when a person sat down, she opened her eyes solely upon them, and when they got up to leave, she closed her eyes again and lowered her head, creating an entirely new space for each successive person. She held them in her physical and emotional presence. Toward the end of the film, the camera gave more focused time to the up-close faces of some of those who sat across from her. Some cried. Some put their hands over their hearts. Some expressed deep and intense feeling from their eyes, faces, as if no one had ever actually looked at them before, hadn’t before sat in quiet presence with them in such a way. Abramović slowed down time to imperceptible movements during those visits. She gave her visitors the entire space of her attention and care. Her facial expression sometimes changed subtly, and sometimes more discernibly, as she connected with others. A few times, tears also fell from her eyes. 

Some of the other pieces in the exhibition were also about physical presence in space. A number of her earlier pieces were re-created by other artists or actors hired to perform them in other parts of the museum. Two naked bodies, a man and a woman, faced each other with a small amount of space for visitors to squeeze through, so that the nude and clothed bodies pressed against each other for a few seconds at a time. Another nude body lay under a (probably real) human skeleton, a commentary on our own mortality maybe, or a look to the insides of ourselves that we don’t otherwise see. Videos projected on the walls showed Abramović’s past performances, including whipping her own naked back repeatedly, and two naked bodies slamming into walls or into each other. I think about how these represent the literal and figurative body in physical and other kinds of space. As our bodies exist in and move through the world. Navigate, survive, circle through physical, emotional, psychic spaces. We slam into walls, beat ourselves up. Some of us  are subject to literal and metaphorical beatings, many kinds of violence and violation. Sometimes we move in the world without thinking, unaware of our physical selves. The videos were mostly in black and white. The other artists’ live performances were mainly naked white and black and brown bodies. The main element of color in the whole exhibition was the blue or red dress or white dresses that Abramović wore at the table, across from visitors. These kinds of physical/emotional resonances have always been true, but isn’t it all even more incisive now? 

In the final month, the table was removed, so that the connection between her and her visitors became even more closely connected. I don’t know if she offered an artist’s statement about this exhibition, or reflected on the relation between the video works, the re-created works by young performance artists, and her presence at the table. I don’t know if she spoke to the intended disconnection and thereby connection between the violence done to bodies in the world and the undoing of emotional violence in relation, in human connection, in two people holding each other in their gaze and in their hearts. At first glance, one unfamiliar might see the naked bodies as sexual, sexualized, or calling attention (sex sells) in some way as an attention-getter or distraction. But the bodies are instead vulnerable in ways beyond sexual activity. Though sex can make one entirely vulnerable and subject to various kind of emotional or physical violence. But the performers in the nude, stripped of the false protection of clothing and accessories, make the audience vulnerable too, as maybe we see ourselves as fragile individuals in the world and subject to how the world treats us, or how we pass by others often in close contact but don’t connect. How sometimes we are put on display and held there, through no intent or motivation of our own.

 

By the end of the film, I am held in that space. I look into the eyes of the visitors across from Marina who connect with her in that space, and I think about art and the power it can have in the world. I think about how the idea of the power of art is often, for me, so hard to hold on to, to really know and trust in, when so much news and politics and literal actions and events are happening at breakneck speed every day. So hard to remember when scrolling through social media or working on random tasks that take up hours every day. And instead of imagining what it would have felt like to sit across from her, to look into her eyes and let her into mine, a thought that only now crosses my mind two days after watching the film, instead of that I thought about art. It’s power. It’s necessity. Marina was able to stop time in that space. She invited people in, and held them, for as long as they wanted to sit there. Recognizing how we are often alone in the world, battling and surviving and moving, often not allowed the vulnerability of our own feelings and emotions and need for human contact and love, she made a space of quiet presence, like a gift, for everyone who entered. 

Even if, as is said clearly in the film, she needs the audience, needs to feel seen and acknowledged and loved, maybe as much as or more than the audience needs her, the power of that performance, and the clarity, is striking. The exhibition was in 2010. I don’t know what she is doing now. Or if her art has changed. Many artists have talked in these past few years about figuring out how to be artists and political activists. I wake up every day wondering how to be both, though in many ways I’ve abandoned my artist/writer self to be more active, more political, more focused on literal news and events and responses to those. I spend more time working, for my job, for volunteer causes, and less time writing or engaging in other kinds of creative practices. And I don’t know how to trust more in art, in it’s potential to affect and maybe even create change. Or to feel allowed to spend more physical and emotional time there. But I don’t want to have to choose. There are many kinds of art, many kinds of action, many things that make our lives whole, and that make us care and think and relate to one another, that make us question, and trust, and critique, and be human.

Covid diary Sept 23

In the eastern UP and the tourist season is mostly over. Unless you go to the state park where fall color voyeurs crowd the waterfall trails. The leaves are changing, from summer to fall, from awake and eternally optimistic to quiet, not yet resigned. Though there are still some last moments of quiet nature harnessed like hope just waiting for us all to act in its and our best interests. 

