Reflection: March 17-24, 2022
The Mission:
Let’s Reflect. Take the week to go back through your own writing. Any writing: polished pieces, certainly, but also journal entries, texts with friends, posts when you were in your favorite places, letters you wrote but never sent, reflections in the margins of books you loved, etc. Don’t limit yourself is all I’m saying.
Choose a line you wrote that really speaks to you and write it on the item you received.* It must fit on one side. Decorate the other side as you wish. Bonus points - include in your submission a brief reflection/explanation of your choice.
This is a snapshot of where you are and what speaks to you in this moment. Don’t let the choosing paralyze you. Let yourself be impressed with your own ability to articulate what resonates with you right now.
*Editor’s Note: The person who submitted this mission also was kind enough to deliver an object to each of our houses before posting the mission. This is the “item you received” referred to above.
Feel free to purchase a keychain like this, or use a similar object - the key here is the size - use something no bigger than one inch by two inches.
(Penny shown for size)
The Submissions:
by Soldier Clinging to Helicopter…
This line in particular was the product of one of those rare but divine writing circumstances -- that delicious moment when you're deep in the drafting, you've quieted your inner Karen-critic, you write a word or a phrase or a sentence -- a good one -- and you think, "Whoa, where did that even come from?? Because it did NOT come from me. It just...appeared, out of the cosmos." Almost like a star.
As it turned out, that line was the one that seemed to linger with my readers, too.
It seems to have lingered with me as well. I have been pretty melancholy for most of my life, even when I was happy. But in the past few years, I've been trying to work on breathing more, dwelling less, and leaving light wherever I go. A work in progress, one for which I could use a reminder. I'm not a tattoo person, so this keychain is the next best thing.
Making it gave me a reason to break out the package of new (birthday) sharpies I bought myself, and to listen to one of my all-time favorite songs, Nat King Cole's "Stardust" (on repeat, since it lingers for only a short three minutes):
by Captain Quillard…
When I first read this assignment, I was intrigued by the idea of finding something outside of my writing “pieces”—hopefully something from a text message or a social media comment or a note I’d written to myself. But the part about “where you are” now and “what speaks to you in this moment” kept leading me back to something I wrote last summer—a poem (? I guess it’s a poem?) called “Cicada,” about life during the pandemic. And, even though that meant taking a line from some more “formal” writing than I wanted, it just seemed to fit with how I’ve been feeling and where I am now.
When I wrote that line, I’d been trying to evoke that specific way that time felt during the isolation and societal changes that came with covid—that sort of languishing, time is meaningless, foggy and barely lucid, fever dream mix of boredom and loneliness and fear and anger and sadness and uncertainty and slipping into insanity while oddly comfortable and restless at the same time. Each day felt mostly the same as the day before it, but not like an exact copy—just a little different in minor ways or, as I wrote, “one maybe a slightly altered facsimile of another, but not enough to matter. Not enough to give it a different scientific name.”
As I tried to put that into words, I started to vividly remember the papers and tests I was given in elementary school, where copies were made on a mimeograph machine. I could clearly see that very specific shade of blueish-purple, picture the little ink smears and missing parts of letters and other imperfections, and even smell the way those papers smelled—each copy just a little different than the others, but not by enough to matter. It all seemed to fit perfectly with how living in the pandemic felt. It wasn’t the most brilliant line ever written, but I remember feeling really good about it—impressed that I’d been able to pull out a metaphor that felt exactly how I wanted it to feel. Things are a little different with the pandemic now than they were when I wrote that, but in many ways they’re not that different, either. I still feel much the same way these days, with that same indigo blur and hollowed purpose, as each day bleeds and smudges into the next.
The back of the keychain is a photo of me in the middle of Yayoi Kusama’s “Fireflies on the Water,” which I colorized with the same purple mimeograph color. About six months into the pandemic, I knew I needed to get out of the house, so I took a day trip to the Toledo Museum of Art, being sure to visit at an off time when I’d be one of the only people in the building. Seeing art in person helped my mood and helped me make it through a difficult time, much like I’m hoping these weekly art assignments will do. The use of mirrors in Kusama’s installation worked well for this “reflection” assignment, but it also spoke to me in terms of repetition and the infinite, unending feeling of these days and the times we’re living in. The image feels somewhat foreboding to me (isolated, wearing a mask, surrounded by slightly “off” copies of myself), but also with some glimmers of hope and defiance and magic, so while it represents the helplessness I feel now, it also reminds me of the few pockets of joy and positivity out there—the “fireflies on the water” that are keeping me going.
“Nails” by Journal Kurtz
Next Week’s Assignment:
Take photos of three seemingly unrelated things (one photo of each thing), and find a way to relate them to each other - a common thread that bonds them together. Could be a unifying theme, or a common color scheme, or something in the geometry/composition of the photos. Could be song lyric or a line of text. With the photos, submit a short description of how you feel these ostensibly disparate things are related.
You don’t need to use a fancy camera or develop film in a dark room (unless you want to). Photos taken with your phone or any other device are just fine.