Starting Over Is...

Psst: this is going out as an email, so, Hi! How are you doing? :-)

Beginning one of my sculptural pinched/coiled red clay vessels. View from above.

(This post was migrated from Substack)

…something I have done eleventy three point seven zillion times. Yes, I counted them all. It’s absolutely an official tally.

No it isn’t.

Of course it isn’t. But that is what it feels like.

And here I am starting over again—hi there, welcome to my substack!

I’m starting without a strategy, without a plan, without a promise to deliver something every whenever.

And I’m starting with the promise that I’m going to feel my way through this, doing it my way, rather than trying to fit myself into yet another box of someone else’s expectations. It’s an approach I embraced in ceramic sculpture: feeling and, as Paulus Berensohn—who, of course, was a dancer before he found clay—said it best, “finding (my) way with clay.”

Beginning one of my sculptural pinched/coiled red clay vessels. View from above. Photo by Liza Bernstein (oui, c’est moi). By the way, I’d really love to figure out how to place the image with the text, rather than have it floating in the center like this. Also the alt text was not cooperating, hence the description in this very long caption.

Today I’m offering two things that activated my neurons…

1. letting go to start anew

First, it’s thanks to that I’m even daring to embark on this new journey of sharing of myself publicly once again (maybe you knew me from my itsthebunk years on the bird app?). Below, my Notes comment on her recent essay “Letting it Go,” and the excerpt I shared from it:

“I don’t build such spaces for myself alone, for admiration, status, or ownership. I create them to share and therefore fighting to keep it defeats the entire purpose.”

—Martha Crawford

@Martha Crawford! I loved this essay! Thank you, as you often do, for so clearly expressing things that I sense but haven’t yet been able to fully articulate.

Your dream and the insights you derived helped me pull into exquisite focus one of the key causes that contributed to my walking away from (notwithstanding the massive acceleration slap in the face the universe delivered with that traumatic layoff!) the type of cancer advocacy and career I’d built beginning late 2010.

It had started out with service, sharing, and collaboration… but at some point all that culture of supremacy, domination, and competition, plus exploitation/extraction, began to sprout like invasive plants, and grow and grow and grow until it had clogged up most of the landscape.

I was not interested in fighting with those whose egos needed to claim ownership of whatever, as if they were claiming land as colonizers… I wanted to share, serve, and collaborate, which by letting go, I now am freer to do once again.

(If you click on the block below, it will open in a new tab, and you’ll be able to click through to read Martha’s entire awesome essay.)

2. made in america—erasure

Next, US Memorial Day just ended (it’s 1:00 am and, oy, am I up too late). I found this extraordinary but, not at all surprising, information in the Washington Post yesterday. The article—Black people may have started Memorial Day. Whites erased it from history—is a MUST READ. (gift link)

Here are a few words I shared with friends:

It is such the story of this country…

Thinking of the love and compassion in the hearts of the freed people and all those children newly enrolled in schools and all those flowers…. That fills my heart with love.

And then all that fucking hatred. 💔

… as well as some itsthebunk etymology…

If you’re wondering where this whole itsthebunk thing comes from, watch this trailer from one of my favorite writer/director’s films:

…and a sweet farewell.

Thanks for reading! I’m looking forward to the words and thoughts and ideas and our exchanges ahead… pop a comment or give a like if you’d like!

I leave you with these leaves and petals!

Nasturtiums, and lavender, and gorgeous pinkish-purple leaves, and succulents basking in the sun. Another pic by moi.

Oh wait, I need to add a PS!

PS: My avatar is from Regina Holliday’s portrait of me for her Walking Gallery of Healthcare.