see the cat? see the cradle?

The confrontation of a hand puzzle.

A bit of manipulation, a twinge of trickery, and nimble hands help. Yet, the willingness to succumb is the secret. One of the oldest in the world, Cat’s Cradle transcends language, culture, and may – in fact – be the key to world peace.

I remember shying away from the game as a child. Similar to playing whiffle ball in gym class…i knew attempting to outwit my opponent and twirling that string through my fingers was not going to end well. It seemed like a secret language, like I must have missed that session of recess when every girl learned the tricks of cat’s cradle. I never understood it and still, when confronted with a piece of string, I make it up. Fictionalizing the reality of the game is the secret. It is a secret language, but it’s your own, based on your own sensibility, your own decisiveness, your own path.

Like Flannery O’Connor’s point of grace, Joeseph Young weaves moments of exchange and intimacy into each tale he tells. I’m confronted with the woven string of his words, a small narrative placed uniquely and tightly into each netted opening. Every word specifically chosen and placed awaiting my move. I am confronted with his fiction. Fiction and slight nods. A nod to himself, to his past. A nod to the fictionalized reality of his experience within the space, his present. And many gifts of sensibility sprinkled throughout. The mini-narratives are often transactional moments between two objects/beings, followed by odd, open-ending twists. He manages to create an environment, a purpose, and an absurdity with one sentence.

The physicality of the hand is omnipresent in the work. As tool, as object, as story teller, as device – the hands hold truth. Written or other wise. Joe uses his hands to make the work, to write to transfer each word manually to the wall. And so do his characters: an artist, a photographer, an ink maker. Each hand tugging yet another string.

It’s as though he knows something about me I don’t know he knows. His own little secret and each narrative is a clue for me to figure out what he knows and how he knows it. I have to keep looping the thread through my fingers and twisting and turning to find that in the end the trick is on me. Coincidence may be to blame, but I believe coincidence to be fate in sheep’s clothing…so there! It was meant to be. I’m reminded of a door I have closed and to keep opening the other.

“AZ/PA
Two
States
Watch
Each
Other
Across
a
narrow
line,
ocotillo
and
bull-
doser.”

and

“New Roosevelt

She dreamt of Ansel

Adams, his famously long

hands. She woke then,

watching the movement of

people on the granite street.”

It is strange, it seems after your life is strangely affected by something you can’t stop hearing about it in various variations. I was in my apartment after work one night and decided to watch a movie on hulu. One of my guilty pleasures is really bad movies, mind numbing if possible. I just want to stare at the screen and not think for about an hour. This usually happens about once a month and due to the limited selection this month’s movie was “Family Man” starring Nick Cage. Cage plays a man who has put his finances above his relationship with his first and only love…Tea Leoni. You see, Cage got on the plane for London for graduate school instead of listening to Tea as he boarded begging him to stay and choose “us”. It is after a brief encounter with Don Cheatel (an angel) when the “it’s a wonderful life” plot line kicks in. He wakes up in Jersey with two kids and his wife…you guessed it…Tea. In this reality he got off the plane and chose “us”. Hilarity ensues as he tries to get used to his new lifestyle and once he does, he is then thrust back into his own reality, the lonely life of money. He realizes he still loves her and decides to find her. But the real clincher of the story is what it takes for him to realize he still loves her….his copy of “Cat’s Cradle” and the bookmark, her photograph.

“Libra

A man broke into the

Kalamazoo Public Library.

He wheeled away cars of

books and gave to

passersby his autograph,

Austen, Dostoevsky,

Johnson.”

This morning one of the stories on NPR, “Kalamazoo gives free education, will Baltimore be next?”

Coincidence. me think not.

**photos to follow**

potato/tomato

Bryan has surrounded me with his shadow twins, reproductions, doppelgangers, and parallel universe narratives. There are choices, challenges and decisions at every stop and more importantly they come in pairs. Never identical, but so similar you know they are related. Like those brothers, Timmy and Tommy you can never seem to get straight. Written notes become dual commentary using my objects as subjects as well as props. A single light bulb hangs in my hallway, it’s origin debated between two opposing notes on each wall. My hula hoop and my bike lock become decisive red lipstick circles around job postings stuck to the wall.

Both the toilet and my little chair are partners in contemplative crime serving as perching posts for Bryan’s corresponding notes at eye level.

“They look so good together. It’s as if they were made to compliment one another.“

“They look so good together it’s almost like they were intended to go together made for each other.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Are the notes observations amongst themselves of the chairs or are they practicing a bit of self reflection? Maybe the joke is on us? Or above us?

Traversing through the rest of the space I find elements of change.  A cardboard recreation of the broken skateboard found on a walk. The forgery hangs along side the original inscribed as “This Thing”. I look up and taped to the wall is a sketched doppelganger of my grandfather labeling him “This Guy”.

My porch now a stage to chairs dressed as army officers. Two generals delegate over the latest map to come in while two officers in the corner have a closed mouth conversation.

