Thank you for this Sally. With the death of my spouse in November, and before that, as he was sick and dying, I resolved to simply surrender to feelings and thoughts, let them be what they are, when they are, and to neither grab onto them nor judge them nor repress them. Even when the pain seems too great i let it shake me down and then leave. Everything leaves.
Surrender is underrated. But then again, there has to be another way that isn’t “fight”
I get caught in loops. Neither fight nor surrender is great action. Open the gates and let the horses roam together is a wonderful metaphor. I heard it before but you made it vivid Sal! Thanks
A couple of weeks ago I was at the Whitney visiting your pieces. It felt like you found a way past looping into endless generation. That plastic bag floating and playing in Mesocosm. The animals standing curiously on the same rock islands as those who were mining. I kept thinking to myself this is the world we need to learn to love.
You get it! Embrace wholly the grief beauty contradictions and impermanence.
It is a wish. Hard to implement in every day life especially when capitalist/puritanical time crushes in… and neuroses that attend to those conditions….
It’s been such an awful time in this country, in the world. It’s hard to find my way into that love while everything is always happening at once. Animals, trash, bombing, fires, flowers, romances, anime, art, fancy restaurants, shootings, deliberate cruelty, all of it.
Yes, when you put it that way, I’m totally deflated. So what does that mean for the work of cultivating compassion? I can’t get to the criminal perpetrators with my compassion. But I can get to the garbage and I can get to the grief.
I used to have a field guide class and did all this work on Newtown Creek where we talked about embracing the *everythingness* of a particular kind of exhausted Site. I also think you could re-tool those kinds of spaces as heterotopia not dystopia.
But authoritarian regimes? The torment of the vulnerable? I don’t know. I think deflation might be a soulful response.
Thank you for this Sally. With the death of my spouse in November, and before that, as he was sick and dying, I resolved to simply surrender to feelings and thoughts, let them be what they are, when they are, and to neither grab onto them nor judge them nor repress them. Even when the pain seems too great i let it shake me down and then leave. Everything leaves.
Brave heart. ❤️
Surrender is underrated. But then again, there has to be another way that isn’t “fight”
I get caught in loops. Neither fight nor surrender is great action. Open the gates and let the horses roam together is a wonderful metaphor. I heard it before but you made it vivid Sal! Thanks
A couple of weeks ago I was at the Whitney visiting your pieces. It felt like you found a way past looping into endless generation. That plastic bag floating and playing in Mesocosm. The animals standing curiously on the same rock islands as those who were mining. I kept thinking to myself this is the world we need to learn to love.
A big thank you for going to see the show
You get it! Embrace wholly the grief beauty contradictions and impermanence.
It is a wish. Hard to implement in every day life especially when capitalist/puritanical time crushes in… and neuroses that attend to those conditions….
It’s been such an awful time in this country, in the world. It’s hard to find my way into that love while everything is always happening at once. Animals, trash, bombing, fires, flowers, romances, anime, art, fancy restaurants, shootings, deliberate cruelty, all of it.
Yes, when you put it that way, I’m totally deflated. So what does that mean for the work of cultivating compassion? I can’t get to the criminal perpetrators with my compassion. But I can get to the garbage and I can get to the grief.
Be not deflated!!!!!
But I agree, there’s something about trash and garbage which makes it a good doorway for me too.
I used to have a field guide class and did all this work on Newtown Creek where we talked about embracing the *everythingness* of a particular kind of exhausted Site. I also think you could re-tool those kinds of spaces as heterotopia not dystopia.
But authoritarian regimes? The torment of the vulnerable? I don’t know. I think deflation might be a soulful response.
🙏