The question at hand
What is the bridge between three things that I love, and how might they exist in harmony with each other?
A question has been on my mind these past weeks:
What is the connection between design, art, and nature?
I have a few ideas, but nothing certain yet. I am still searching for clues and I have, to my amazement, found a few.
Clue one: I had a surreal connection with a mentee on ADPList (when there are tears the first time you meet someone, you know it is special). She was so excited to share with me the small and potent idea of how smart our natural world can be, a thought she captured after visiting a Cooper Hewitt exhibit on bio-mimicry. The more I talk about my love for plants and animals, the more I see so many of us attempting to reclaim connection to our natural world.
Clue two: Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood, wrote of her childhood in Southern Georgia:
“Not long ago I dreamed of actually cradling a place, as if something so amorphous and vague as a region, existing mostly in imagination and idea, suddenly took form. I held its shrunken relief in my arms, a baby smelted from a plastic topography map, and when I gazed down into its face, as my father had gazed into mine, I saw the pine flatlands of my homeland.”
I began reading the above book at a friend’s cabin an hour from here, and when we got home I asked Mark to get it for me from the library so I could finish it. They didn’t have a copy on the shelves, but they had another one by Janisse Ray, The Seed Underground. From the very first page of her preface:
“This book is for everyone, but it is especially for young people, in hopes that, given all the bad, you start building. Not skyscrapers or oil rigs, but lives that make sense, that contribute to a lighter, more intelligent, more beautiful way of living on the earth, lives that are lived as far outside and beyond corporate control as possible.”
So, I wish I had a clearer story for you today about what’s next. I wish I could tell you exactly what I’m building. But you’ll have to accept a short, hopeful walk with me instead.
—
What I’ve loved about my first four weeks of not-working/unpaid-labor is the ability to make with my hands and my body. The transition from computer posture to upright and on-the-go has been grueling. One day I moved twenty large windows we were storing in the old garage to ready it for demolition, and my body screamed at me the next few days. That was the day I fell in love with my wheelbarrow.
The garden cart has also been a trusted sidekick. Carting trees from the side yard where they’ve now dug, plumbed, and concreted the new pool. Carting beehives from the front driveway to the back bee yard. Carting the new propane tank out back so I could scorch and sanitize the old hives. Moving no fewer than forty loads of scrap wood, also. Wish I had a timelapse of that relentless work.
My hands finally got around to making the extra large window bench cushion I promised my oldest for her birthday last September. It too required a different way of executing, given the constraints of material and sequence. You can’t, for example, sew a zipper with a flap without thinking it through, first. And you do need batting to make it adequately plump.
That is one of the biggest differences between this work and the hugely mental work I was doing full-time on a computer: The sheer pragmatism of it. The real consequence of time, that what you do in one moment cannot really be undone. Whatever you did before, yesterday or last night or this morning, leads you right to the very next moment.
There is something cruel in that. Unforgiving. Also stark and motivating.
It is tempting to think that this new world of mine is more real world than the one I was in before, and perhaps that is partially true for me. The way our economy categorically values some people’s time (caregivers, essential workers, teachers always at the bottom) will confound me forever. But then, online is real too. It was via social media that I was recently tagged to come collect another bee swarm. It was on the internet that I recently completed four honeybee courses through UF. It is online that I am connecting with you.
So, though I haven’t been using it all that much I don’t shun tech by any means. I am legitimately looking for the right balance.
What I am looking for next exists in the tension between “design with a purpose” and “art for art’s sake.” I want to tap into the human experience, to capture, share, connect over it, and I want my work to matter, to be valuable, to have purpose. I do crave scale, still, perhaps primarily because I think our society could use more connection with and understanding of nature.
For now, that means rooting myself in the natural world and continuing to learn as much as I can.
✍️ Writing
Tomorrow, I’ll attend my new short story critique group for the second time. I finished a story and submitted it for the group’s review. It is a suspenseful, farmhouse-thriller (?!) about a couple with an unexpected midnight visitor. It’s called “The Girls”.
Sometimes when I am not actively writing anything new, as now, I know I am instead collecting poetry fragments. Sooner or later the experiences of the last few weeks will fall into a new piece of writing.
I continue to read and collect feedback on bits of my novel from my Saturday morning writers group, and they graciously, kindly, often unbeliveably, support and encourage me even in the most embarassing throes of first-drafts.
🐝 Apiary update
The first swarm I captured is still hanging around and brood is growing! It is weird of me, I know, to think the white, wet, squirmy baby bee larvae are cute, but they are. I installed a mesh bottom board and found a couple hive beetles in the tray so I’ll try out some cider vinegar traps for those soon.
I also caught another swarm, this time all on my own (thank you Teresa for being so patient with me, and for capturing this video of me, and thank you Lisa for coaching me through it!). These bees too seem to be sticking around but it is probably too soon to tell for certain.
And I completed my four UF honeybee courses on Nutrition, Pests, Pathogens and Honey Extraction, yay me. Learned a ton.
🏡 Home
The pool has passed its steel inspection and gunite (concrete) and plumbing have been completed. Maybe this could be done by the end of May or June? On the other side of the house where we’re building mom’s addition, the old garage and half the driveway have been torn out and new footers should happen late this week. That project will take a little longer than the pool.
My brothers and cousins are doing a pushup challenge for April. I love this feeling of getting stronger! This is due to my oldest brother oldest-brothering, corralling the family into random physical challenges with jokes and peer pressure, and it brings me much joy. When I post here again it will be 150 pushups later.
I chaperoned a fieldtrip for Bb’s class to Barberville, a pioneer village in north central Florida. The part the kids seemed to like most was feeding the goats. I do sometimes think I was made for the 1800s.
I survived spring break! The highlight was canoeing to Alexander springs and a water snake slithering over Mark’s feet while swimming.
We had a wonderful family Easter meal yesterday at my cousin’s beautiful place.
My seedlings are sprouting. Lots of loofah and calendula.
—
See you again in mid-April!
On on,
cassie. xo