Bourriaud states in his book PostProduction “To use an object it is necessarily to interpret it. To use a product is to betray its concept. To read, to view, to envision a work is to know how to divert it: use is an act of micropirating that constitutes postproduction. We never read a book the way its author would like us to.” Bryan has betrayed the use of my objects and added to the language of each. Channeling a bit of both Andy Warhol and Duchamp Bryan is decisive in his appropriations. He understands the boundaries of language and our entrapment in it but falls back on his solid sense of humor.

Coincidentally, over drinks with friends (including Bryan) after the installation the conversation turned toward the phenomenon of shadow twins and chimeraism. I’m going to go out on a limb and say it had something to do with mentioning my grandmother’s sixth finger, but who knows why.

Yep. Six. Right between her thumb and index finger on her right hand.

Not only that, but in 1933 she was written up in medical books for the treatment she received as a child for such a “deformity”. What I like the most about the story is how the rest of her life has been effected in such small/monumental ways. The doctors sewed her two “thumbs” together so instead having an extra finger she had no usable, apposable thumb. She uses her index and middle fingers on her right hand to do just about everything, think the toy dinosaur head grabber toys they have at Ocean City. Pretty amazing for a woman who raised 9 children. When i was younger it fascinated me and even to this day I hold the newspaper with my index and middle finger. That takes commitment, believe me.

I have created a jenga-like structure to define my grandmother and to pull out a piece from the bottom in order to reevaluate due to this new knowledge is unsettling as well as fascinating. The eleven year old in me visualizes her shadow twin trying to escape or rather, to avoid turning this into an Alien fantasy, what if my grandmother’s twin was just giving her the eternal thumbs up letting her know everything was going to be okay?

After the conversation I come home and examine Bryan’s pairings, my new collection of shadow twins. Singularly they carry one meaning, it is only in the context of the other we recognize the difference.

Timid Associations

I’d seen pictures of this apartment ahead of time.  But when I got here it looked nothing like I’d envisioned.  And I was unable to remember how I’d imagined it before.

All I could think was: This is a strange place.

I was surprised by my reaction– by my sudden homesickness.

***

I used to stay in strange apartment all the time– house-sitting, cat-sitting.  At the drop of a hat, and for weeks at a time.  Rarely have I stayed anyplace for more than three months.  I never gave it much thought but until last spring, I’ve been living out a suitcase since college.  I like to think I can always leave a place if I have to.

But I realized when I was alone in this apartment I felt nostalgic for my own chairs and the things back at home that comfort me.

***

After a few phone calls and a short nap, I start to peek around the apartment.  (**for dramatic purposes I’m going to suddenly switch to the first person)…

I can’t get over how big it is.  It’s like a two bedroom apartment by New York standards.  I also can’t get over how quiet it is.  I don’t hear any cars or buses.  Or people shouting.  There’s nothing that makes the floor rumble.  And, as if all this weren’t strange enough, I can actually hear birds chirping.

***

Another thing that surprises me: I’m incredibly timid.  I tiptoe around the apartment.  I don’t touch anything.  I know Megan said I could do whatever I want, but for some reason I feel really nervous about moving things.  In some way her apartment reminds me of my own and the thought of disturbing her organization seems really taboo.

(For weeks I’ve had fantasies about how “crazy I was going to go on this apartment”.  Rearranging everything.  Making it totally unrecognizable. )

But for the first few hours I just stare at the furniture.  I turn some chairs upside-down.  I make a fort under her table.  I sit in the bathtub.  For a long time, all I can think about is my apartment back home.

***

The one thing that embarrasses me is the video I made for the webcam where I’m playing with the table and chairs.  At the end I’m trying really hard to look casual, as if I’m not aware of the camera.  It’s the most unconvincing “casual” in all the history of art/process-documentation.

But somehow I love it all the same.

***

When exactly did my break-through happen?  It was after I put on my pajamas… I remember that much.  It was like all of a sudden I had a really clear sense of objects that ought to go together.  And the tone of it all just fell into place.

***

It all started with a chair I put beside the toilet.  They were the same height but different textures and different shapes  They had different functions.  But from a design perspective the made a really interesting couple.

I sat in the tub, admiring them for a long time.

I thought about long conversations.  And about people that compliment one another.  And how that basic element of complementary differences can make for some really awesome discussions.  Or TV shows.  Or whatever.

***

And then it all came down to me playing with objects.  Carefully selecting pairs and groups.   Trying out different jokes.  Different references.  Different visual arrangements.

***

I don’t have a lot to say about the actual working process because it just somehow happened.

I wasn’t thinking about my apartment in Brooklyn.  And I wasn’t worried that Megan might not like the decorative light-bulb I hung from the ceiling.  It all just happened like a blur.

***

Whenever I come up with something really good, it’s like it just happens and suddenly I’m looking at it and I’m like “Wow, that’s hilarious… whoever came up with that is a genious.”

Well, in any case, this experience went from being tragic/anxiety-ridden to being totally effortless and fun.

