In the sixth month, a collage illustration for Ilya Kaminsky's We Lived Happily During the War
A year from now, here are five things from this week that I'd like to remember:
MONDAY
“Probably the best thing my parents did—two simple things that don’t seem to occur to many people—was to give me my own desk just for art and to let me use professional (or at least good) art supplies from a very young age. My father was a printmaker in the 1980s, so he had all of his stuff lying around and was very generous about it. Other than that, I did not have after-school art classes or trips to museums or things that people assume are key to inspiration. In the 1980s, art was seen as an optional thing in the sidelines of life, so you got to make “creative stuff” at school if you happened to get a teacher who was personally into it. That was about once every three years. I would say that, instead, boredom was the key to inspiration. My family didn’t have any money to spare, didn’t go many places, and therefore my brothers and I had loads of unstructured time, our own desks, and a backyard with plants and dirt. We didn’t have vacations, other than driving to a river or a beach once in a while, so I figured that exploring ideas in the far reaches of one’s imagination was perhaps the best way to travel.”
–from Elizabeth Haidle's interview with Haley Laningham in Southeast Review
P.S. Elizabeth (who is as lovely on the phone as she is on the internet) has a new needle felting course out that I'm excited to take this summer. Maybe you'd like it, too!
TUESDAY
Today marks the last day of my first year of graduate school. It feels anticlimactic; I knew it would. Significant days have a way of doing that: feeling like a terrific storm that took a wrong turn somewhere, forgetting to arrive. The body fills with an anticipation so large that there is very little room left for the prospect of satiety.
In preparation for my final review, I finished illustrating Ilya Kaminsky's We Lived Happily During the War, and bound my illustrations for William Bronk's The Tell into a neat little book. I thought about how much I love poetry, and how poetry has always loved me back, the way only books or paintings or music can, without reason or knowing how.
This summer, I'll write and illustrate some of my own poems. I want them to be good. I want them to be so good, so badly, that I often think about not writing them at all. The one thing graduate school has taught me is the one thing I already knew. In life and love and art and parenting, you can't really plan on it being good. The only thing you can plan on––all you can really count on––is trying.
WEDNESDAY
"The Ama divers of Japan are all-women divers. The women dive tankless making them free divers, and while they also collect seafood and seaweed, their main focus is pearls. Ama means ‘woman of the sea’ or ‘sea women.’
The world of the ama is one marked by duty and superstition. One traditional article of clothing that has stood the test of time is their headscarf. The headscarves are adorned with symbols such as the seiman and the douman, which bring luck to the diver and ward off evil. The ama are also known to create small shrines near their diving location, where they will visit after diving in order to thank the gods for their safe return."
–on the Ama divers of Japan, from Erin Austen Abott's newsletter, Field Trip
THURSDAY
It's 6:45 am and we are downstairs in the kitchen, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppersplaying on the stereo, N shoveling fistfuls of granola into her face. Her head hinges at the neck like an L-shaped bracket and she moves corpse-like to the beat. She is, by far, the best dancer under this roof.
I laugh aloud and the future flashes behind my eyes: N at 14 slamming the door in my face, N at 3 giving me a soaking wet post-bath hug, N at 22 calling me on the phone, I hope, just to say hello. I laugh aloud and her voice fills the space between my ears like crickets' song, beautiful against the early morning stillness.
It's 6:48 am and I'm back downstairs, standing in the kitchen while she bops along to Kendrick Lamar. “MA-ma!" she shouts, beckoning me to dance, but I feel exhausted, having traveled to the future and back. She's only 18 months, I know, but it was yesterday that I brought her home from the hospital.
Where has all the time gone, I wonder.
FRIDAY
I like the lady horses best,
how they make it all look easy,
like running 40 miles per hour
is as fun as taking a nap, or grass.
I like their lady horse swagger,
after winning. Ears up, girls, ears up!
But mainly, let’s be honest, I like
that they’re ladies. As if this big
dangerous animal is also a part of me,
that somewhere inside the delicate
skin of my body, there pumps
an 8-pound female horse heart,
giant with power, heavy with blood.
Don’t you want to believe it?
Don’t you want to lift my shirt and see
the huge beating genius machine
that thinks, no, it knows,
it’s going to come in first.
–from Ada Limón's How to Triumph Like a Girl
xo,
M
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