Hurricane Hits
My todo list tells me that I need to finish Pedestrian Plea today. I couldn't finish it last week because my teen was creating catastrophe and my mother was in town and my sleep molecules disintegrated completely under the onslaught of psychological collisions. Now today, Hurricane Sandy is fast approaching, and I am compulsively cooking, checking weather updates, comparing Facebook posts with my daughter, wondering when the power is going to shut down. 
Pedestrian Plea is all about the accidental absence of life from well-meaning conceptual Art with a capital A. So, wouldn't it be lovely if I can work in something about how the hurricane is life itself, more art than Art? A wake-up call of the highest order.
Except that all I want to do is eat stew. It came out really well, nice and spicy, with lentils and potatoes, served over quinoa which I made earlier in the rice cooker to make sure I had used the electric appliances before it would all be over.
Soup or Art? Stew or Blog? Eat or Write?
Another post in incubation is on the topic of Working With It, specifically on the question of how tightly to hew to one's intentions. I set out to write one thing and it is turning into another, and I must decide now which way to go. Complicating the matter is my teen, who is twirling and knocking into the wall every now and then with a potent arabesque.
As I write this, I feel a gust of wind smack the building and I look out the window and see pieces of things fly violently in all directions. I picture future generations of people or aliens reading these last words I write before the storm washes us all away. Meanwhile the teen asks numerous questions about gluten-free baking and then comments, accurately, on my clichéd writing.
When life gets in the way, what is the Way? It is not enough to say go with the flow. My effort to maintain focus creates tension and then play between myself and my daughter. We put sandbags up (or something like that), so our homes don't wash away, but if they do we get the canoe. Isn't there some great joke about that?
The super sweeps the leaves into a circle right before the winds hit. A neighbor purchases an axe, in case he has to hack his way out of the attic. Everyone is buying hot chocolate, or red wine, or bread. It is impossible not to meet life with our minds. Sometimes the mind changes, scattering like the leaves, but sometimes it holds its center like the hurricane itself, a force of nature that pulls everything into its path.
I have written a post after all.
October 2012
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Reader Comments (4)
You're doing better than I am. I'm trying to write, but the creaking trees threatening my roof are making it a little hard to concentrate!
I like the honesty and free flow of this piece of writing. The last paragraph is beautiful and many-layered.
Thank you, Mumarina. Julie, your experience was pretty much echoed by everyone I spoke to. We all thought, oh good, here is the day I've been waiting for. Can't go out, can write. But we were all too ramped up. The only reason I could write is that I was writing about IT. Apologies for the delay in response; actually I had no idea there were comments--clearly don't have those settings set right.
The absence of life -- accidental or not --- is what I mostly experience in Chelsea… so well put thank you for identifying the reason of my discomfort around most contemporary art…
Something I was thinking about: since Duchamp gave artists the rights of a king Midas (that which I touch, think, breathe, shit is art simply because I am an artist-- see Piero Manzoni) then as a member of the anonymous non-artistic audience I take up the right to decide what is relevant, ethically and artistically, for myself. I am stepping out of the fray…