Potato/potato, I guess.

take your time. live a little.

Part of this project involves documenting myself within the installations. How I interact with them, adjust to them, how the shift of my own cocoon could affect so many other parts of my life. The streaming video is both a form of documentation for the project as well as an extension of whatever installation I’m currently living in. In front of me is the installation, the change, a new experience. Behind me is the camera calling me out on all of my bullshit. The convergence of these two situations is a beautiful balancing act. Jumping forward yet constantly keeping myself in check. My identity is both lost as well as redefined as I weave my way through.

In social situations I spend a lot of my time examining others, something I’ve come to believe to be social survival. I believe if I read someone well enough, I am therefore more capable of understanding and for me understanding creates ease. Our energy is more than a wide smile and a bright shirt, it’s how we prioritize our life. So while I’m busy trying to figure out everyone else, what sort of energy am I projecting out to others about myself? Am I then, ever really present?

For this very reason I tried to take my time in Mary Beth’s installation. Focusing on myself, my habits, how I behaved in the space. I noticed I hardly ever hear the sound of my own voice. I have to have noise on at all times. I sit at my computer about 90% of the time I’m in my apartment which would account for about 10% of my overall existence, but also means I’m in front of a computer 90% of my day. scary shit.

Through out the space Mary Beth uses color as a tool of shifting energies. The energies we exert without consciousness. As I walk through my apartment I see her pointing at me and pointing to the color and declaring “You can be this today!” It’s about choice, priority, and awareness and more importantly it’s all up to me. The specific placement of color is something I believe to be a special gift of Mary Beth’s. The hallway is embraced with warm hues of orange, red, and sage green hugging me as I walk out the door every morning and come home every night. The kitchen is lined with reds leading to the bridge before the fall. She has very systematically yet simplistically created a structure leading the eye from my bookshelf to a sea of blue engulfing the doomed porch. Energy reinforcement!

I compared her placement to that of a painting. I felt the treatment of composition was as studied and meticulous as a brushstroke on a canvas. The hues and placements of the different blues create a textured, calming environment. I see surrealism in the white chiffon billowing above the white table and the pink shoes peaking out from behind the layers of blue sky. Mischeivious? fearful? Playful? Her efforts to pull this sagging structure up from a space to be feared in to a sanctuary were successful, but the placement of the shoes seems to be symbolic foreshadowing. Even the structure leading into the porch. I call it a bridge but it’s more like a play on the crack in the ceiling and in the floor. A series of angular facets leading to the fatal fall and then the whole thing becomes an iceberg floating in the middle of the arctic. If you shift your perspective just slightly, you shift the identity of the entire piece.

I recently saw the documentary “Guest of Cindy Sherman”, a great film about the artist’s work and her reclusive personality. Shying away from interviews the artist with so many identities has gone without her own (at least to the public) for decades. She paints her face, stares confidently into the camera and tells us she can be whoever she wants to be. But she’s also letting us know that we are all capable of the same reality shift, of being several people at once. She points to our associations and assumptions about appearance, our stereotypes and judgements. She accentuates the exterior layer of identity, causing the viewer to forget what and who we are looking at and then the “aHa” moment and the joke is on us. We were fooled by her own fiction just as we can be of our own.

Searching for one’s own identity can be the sort of mind-fuck that can drive you to drink. But sometimes you just have to sit back and laugh at the ridiculousness of such an egotistical question. I tend to treat it as a rhetorical question. My identity thus far has been very fluid, lacking a definition, constantly adapting and shifting with each new situation.

Next to physical appearance our “home” is an extension of our identity. I remember living in an apartment in England with four friends. I was walking home and realized how small my space in the world really was. Like stacking Russian dolls…i had the top half of one bunk in half of a room in one fifth of one town house on a block of twenty. The idea of property and ownership no longer apply as signifiers of “home”. It just keeps getting smaller until you realize you are sliver. You either define your home as your rationed seat on the sofa or you break the wall of tangibility and home becomes an idea. Something you carry with you.

i pee with the door open…

Meaghan has returned.

A little over a year ago she handed over her keys to the space where I (and now so many others) dwell. In the transition she said goodbye to her own first experience living alone and I said hello to my own. An executive decision made after a whirlwind trip across the globe and a welcome shift to my always wandering, itchy feet. Signing the lease was the first real commitment I have ever made by myself and I did so without a twinge of regret. The week leading up to her installation I forced my mind back to that month of my life. It was exciting and very serendipitious – my heart had been both lifted and broken within a month, I had seen sights I never thought I would be able to see, and at the end of it all I was ready (for once) to focus on the present.

