half a longing: Cards & Contemplations

Looking over the creations of the past six months, I'm struck the the consistency with which I return to primary colors, although mostly it's just to warmth: red, yellow, orange, green, and brown earth tones. It may be a function of fall and winter, and of wanting to introduce comfort and joy. I find a comfort in giving, in making things to give away, that can be hard to shake, and confusing when I don't have a project to work on-- a birthday or goodbye or anniversary of some other Major Life Event that needs marking. What prompts creativity, otherwise? I have this postcard above my desk that quotes Octavia Butler on the importance of "persistence in practice," but I don't seem to give much credence to her advice. Or maybe I do, just at a slower pace than perhaps she had in mind.

I was inspired by the pictures that people from all over the world posted online when their dear friend and fellow artist-writer David Rakoff died. Apparently, he'd for years made the loveliest boxes, wallets, and linocuts as gifts for his friends, and when he died his friends clung to them. Rich & famous people. Accomplished people. And what they treasured were his hand-made gifts.

Today I read about a moral bucket list, the kinds of qualities and experiences one needs to be worthy of a meaningful memorial service at life's end. One of the qualities that struck me from the list he calls "the dependency leap"--realizing "We all need redemptive assistance from outside." I can do self-sufficiency; it's admitting I need other people that's hard. So these things I've made, and their pictures here, are reminders to me not only of my gratitude for the friends and family in my life, but also of the myriad ways in which I depend on them to push me, to remind me what it means to be connected, to pull me into their gravitational fields, crossing orbits and colliding to form planetary clusters, so that I, we, are not merely satellites, passing, blinking, signaling, alone.