Untitled - Falling Out of Touch
Mixed Media on Paper
August 2021 10” x 24”
Ruth Ann Howden
Awkward, awkwardly, awkwardness
I feel indecisive, going in circles
I tell myself not to judge
Not to label
I say let it be, just pay attention
In the great arc of time
I aspire to be a mosquito
The one who gets but never gives, may last a long time, but never lives.
Maxim framed on wall of my childhood home
As an act of atonement I have slowed down, paying attention to my impact on the environment, and creating with the belief that art is an act of giving back/restitution.
The time for giving back is now.
My proposal for national restitution that could be implemented immediately: Transform the 800+ military bases the United States has spread around the globe into refugee centers.
Our military industrial complex has proved to be the disaster that was forecast by President Eisenhower. The U.S. military (the world’s largest consumer of petroleum products) has caused vast devastation and suffering throughout the world. All for profit. We can chose to stop, take that infrastructure and turn these facilities into life-giving action.
Timefullness* Puts World into Perspective
Look, time vanishes
with all our urgent concerns
while the rocks persist
* Timefullness by Geologist Marcia Bjornerud, published 2020
“The great irony of the Anthropocene is that our outsized effects on the planet has in fact put Nature firmly back in charge“
“As members of a technological society that can keep Nature at arms length most of the time, we have an almost autistic relationship with the earth. We are rigid in our ways, savants when it comes to certain narrow obsessions, but dysfunctional in other regards, because we wrongly view ourselves as separate from the rest of the natural world. Convinced that nature is some thing outside us, a mute and immutable thing external to us, but the earth is speaking to us all the time… We need to start thinking like a mountain, awake to all the habits and inhabitants of this ancient, complicated, endlessly evolving planet.”
Random thoughts
Deadline approaching
I used to say deadlines are my friends as they prompted me to get things done — things I felt were important and gave me pleasure both in the doing and in the completion. Now I do what I can, when I can, following the advice of the Oregon poet laureate, William Stafford, who when asked about writer’s block said, “I lower my standards.”
Choice
We’re all alive without our choice. No one has a say over the family we’re born into, nor our gender, race, nation, era. And as for particular talents, interests, physical or mental ability —it’s all a crapshoot. Our personal choices are insignificant, but our choices collectively can be astounding.
Giving Up
Giving up can be like paying forward. Giving up meat so the land can feed more people. Giving up driving and flying so we can have clean air. Giving up military bases so refugees can be housed. Giving up defense contracts so we can have universal education and health care.
“Up on my toes.” There was a girl in my kindergarten class who would start her stories that way. I think her name was Sylvia, but probably am just guessing at that. However, I recall her lanky stature, her mixed-race uniqueness in East Los Angeles (the third largest Mexican population at that time after Mexico City and Guadalajara. I wonder if that distinction has changed in the 50 plus years since I worked at Malabar School, in Boyle Heights.)
Up on my toes is a wonderful phrase. It says pay attention, I have something to tell you. It also reflects back on advice to keep on your toes, as in danger, be ready to pivot, dodge, duck, change course. A reminder that you have choices besides standing like a deer in the headlights waiting to get hit.
Up on my toes. A superpower I never achieved, but like to believe that Sylvia perfected it.
I had the pleasure of a vacation on Kauai’s lovely beaches with family in August
Back home. Life is good on Molokai (back to boring, boring is good)
The curlew and kolea have returned from Alaska, next will be the whales.