My first night was spent surrounded by my boxes along with a few remnants from Miss Harrison. I sifted through, ate firecracker pop after firecracker pop, paused to laugh at the lame jokes printed on the sticks – all an attempt to avoid the reality of the HEAT. But it could have been 120 degrees and I would not have cared, I was on my own and that was all that mattered. A year later I still feel the same way, but I also have questioned how much I’m living in the present. Have I developed my own set of habits that have yet to be revealed to me? I sometimes feel like all i do is sleep in this space yet alternately I have dedicated a lot of time to perfecting the allocation of space – even building my own shelves! (i actually have to pay tribute to my mom here. what can I say? the woman is amazing with a hand-saw.)

So I reflect more..how much do we actually dwell or do we just give the presence of dwelling? I put my things here, I sleep in that bed, I shower in that shower, but does it mean I’m really dwelling? It feels like it should involve more than mere motions, it should be contemplative. Or is it involuntary like breathing? And if so then what about the moment between breaths? My yoga instructor describes the space between breaths as both a moment of reflection and the point of transformation. In one calm, swooping moment there is awareness of where you have been and preparation for where you are about to go.

This apartment was just that space for Meaghan. A physical vessel for her to contemplate how she got there and position herself for a better, deeper future. She exhaled.

I had my own exhale and it landed me in her “between vessel” and I couldn’t be happier. Meaghan returned to find familiarity and habit as well as a space transformed since she left. Little pink kitty-cat post-it notes sprinkled the apartment with stream of consciousness observations, object histories, imaginative narratives and instruction. Feeling at times apprehensive but always understanding and encouraging:

“No matter how hard i try, i cannot be methodical, only random”

“You broke my heart So i broke your records. You have bad taste in music”

“Standing in the kitchen my leg reached for the chair I used to keep there”

“i pee with the door open”

“These things: I have two different writing styles that I use at the same time”

“Vulnerable”

“i prefer to be nonsensical”

“you gotta protect it. you gotta pay homage to it…”

“aw geez. i don’t know.”

All meaningful objects have been zip-locked baggy-ed pointing to their precious existence and their scientific reality. My books have been neatly organized into piles throughout the apartment specific to Meaghan’s own dewey decimal system. The totem sits in the back with a million feet and nowhere to crawl. My objects are strewn and erected to form a fountain of color and light. Redefining the objects themselves, but also paying them the homage they deserve. The heads up pennies i collect from the street usually sit in a tall, dark cylinder. Here they are laid out as the totem foundation. A foundation of luck. A base of experience. And an inconclusive yet optimistic tower.

Sounds about right.

photos

home coming

As i prepared to leave my house yesterday evening, much later than i wanted to, i felt my environment shift from how i currently dwell to how i used to. You see i used to live in Megan’s apartment, Megan technically took over my lease when i decided to move closer to school. On August 15th 2006 i moved into 2625, i was a single girl. Moving from Towson back into Baltimore excited me and cautioned me. Single white girl living alone, on her own.  While in this transitory state i was not getting along with my family, who thought graduate school at MICA was a bad decision, breaking up with my former boyfriend was horrible and generally my life was headed nowhere. Never had i felt so alone. What did ease my emotional state was my apartment, my very own place to dwell. If the TP ran out it was my fault, dirty dishes stinky trash, it was all on me. No more battles with roommates, no more bad roommates. I did not however have a lot of furniture, even for an efficiency apartment. I slept on the floor on a futon, i had no kitchen table, one bath towel, 5 plants, 5 paintings, a dresser, to many clothes, to many shoes, books, enough knick-knacks and bric-a-brac for 18 people and a bottle of wine. Fine by me i was happy as a clam. My first night i danced to Prince, cried with Nina and contemplated with led. But always dancing. As i stared up at the ceiling that night i could hear the rats in the alley and the soon to be obnoxious wind chime on the neighbors back porch. I considered my new situation, as fragile as it was and smiled. I lived here for 11 months, back and forth between my place and the man i now deeply love and live with. I never truly felt like i lived here, unlike Megan who has made this place into a home. Part of me wishes i would have taken my time here more seriously, slept here more, cooked and had wild parties. Last night was a very strange feeling, i was doing exactly what i did two years prior… walking from my boyfriends house after spending the weekend together to mine. Being back in my old place conjures up how we are creatures of habit, we fall into our old routines so easily. To underscore this i even made a stop at Safeway to buy some snacks, (because i never had food here when i lived here), the liquor store for some wine then back to 2625. As i approached the familiar set of steps and door i did not even fuss with the keys, the building smelled the same, junk mail stacked on the radiator, the downstairs tenant watching TV. So is it true? Do the places we inhabit really not change after we leave them? Walking up the steps i unlocked the door to #3. The door still slid close to the wood floor, the push button for the light was still in the same place. Not sure what to expect i essentially found the same apartment, but now with a new smell, different furniture and a much more lived in feel. Immediately i took to the place as an anthropologist would. Observing and taking meticulous notes, photographing with a disposable camera parts of Megan’s apartment that would be cataloged and bagged. I felt as if i had been given the key to a much anticipated archaeological find. Needless to say i was full of excitement and ideas, and felt very much at home…

Here are my first observations:

1. Megans apartment smells nice.

2. organized

3. vacuum (left for megan when i moved out)

