Word of the Week - 66

Henri Matisse making paper cut-outs.

Matisse in front of gouache-painted papers, Hôtel Régina, Nice.

Word of the Week:  INVENT

Even the most able-bodied among us has a need to adapt from time to time.  When one door closes, turn around and go the other way.  If a possibility has been exhausted, invent or discover a new option.  It is a form of mental duct tape, putting pieces together that have been rent asunder.  Making things work.

As you may already know or have just read in the photo caption link above, Henri Matisse, no longer able to paint or draw as he once had, turned to a giant pair of shears, gouache-painted papers and cut-out shapes to make art for an album called "Jazz."

From Jerry Saltz's exhibition review: "With The Cut-Outs, Matisse crosses a mystical bridge...With The Cut-Outs, all we see is the work; only process is present; process and something as close to pure beauty in all of Western art." (see article here)

Making things work, whatever the things, allows us to feel, to be, undefeated.  Having only a Plan A for any situation leaves no escape hatch.  I believe strongly that very little in our human existence has only one right answer.  We develop a vocabulary of second chances: adapt, adjust, reconsider, improvise, redefine, wing it.  Cooking offers itself as a model for such behavior.  We are greater than a mostly-bare cupboard.  We will prevail, there will be dinner and it will taste good.

It is not scientific but in my experience there is always a way.  Some way.  The molecules of the situation may have to be rearranged to create an original life form and so what?  We build new neural pathways with just this sort of problem-solving.

Grab those enormous scissors and change the shape of what it ought to be to what it CAN be.  The genius of Henri Matisse will light the way.

Angelou, Basquiat and fear

Illustration by Jean-Michel Basquiat.

There IS a difference between frighten and befuddle, though when the lights are out and the water is rising, one might be mistaken for the other.  As I shiver in our 40+ degree dawns I think of Long Islanders who are still without electricity, for whom 44 might seem almost balmy.

I want a magic charm to keep up my sleeve.  I want rows of charms, worn bandolier-style like a Girl Scout sash with amulets in place of badges.  I want pockets for my ammunition in case life breaks out in forms too unexpectedly unwelcome.

Blog writers whom I follow as consistently as I can, which could be defined at the present as not very, confront daily events that would leave me shell-shocked, immobilized.  "Don't compare pain" is advice carried from various recovery group sessions.  Still.  Most of us are given circumstances that we are expected to endure, for it is not within our power to change them.  Once the whimpering, in my case, stops, comes time for the winnowing.  How can I see this (or these) differently, what CAN I change, is there peace to be found within discouragement, certainly within multiple imperfections?

Definitions can be adjusted, the word imperfect changed to read ideal.  How much are we handed that is ideal?   Life is a make-do business.  Mostly.  Am I frightened or am I resistant?  They are not the same.  Am I capable of evolving, of becoming the flexible, adaptable creature that survives growing older with optimism and good humor?  Can I believe in myself and my work when connections to the numinous suddenly feel thin and fragile?

Certainty would be a fine thing, certainty of the good outcome,  unfailing trust in resilience and the transcending of all which is irksome or unsettling, guarantees of safety, of wisdom, of ability.  Wish for the moon, then go back and read the contract.  The word guarantee does not appear.

When I feel, because of orbiting planets or undulating chemistry, that I am flimsy and vulnerable, fear starts to wriggle in under the tent or over the transom.  I forget that I am both wave and particle, solid and gas, earth and sky.  I become foggy and forget the only thing we can count on is change.  I lose the grasp on my gifts, that I am one among the great shape shifters, the mind changers, the course adjusters.  I am most frightened when I fail to remember who I am.