So little is visible
I’m leading a five week intention setting class starting December 9 to benefit Community Building Art Works’ Hospital Programs. Registration is here. There are 2 spots left, so register soon. And of course, here’s CBAW’s Holiday Fundraiser. Please give if you can.
Five years ago I could not have imagined CBAW would be here (or I guess would be at all). Some people, when asked “Where do you see yourself (or your organization) in 5 years?” know exactly how to answer–they have a vision of a life or of an outcome and they move toward that vision. I do not. I make a plan of what I’d like to study, what I’d like to know more about, but the plan always includes room for walking through doors I didn’t know would be open, doors I maybe didn’t know existed, held open by people I haven’t met yet.
I am continually astounded by how this work has grown, the shape it has grown into, the opportunities that have presented themselves, and how they have changed my thinking. My creative work too, moves at its own pace, surprising things happen in my writing career; sometimes I write good, even great things, sometimes my sentences are dull and convoluted. I don’t know how to make things happen, I only know to follow my curiosity until it leads me to the right place. As long as I actively pursue opportunities to make myself better, good things happen. That’s all I know for sure.
Here’s bell hooks from All About Love, talking about the challenge she faced early in her feminism—balance the idea of wanting to know men’s feelings with the reality of what has to be done once we know how others suffer. “When we hear another person’s thoughts, beliefs and feelings, it is more difficult to project on to them our perceptions of who they are. It is harder to be manipulative.” Isn’t this true of anyone we set ourselves up against? Isn’t it true that we need to create these barriers to our projections, that we need to make it harder on us, psychically, to be manipulative?
… Myth gives man, very importantly, the illusion
that he can understand the universe and that he
does understand the universe. It is, of course, only
an illusion.
Levi Scrauss, Myth and Meaning
looks up at us and begs. It sits up. Bends
its outstretched paws at what would be the wrists—
we think it looks like us, or something like us,
but … different somehow. It has a tail. And there’s
something in the eyes, something deep. But it wears
strange clothes: a collar, thick fur. And it knows
we’re lost, we haven’t got a clue. Wouldn’t know one
if we saw one. And it’s true, we don’t, we wouldn’t.
But its tail thumps like our poor heart beating
and what we don’t understand welcomes us home,
gives out its message in sharp, nearly comprehensible
bursts. We love that. And we bark back, our blunt
tongues wagging. We think what we don’t know
loves us, but we can’t even call it by name.
So we give it a name. It’s mysterious. And for all
we know we might be saying footstool, pig’s eye,
Or rich, black dirt. We’ll never be sure. But we
go on. And we brag; we write long and painful essays
On our progress. Others read them. But what we really understand
is this: We want. And what we can’t comprehend
is unfathomable. What we hear is the wind
and our own fears rumbling. But we could
be mistaken. We are often mistaken and
so little is visible—for instance,
the wind and what we do not know. What
we don’t understand. What sounds
like it might be our home—unknowable
wind and the black, thumping heart of the world.
Copyright © 2019 Renée Ashley All rights reserved
from Minglements
Del Sol Press