4. Discovered the web cam

5. Discovered the How We Dwell Composition book

6. Same pink leopard print shower curtain

7. Shelf and shower organizer still the same (both here when i moved in)

8. Same garbage can (left for Megan when i moved out)

9. Same pots and pans ( left for Megan when i moved out, xmas gift from family 6 years ago)

10. Same kitchen knifes ( left for Megan when i moved out)

11. Same Michael Graves cooking utensils, (left for Megan, xmas gift, part of pots and pans)

12. Favorite childhood artist on Megans itunes, Cat Stevens

13. You Gotta Have Art Button on Megan’s desk. Photographed and bagged.

14. broken record piece ” Hark the Herald Angels Sing” still on nail in hallway. Found outside the Copy Cat before a 2012 potluck at the old Wham City Space. Photgraphed, not bagged.

15. medicine cabinet still has the same mushroom contact paper, who knows how long thats been there! Photographed, not bag-able.

16. Tester lives! Photographed, not bagged.

17. Black sticky mat in medicine cabinet, here when i moved in.

18. Bodum glass with deflated balloons, glass from house in Towson, Balloons must be Megans addition.

(((Its crazy that i can still recall the stories of these “things”)))

19. Tulip Table from IKEA! Sold to Megan when i moved out.

20. Same green chairs from sketchy thrift store in Fells Point, found by me and my ex when we first moved to bmore.

21. OMG! Single-Origin Subtleties! Stolen off a fridge at a party. Photograhed, not bagged.

22. Megan needs more plants. Perhaps i will buy her one.

23. ame crate under sink. I used it to move small plants when i moved in. Then for cleaners under the sink, still in use today! Photographed.

24. Megan has a great sense of humor. Photographed and bagged her magnetic board by stove. Accidentally dropped a calling card for cory berant, tried to fish it out with Megans T-square, not luck. Sorry.

25. Megan is intelligent (observing her books).

26. She hid the annoying closet doors well.

27. This is Awesome!

we are now leaving observances into creation.

28. Designated artifact holding tank, the ikea vase from megans desk, placed it on the tulip table, preparing for totem creation.

29. Dumbo Keychain in package. Photographed. Brought to table.

30.Cards and Hammer. Photographed. Left on desk.

31. Chinese umbrella. Photographed. Brought to table.

32. Standing Solitude, by Suzanne Vega..Records removed from desk to table, photographed.

33. Megans google bar reads ” Belgian Wheat Beer” (this is an observance)

34. Another observance, Megan saves her fortunes, bagged fortune by computer, “Don’t be afraid to take that big step.”

35. Voter registration reminder….Megan votes! Obama i hope!

36. Bagged everything small on Megans desk.

37. 38. Morning has Broken comes on, my Moms song, sung at her funeral.

38. Megan likes ballons (observation)

39. Wooden IKEA dish rack still here, left for Megan, photographed.

40. My first dinner to mimic my first dinner when i first moved in. Yum! Photographed.

41. i prefer to be nonsensical

42. Tea infuser with ceramic tea cup, fomer towson roommate had the same thing.

43. David Bowie-Changes///in my all time top ten

44. Is that my old Virgin Mary Candle? X related

45. 33 28 35

46. I think my friend J is checking me out on the how we dwell web cam.

47. tired

48. megan has bigger feet than me, she wears a 8.5 i wear a 7.5/8

49. she has some really nice shoes.

50.created short playslist on Megan’s itunes…Coming Home

51. Hung “history” post it, have to photograph first thing in the morning.

52. Its strange how we need all these things around us

53. Garden State soundtrack…love this movie. I will watch it when i go home tomorrow night.

54. awoke to your 6:41 am alarm 1 and 2

55. re-awoke to shane calling me at 9:30 am on Sunday September 14th 2008

56. i made some green tea, ate yogurt with raspberries and brie.

57. i wish i had one more day.

58. oh , yes the rules. I forgot to state the only two rules. I cannot use anything not from megans and everything that i consume here stays here, including the towel i used for my shower (green onhook in the bathroom)

59. Its 12:02 i have a long way to go….

60. Began to create totem on megans table.

61. finished bagging.

62. took more photos

63. did some yoga.

64. snacked on more brie.

65. drank tea.

66. dimantled books and categorized

67. arranged books, shoes and bathroom items.

68. more photos.

69. everything is coming together. i will be done before i thought.

70. placed umbrella, turned around paintings.

71. found xeroxs of women and bubble wrap, hung above painting above the bed.

72. Found loose change, arranged on table.

73. stacked sweaters ont op of the hamper to keep it warm from the AC.

74. took a shower.

75. ate some more.