RBG died on Friday. Today is Wednesday. If we don’t act fast and in large numbers as people who want to save the earth and save ourselves, so much of what she worked for will be lost. I don’t know how many decisions RBG made that specifically related to environmental issues, but the environmental and the social are related. If we let capitalism run unfettered, we destroy ourselves. When white men rule everything, everyone else suffers economically, politically, in terms of social justice, and in other ways. RBG dissented against rulings that allowed more and more money to go toward political campaigns—money that often favors conservative corporations and super-wealthy individuals—and she was against dismantling the voting rights act—the new version making it harder for Black Americans, Latinos, and other communities of color to have fair access to voting across the country. If she’s replaced by a Trump appointee they may get rid of Roe v. Wade—if you don’t like abortion, don’t get one, but you don’t have the right to control others peoples’ healthcare needs; healthcare as we have come to know it under Obamacare—a system that needs to be improved or replaced with something better in order to get healthcare to more people, not discarded leaving millions uncovered; and if Trump loses the election he may even get the court to say he won, giving him more time to destroy everything. 

I remember in early March, when talk first started, that colleges might go 100% online and we might have to isolate ourselves in our homes for two weeks… I remember thinking that was totally crazy and would never happen. How could colleges just suddenly stop and move everything online? Well they could because teachers picked up all of the slack. And staff people. Doing the labor of making it happen for students. Yes, higher admins have a lot of meetings and make a lot of decisions. But then they send emails that say thanks for doing such great work, when you aren’t doing it wrong and hurting students, and keep doing the great work indefinitely but with no extra pay and little extra support etc. etc… And I thought, how is it possible that we will have to stay home, and everything except grocery stories will be closed, what will we do? Like everyone, I couldn’t conceptualize or envision any of this. So many months later, in some ways things are a bit better because we can go to stores and other places wearing masks. I have finally felt comfortable eating or drinking on patios at a limited few restaurants. There is now more info from doctors and researchers about how the virus spreads and how to be safe. But I remember feeling sick to my stomach every time I went to the grocery store for the first months of all this. And feeling deep relief when the governor finally, too late, but finally, made masks mandatory at any business indoors—gas stations, restaurants, grocery stores—and as other stores opened back up, masks have been required everywhere.

We’ve been traveling around northern Michigan a lot, and sometimes I’m surprised to see little stores in the middle of nowhere—where the Trump flags fly loud and aggressive—enforcing the mask rule. Ironically, one guy in a tiny UP grocery was wearing his Trump 2020 mask; not ironic, hypocritical maybe. But never mind that guy, life is somewhat easier now when everyone wears masks and we can all just walk into the gas station or grocery and just do what we need to do and get out and feel less terrified. But MI Republicans are trying to take that away. That little bit of care and safety for each other. Again making us less safe and more scared and eternally more divided. 

By Friday of this same week, only a week after RGB died, Trump has said we just shouldn’t have ballots. Or some nonsense. And that he won’t go quietly. And in not exact words, basically the election will only be fair if he wins. T. voters will vote in person and then continue to discredit voting by mail or early voting. RBG’s funeral is today. And he’s going to name a replacement tomorrow. And that person will probably get voted in. While the Covid numbers are going up in places they have not gone up before. WI Republicans took away their Gov’s emergency powers and they are bursting with Covid there. And higher ed is no better than the state Rs, knowing better and not doing enough to prevent spread among students back to campus. Bringing it home to their communities and families. It will go on like this until there is a vaccine because people are people or something and can’t be trusted to do better, not enough of them/us can be convinced to care about others. Or maybe the rest of us who do care shouldn’t have such high expectations. Maybe we want too much. Maybe humans as a species can’t evolve enough for all people to care about others. Maybe there would be other kinds of consequences to that that we can’t foresee. Maybe the uncaring people are like the one loud kid in class who gets all the attention and disrupts everything, while everyone else just wants to get on with things. Maybe we need to learn how to turn away and amplify our own more human messages, advocate for justice on the loudspeakers, silence anyone who harms others with their words and ideas. Not fake harm, real harm. If you are a white person brainwashed to be afraid of people of color, that results in real harm. If you are afraid for your health or your safety, but the state or the feds refuse to take public health seriously, that is real harm. If you hurt others in exercising what you believe to be your individual freedom, that is real harm. If the earth becomes uninhabitable because we’ve destroyed it by letting capitalism kill us all, that is real harm; or maybe some of us still live, while many others don’t, and we don’t have clean water, air, or options. But there are also always responses to harm. More protests. More voting. More fighting for real news, real stories. Maybe we can work harder on getting our messages out ahead of the bully, and ahead of the bullies that will continue to follow in his footsteps. Maybe we can change the lies into hope. Imagine compassion. Etc.