Fluffmudget and Floyd share a little house I bought and
positioned for them atop the heat pump. From there, I reason, they have a
guard-tower view of the mousey side of the house thus discouraging any rodents
intent on home invasion and saving those rodents from a more lingering death by
De-Con. I’m compassionate that way.
Lately, however, Fluff’s taken to having her post-prandial
nap with her back stuffed out the door of her house. The mice parade by
unmolested. And I feel personally responsible.
On January 10th it was very cold and still, there she was, chilling her winter
coat in the rain. Why would she do
that? Perhaps she was having a hot flash. She is 14 years old. That’s, what, 74 cat
years? Well, really!
But I can only make up stories about what I’m seeing. I
can’t know. Fluff and I have a language gap and cognitive limitations. She’s
smarter but I’m the one who tells our stories.
People make art in the absence of fact. We all do it. We also
make nothing but art in the presence
of facts. When we open our mouths, or pick up a tool, the only thing that CAN
come out is art. From an incalculable array of limitations and partially
understood events we select what we will bring forth. It’s always art. Even a
Ph.D. thesis. Even the best designed scientific experiment. Even your daily ‘to
do’ list. They are art and can never be anything else.
It’s all relative, it’s all subjective, it all fails as fact
because it is not all the facts. And no matter what our intention, or where we
are pointing our finger, it’s all always about us.
Could that cat be mooning me?
Well, okay, that story won’t fly. I am not that important to
Fluff in this moment of time. Besides, she has much more effective ways of expressing
disdain. I flash to her behavior yesterday where upon examining the contents of
her breakfast bowl, no canned meat, she
walked directly away from me with her tail held up like baton, like a curser,
like an exclamation point.
I get it. I really think I do. Of course when my old lab,
Dina, began surreptitiously burying her chow in the flower bed, mouthful by
mouthful, hauling it slowly across the porch and shoving it into a hole she’d
made, I thought she was just sick-to-death
of Purina when, in fact, she was just sick to death. I’m so sad remembering how
casually I wondered about the dirt on her nose those last few months. Instead
of investigation I just told myself stories. When she died I told myself other
stories; like that she had just been too good-hearted to risk hurting my
feelings with an untouched dinner. Again, I don’t know. She was an
extraordinarily prescient and kind dog. My point is that whether I had
investigated or not I’d never have known the full story of Dina’s reality.
I got the following inquiry from a reader a year ago: “Your
blog is very self-revealing. How come?” I
responded to this person who so generously gave me feed-back.
I wrote, “That’s an excellent question. When I know the
answer I’ll post it.”
It’s been a year since my last entry though I’ve lived with that
question in the back of my mind as events have unfolded. Serious illness, the
near loss of an adult child and a bio-hazard that left me homeless over five
months have been distractions but still, all the while, I’ve been thinking
about self-revelation and life commentary, art and story. I’ve been thinking
about compassion and accountability.
It feels like love of life, this desire to use what I am, what
I notice and what I can never know, to tell a story. It feels like the desire
for communion with my tribe, wherever they are. It is an expression. It is human.
I hope it is never hurtful. I aim for art.
As an untrained artist I made my living for 30 years. I never called myself an artist but others
called me that.
You see things. You see a bit of how things are and you want to demonstrate your vision of the
underlying connectedness that you sense. If you are being commissioned you
usually have to incorporate what’s in your client’s head and wallet as well.
Okay, that was a challenge. Maybe it was art, in its fashion, what I did.
The story teller or artist is at the center of what they see.
It can not be otherwise. My ‘art;’ those thirty years, was fussy, tight, pretty
and full of longing to be more than it was. The ‘more’ kept leaking out in
little tributaries. It showed me where I needed to go.
It is in relationship that I have to look for my stories and it is in my stories that I look for clues about how
to be a faithful and compassionate storyteller. That begins with
my relationship with myself but it is about everything. I hope it is not too
fussy, tight and pretty. I’m aiming for something closer to compost and the
kind of energy you find there.
The practice of relationship or story is only as
effective as it is honest. Never honest enough we plug on with our limitations and
that leaves all our stories and relationships full of mystery and error. Yet still, through those
practices we are enhanced. We find that we are not exactly alone. Both less and
more special than we thought.
Everyone I’ve ever loved, I’ve loved for their struggles,
not their perfection. And I’ve been pretty up-front about my own struggles and
lack of perfection. I see no reason to stop now.
Let there be no unseemly displays. Let there by no
unkindness. But light, we need light. The concepts of home, communion and
simplicity continue to come up for me and are difficult to explore. The way toward veracity is not as the crow flies and I don’t see how to do it at all without transparency. The inherent risk in first person story is that it will come
back to hit us in the face with a scary value added; more revelation than we intended. But putting it
out there is how we get to better art. It’s how we get to being a better
person.
Love much. Create. Give the world a lot to forgive you for. Things
we make secretly and in the dark may be unforgiveable, they won’t accrue
interest and they may stink. Jesus said it all the time. "Don't hide your light under a bushel unless you're stalking your dinner." (from the Fluff Edition of the New Testament. Matthew 5:15) Stir the compost. Give
it light and air. Something good will grow.
So I show the wart. Wrestle with how it fits the whole
gorgeous horrifying picture. Fail without shame. If
the mark is missed, recalibrate, get better lighting, take another shot. Don’t
look back. Always be looking for a better way of making it happen but do make it happen.
“Now we see through a screen-mesh, darkly;
then face to face:”
(fragment from the
Fluff Edition of the New Testament. 1 Corinthians 13:12)