76. drank some wine

77. its now 5:36. meeting becky in one hour at donnas

78. at 8 megan will be here to get her keys

Photos coming soon…

readiness and a grim reminder: salvation

“given the weather and the soil the tree could not have been any different…” – C.S. Lewis

A mixed CD was given to me in college with this same quote scribbled on the top. Pre-google era, I took the obscure quote as a nugget of intelligence from a boy trying to woo me and then I forgot about it. I’m embarrassed to say it took years for me to grow curious and even after finding its origin, I have yet to read the text. Since unearthing the mix the quote has remained something I keep turning back toward. So simple, it reminds me to always pay attention to subtleties and the moments. As much as i may want complete control, the beauty of life is giving it up. Even the bad things take us to a place we never thought we would/could be and it becomes a balancing act of willingness and acceptance.

As in the previous post I’ve been thinking a lot about fate and luck and destiny and how much participation we have with our own. How do we rationalize working toward something we may never reach or believing in something which may not be real? And what about regret? My own personal belief has always been to dive head first into the pool of fate/luck/destiny and leave no room for regret. As I grow a little older I realize I can’t just dive – and i usually don’t – I have to float, doggy paddle even. I have to look around and make sure that I’m at least on my intended path. And I’m sure somewhere down the road I’ll be doing water aerobics in the local fate/luck/destiny pool, lifting milk jugs when the lady with the neon spandex motions for me to do so. But at least I will still be there – still splashing around with minimal regret and some great biceps.

And ONE….And TWO…And THREE….Alright other arm!

And so we dance. Light and Movement. Light movement.

The context of the quote remains my own reality of its existence -what it has meant to me the past eight years and now, presently, as I sit among artifacts of scrap. Like a scene out of Water World or Blade Runner or – dare I say it – the Matrix. I am surrounded equally by steel machine and organic branch, neither serving their intended function. Like Ariel’s trinkets and more recently WALLE’s collection of an evacuated world’s trash. These rusty objects become breadcrumbs, clues sending us back to a world destroyed. Their context is just as important as their history, the ingredients and circumstance of which they are made. Observing these common objects as though we were viewing ancient Egyptian artifacts in a museum – their context completely changes yet they are no different in this new world

The movement of the surrounding headlines, the text, the imagery, the violence vibrating on the wall against collections of light bulbs, film, wire. Pamphlets strewn around the room claiming to hold the light of redemption and salvation. The human desire for these things – for the greener grass beyond the golden gates – even in a post apocalyptic society. It is as though we have created a world just so the only desire is salvation. The menacing violent dance of light.

The character from this world has vanished and I enter from the past. A past where most of these objects and most of this text are relevant and mean something of function to me. I spend time finding moments in the space hoping for an experience. I pick up objects and string a story together with each one. This character has engulfed themselves with what they believe to be wrong with the world as a constant reminder of the suffering which can so easily be ignored. The newspaper clippings spread like fire up the wall, at my feet the lamb of god and on the fridge single-origin subtleties.

Adapting this ideology to the fate trinity, we are all make-ups of our past selves. I’m convinced there is no escaping it. Embrace it, take it with you, use it with a genuine purpose. It’s the only way to move in whatever direction on this circle track you are headed. Yet, as Scrap states:

“I did not however, have the freedom to keep myself from directing this experience of pain at personal perceptions from the past, projected into the present.”

It’s all there and it will all come back to haunt. Acknowledging it’s existence does not reduce it’s ability to do so. My walls are usually collaged with filtered scraps of life: images I like of myself with people I enjoy spending time with, good memories, funny moments, endearing reminders of past events. I do not tack break up letters to my wall just as I don’t frame photos from funerals. Yet these past events may shape our present selves more than anything else. The collage of war surrounding me reminds me just how easily it can all be forgotten.

I stand at the center of it all and remember to Float, Focus, and Dance.

the challenge of change

this has been a most intense experience. dwelling…. in a weekend- transforming a living space. From 1/07-4/08 I went through a dark phase of loss, depression, and major self re-examination. Because it is most recent, the 15 months are still very vivid as a time of intense struggle. It just happened to include most of the time I was living alone in Baltimore. Although the hard times eventually allowed me insights to evolve myself both psychologically and spiritually; nonetheless the wounds are fresh. Point being: I have since moved home to Brooklyn and resettled into my life– in the same apartment since the MICA sojourn, thankfully sharing everyday with my love, and happier in the frenzy and competition of NY life than I could’ve been when I was stuck up in anxiety about it before. However: this weekend, alone in Baltimore, my behavioral responses revealed truths about myself that I’d been avoiding. Transforming the space, I went through major flashbacks about both my life and recent political history.

I had had this huge idea of building an allegorical post apocalyptic world- classic grandiose scrap; but do-able because I’d put materials aside in my hampden yard shed when pulling off the big move home. Part of my practice seems to be a huge waste of time and energy in classifying and moving around stiff. While it is a hoarding of artifacts, they are interesting things, and I do my best to keep it not pathological. I have a deep drive to recycle and reuse everything, also appreciative of history in the objects existing at all.  I’ve spent so much time with some items that I am unsure of their origin.

