"What Remains"

I went to the Met today. I can't take credit for the impetus, only that I'd scheduled it as a field trip with my students. Thank God. It was pretty great. Not only my casual conversations with them, but also the wandering in between. I saw the Bonnard show, Late Interiors, which was lovely. Some of the work seems to presage Diebenkorn's Ocean Park paintings.

Before and after Bonnard I moved through the museum without purpose or intention. I wound up in this cave-like, bricked, dimly lit area with steles, jewelry, and tapestry fragments from 200 to 400 AD. One woven fragment was mesmerizing. There was something architectural about it, and the parts that were eroded away only made what was left more exquisite. It was hard to leave.

I've been thinking about collage. I need to use my hands. The woven fragment is a push. It gave the title to this post, which is from Sally Mann, who I've been looking at for my students.

I launched two videos on my Web site today. The video seems like the form my sculpture is taking. Tomorrow is a studio day. Yay.

Missing

It's been three weeks since I wrote, not for lack of inclination but time. For having to set priorities so that many things I want to do don't get done and many ways I'd like to feel don't get felt. Like embodied. Like I'm doing my work. Like I'm in it.

I seem only to disappoint myself, and it's exhausting. My expectations are probably too high, yet I've had what I'm missing and I want it back.

What I make is changing to accommodate what is. I know that's positive, yet barely experience it. I made two short videos - my first. They are what I want them to be. They'll be on my Web site soon, as immediate a showing as could be. Yet I don't feel the relief of having made new work, work that's clear and exciting. I can't blame my clumsiness with the technology for this long, long distance from myself.

People tell me I'm disciplined; I don't much agree. If I was as disciplined as I seem, I'd dig out. I returned to meditation a couple of days ago after not sitting for two or three weeks, and that's good - that's the discipline that's proven best at aligning my actions with my hopes for myself.