Unstoppable

The future is bigger than our imaginations. It’s unimaginable, and then it comes anyway. To meet it we need to keep going, to walk past what we can imagine. We need to be unstoppable. And here’s what it takes: you don’t stop walking to congratulate yourself; you don’t stop walking to wallow in despair; you don’t stop because your own life got too comfortable or too rough; you don’t stop because you won; you don’t stop because you lost. There’s more to win, more to lose, others who need you.

You don’t stop walking because there is no way forward. Of course there is no way. You walk the path into being, you make the way, and if you do it well, others can follow the route. You look backward to grasp the long history you’re moving forward from, the paths others have made, the road you came in on. You look forward to possibility.  That’s what we mean by hope, and you look past it into the impossible and that doesn’t stop you either. But mostly you just walk, right foot, left foot, right foot, left foot. That’s what makes you unstoppable. - Rebecca Solnit

Whether today counts as my seventh time falling, I am prepared for it not being the last. These words help me see that there is more to this life beyond this fall and that I must keep walking.

revolution

Rebecca Solnit writes; "Disasters often unfold a little like revolutions. They create a tremendous rupture with the past. Today has nothing much in common with yesterday -- in how the system works or doesn’t, in what people have in common, in how they see their priorities and possibilities."

My most recent work makes a connection between recent disasters and the impermanence of all things. Source material for the work comes from images of destruction after the so-called "Super Storms" that have hit hard across the world. There is something about these destructed man-made creations that become almost human. That they too, are impermanent and destructible. That they can be lost and ruined, dying and gone forever. 

My work has always been about the tension between the natural world and man kinds struggle over impermanence. This tension creates revolutions. I believe that is terrifying for most of us because it shows us how little control we truly have. We are human, destructible, impermanent beings and the world is much the same. We all will wake up one day and realize that today has nothing in common with yesterday. Within that time lapse something had been destroyed or created, lost or forgotten. 

The only thing we have is what we can control, because there will also be someone or something starting a revolution. 

 

falling into winter

This morning I woke up to see the apricot tree in our backyard nearly barren, the ground covered by our first snow of the season. Emptiness reveals everything around us; emptiness to fullness. Our yard is no longer private, winter has become an unwelcome visitor.

This year, we experienced a exuberant, glowing fall. The leaves bursted with colors, the sky a crisp blue, breathing nostalgic air of cider and pumpkin seeds. It was the last glow before the fall. It was like Winnie, shining before she passed. As the world explodes with color, it also prepares for death.

Seasons are much like life and death. We all look forward to the rebirth of Spring after the death of winter. Seasons also mark the passing of time; the time since I found out I was pregnant with Winona, her first kick in the Spring, her birth in the summer. And now, every season marks months that have passed without her. Five days after her birth, brought an early winter.

But like seasons, after the death of winter, there is birth. I look forward to whatever the next season will bring and what the passing of time will reveal. And the glow of next years fall.