Although I’ve written more about this, I discovered this weekend that perception truly is everything. In reverting to the past while I shut myself in to build the dwelling of a lonely shut-in contemplating the pain of the world, I shared that pain– the underlying pain of humanity. I did not however, have the freedom to keep myself from directing this experience of pain at personal perceptions from the past, projected into the present. It was very interesting to watch myself, from inside myself, and also online with the time delay and recordings. It was a living theatrical time travel of the psyche morphing into 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006– a time when I lived less aware and often paranoid, immature but highly sensitive to subtleties.

Times before Baltimore were brought to life in Baltimore after having left Baltimore.

I can’t wait to share it with people on Thursday!

Now, the question becomes, since i am obviously not free from the past, can we, as humans, ever be? Can we exist without the patterned channels that the brain has experienced previously continuing to  govern the routes that the brain will choose indefinitely? such is what J. Krishnamurti seems to mean by the challenge of change

and yes.

it is possible.

∞∞∞∞∞∞∞∞

~o~ scrap

kaleidoscope kismet

cory bernat

The kaleidoscope. A momentary escape
from reality – light pours in and the colorful endless patterns mystify
me. I move my hand and as the color shifts from my slight movement a
new world of light forms. Each composition more beautiful than the
previous, the methodic motion becomes melodic and I’m in a trance.

Something so simple yet so intricate and beautiful. The dynamic of
the endless reflection matched with the unique, spontaneous and
seemingly serendipitous (say that 10x fast) meeting of each bead
becomes a metaphor of life. Circumstance, gravity, cause and effect are
all taking place to make it happen, but the hand orchestrates the
entire thing. Life is often like this. Cyclical. Subjected to cause
& effect, physics, gravity, etc, rationalized by either prior
experience or just plain science. But what about luck? Fate? Destiny?
Is there a difference? Is there really such a thing or do we create our
own? Orchestrated by the very same hand shifting the kaleidoscope.

Moving around as much as I did and
having no siblings I’ve grown fond of finding similarities between
myself and others. Inexplicable parallel behavioral patterns that seem
to defy logic amaze me. It’s as though I’ve been traveling on the same
wavelength as this other person and at some point in the time continuum
we happen upon a magnetic force and meet.

So luck/fate/destiny or some magnetic force pulled through and two
red beads met at the corner of a mirror or rather, through my front door. I
guess it’s all interpretation. I met Cory for the first time as she
walked through the doors of my apartment Friday evening and after just
a few exchanges it was apparent we had a lot in common, most notably -
red hair. There was the military background, the same bank (lame, yes,
but highly uncommon), a background in graphic design, as well as an
uncanny desire to pursue as much as we possibly can, to experience as
much as our interests demand.

Both of
us hold degrees in Graphic Design which influences many of our other
interests and it became the backbone of this installation. As a design
student one of the first things you learn is hierarchy. The delineation
of the visual, what information requires the most real estate vs. what
pleases the eye. As far as I’m concerned this logic can be translated
off the two dimensional plane and into many facets of life. The
information we display about ourselves to the world has a hierarchy,
what we want people to know first, second, third.

For her installation, Cory proposed an interesting twist: I go to her
place in DC and take photos while she installs in my apartment. She
gave no explanation for her request, but I gladly accepted.

Her installation involves giving haircuts in my space – Cory Cuts – an installation within an installation. As I comb through her basement DC apartment finding new compositions
at each turn, Cory is cutting hair. The hair of my friends. She invites people in for a
personal exchange of work for hair cuts, but it goes beyond a few snips. We
can reveal so much of ourselves in even the smallest amounts of time
and on the simplest stage…the stool. Usually when i get my hair cut I
stick my nose in a magazine and avoid awkward conversation as much as
possible. But this environment is more intimate. Her purpose is to
investigate my life through the words of others. To decode my life beyond the hierarchy
of my things. What do these people (my friends) say first, second, third about me? The
importance of this is crucial. Does the person feel comfortable, do
they know enough about me for her to draw some sort of conclusion? Am I
associated with laughter or tension? The serious or the silly?

I imagine with each nugget of information Cory receives she makes a
very specific adjustment to the apartment. The more she learns, the
more she is able to rearrange the current situation to a more accurate
display of the life she has been interpreting. She brings to the
surface succinct
information. Instead of clutter she informs without overwhelming the
viewer. The space then becomes more enjoyable for me. I’m able to see
more of the things that make up my life and appreciate their beauty
while others are able to get an easier read for who I am and what I’ve
experienced.

While I explore Cory’s apartment I’m reminded again
and again about how similar we really are. How the arrangement and
decoration of our lives really do reflect our similar sensibilities
(please see photos).
During our brief conversation the night prior to her installation Cory
revealed she grew up in Florida near NASA where her dad worked.
Although she loved where she was from, she felt more akin to San
Francisco. Her objects reflected this torn sense of identity with
images of the moon, space, manatees, astrological signs, etc. matched
against poppy color and design I would associate with the hipness of
the urban San Fran.
Modest living with funky accents sprinkled throughout. It is evident
that life is a journey for Cory and it’s important
for her to wear her experiences on her walls. Evidence to remind us
that as much as we would like
to think we are the hand gripping and twisting the kaleidoscope, more
often than not I’m
convinced there is another force – maybe a magnet, maybe even destiny.

My
fascination with luck/fate/destiny has been alive and well for many
years.  My grandmother used to bring me along to various events during
my yearly summertime visit. I thought she wanted to show me off to her
friends, but no, I was her portable,blond haired, gap-toothed good luck
charm. I went to bazaars, church picnics, bingo games, even the gas
station to help her pick out her lotto numbers. I even managed to come
through, first in a few baskets at the yearly St. John’s Picnic, then a
few rounds of bingo, but she was convinced after winning the jackpot
with a ticket I placed for the grand-prize at the Holy Name Church
Picnic. A prize our whole family enjoyed for years to come – 12″ TV,
gift certificate to Talbots,
a two night stay at the luxurious Scranton Hampton Inn, BBQ
paraphernalia – too much to name really. From then on my ability to
attract good luck made me feel like I had a super power, like I could
orchestrate my own destiny by just being open to everything.

Just as the kaleidoscope adjusts and dances with the slightest of
movements – so do I. I either speed up or slow down depending on the
rhythm. Every new situation, while it may lack something from before,
has the potential to become something new and more beautiful than the
previous. Completely buying into predestination can get you in trouble,
but I believe we conduct our own fate by fully participating in our
life and appreciating it for what it is. Putting ourselves in new and
interesting situations is what it’s all about. The journey, but also
the challenge.  It has become scientific fact – at least for me.

Turning Your Orbit Around…

clarissa and lauren

I am an only child. Yeah I know. Roll your eyes. It gets better…
I had an imaginary friend. His name was Jimmy and from what I have been told I would spend my days searching for him – apparently our favorite game was hide and seek and I was always “it”.

Needless to say after many rounds of “hide and seek” with Jimmy my mom made sure to surround me with friends ALOT. It wasn’t difficult because #1 I’m awesome and #2 we were apart of a very close-knit community of military families. But even with this traveling troupe of constant entertainment, I always found solace in myself. I would lose myself in the woods behind my house or constructing a quilted castle on my back deck. Piles of leaves became pieces of furniture, lines traced on the ground were floor-plans, a closet was Barbie’s high-rise, a wall cubbie was a campfire, blankets were walls. I was in control. It was my orbit, my universe. Nobody could tell me what to do and in my mind it was all very real and very important. I was creating an imitation of adult life – observing and regurgitating it back into the land of make-believe.

It is a need for shelter at its rawest. The idea of enclosure, safety, and shelter take precedence over the actual physical structure. We seek and create these ideals throughout our life, but as children it can come from a space between two rocks, a clearing in the wood, or even (as my mom learned) from every blanket you own. There is a magic these places hold for us, the magic of escape, the magic of what life could be if constructed with the imagination of an 8 year old.

Lauren and Clarissa have constructed a monumental fort for me. The piles of books strewn down my hallway are rocks leading me downstream to my saw-horses. Once supporting my desk with all of my very important adult things, they are now catapults for my bed and entry to my fort. Within the fort I have tools for my travels, a very high-tech time travel/mind reading device, a book of comics, a book of fables, and a book of hide and seek (if only I had this for Jimmy). My shag rug has become waves crashing against the shore. The princess, constructed from my ladder and my basketball, stands guard behind me holding a steady, watchful gaze as I float on. Forcing me to turn around, slow down and appreciate the moment and my mind’s own capabilities. They have given me a new orbit – my own universe complete with the moon and the stars as well as a safe escape from spider attacks (see previous entry for more details) and the impending doom of the great divide, I float and realize I am my most adventurous when I feel safe.

On the periphery of the fort are moments of reality. An outfit laid out for wear the next day, music mixes for each day of the week, my art kit open and ready for use, even a heart painted on the mirror with lipstick. Demarcations that this magical land is a construction within a construction of life.

The ridiculousness of childhood – at an age when you have no control over the majority of your life, your imagination can put you in complete control of everything that matters. As the years go by it becomes harder and harder to hold on to this ability of escape and wonderment. The schizophrenia of being a 12-year-old girl creeps in and you are expected to transition from being the kid who pees in the woods to avoid missing an ounce of daylight to going to school dances and talking about boys. I still don’t think I have totally recovered from this shock and I’m constantly trying to get that part of me back. Had I a stronger sense of self at the time I would have realized none of those expectations mattered and usually the most intriguing people are those who forgo them altogether and go with their gut.

But I do believe we continue building forts throughout our life, the first dorm room, the first apartment, the first house. We may no longer use glow-in-the-dark stars and time-travel devices, but the same ideals remain – creating a space of safety, utility, and shelter and constructing new orbits for ourselves. So we are always going back to the fort in the backyard and I hope I never stop looking for Jimmy.