No. 1: On Disappointment(s)

A Tear and A Seed in My Heart Often Register the Same

Sep 22, 2022

For most of my life I’ve found magic (or magic found me) at wrong turns and in cracks in things, transforming many mishaps into adventures. Like the time my journal was stolen in Amsterdam — and the remedy of the theft turned into my business. But this year has been darker, and more and more things are feeling particularly weighed down by grimey dark-alley shadows and mysterious illness(es). The shadows hover over me when I am sleeping, sometimes startling me awake and launching me into ruminous, endless, nights. But the illness(es) doesn’t (don’t) like rest. Which is extraordinary, because neither do I. When I move and think and sweat the fog and the closing-up lessens, and an utter abundance of voices converge. As soon as I am still, the fog returns with a darkness that weighs on me physically and mentally. I sometimes feel as if I may suffocate. ⁠Alas, we are here only briefly.

I was invited to illustrate an exquisite book. For one week, (the week that would have otherwise been especially brutal as a blood test confirmed my first diagnosis,) I read and reread and scribbled with ink and pencil using one hand or another, buoyant from this invitation to be part of something outside of myself. For that week nothing else mattered. ⁠My yarn-bound-copy-center version of the manuscript was scribbled upon on every page, as if my pen could convey the long breaths, and laughter, and tears the stories evoked. I read the chapters over and over again.

As for my drawings, in one week’s time there were layers of them. I had moved my studio from the just-rebuilt-barn into our kitchen because the bones of the old barn seemed to ignite a chain of mysterious auto immune responses in me. And I was never alone. My family came in and out of this shared space, and their eyes and hearts swept over my trash-picked kitchen table, scattered with my feverish scribblings and objects found and gathered including:

baby teeth,
paper dolls with x’s for eyes,
abandoned eggs in abandoned nests,
garlic,
Memom’s nutcracker,
Søren’s paper house,
a shard of mirror Pearl and I found on a walk and thought serendipitous,

pebbles,

sticks.

My favourite, most unexpected drawing that arose felt so literal, I worried I had plagiarized the words with my lines. I texted some of the drawings to Katie, who hadn’t read the book. “I love the tear with teeth!” she said.

When I shared the drawings with the poet, she said:

“These are so magical. Especially the seed with teeth.” I was perplexed. Not plagiarized. Not even recognized. “It’s a furry tear with teeth — exactly like in the book!” I said. And she said, ”Ach, I’m sorry. Though a tear and a seed in my heart often register as the same thing.”

Do you see why this was so thrilling?

And then these words, in the subject line, force themselves through screens, and my heart crumbles like an dry piece of clay. I blink, blink through clouded eyes.

“Some disappointing news…”

The book and all the chattering objects before me quieted.

Maybe it was too much. Maybe it needed to be just pebbles and sticks. Not all of this – the teeth, the tear. I wouldn’t mind if the book never ended. If every morning I get to wake up and read another story from it. And every morning I draw another drawing. Collect another object. On a walk, I plucked bramble that bit into my thumb. Pearl pulled as I twisted it, the blood outlining the thorns’ entry. They weren’t big, the thorns.

When I told Søren and Silas, about the disappointing news, a few stuck tears – one at a time – climbed out. They could have been ten-year-old tears stuffed way back. They could have been from a year ago when my mom died. I don’t know who they belonged to, what story they were a part of, but they are here, in this story. Søren and Silas hugged me and told me there will be more. Not tears, but books. And perhaps there will be, but more is not what I was after.

I won’t be drawing the book. ⁠I was gutted. I had jumped in headfirst, all of me, swiped all else away. “That the plants are gone,” I wrote in my journal, “and the book is gone, is exhausting. I barely slept, but when I did, I had nightmares. I should keep going. I get upset with myself because I feel like a parasite — only thriving with inspiration of others. But isn’t that good, a sparkable human?” After a walk, I told myself that it was fair — that my scribbles didn’t fit with the cover that I hadn’t seen, and perhaps there was more. But still I ached.

I had most of the twenty-nine drawings spread out before me, in my makeshift kitchen studio, in front of windows full of plants and daylight, and I was wallowing. Søren, my 14-year-old, looked at the objects and my strange drawings of the objects and said, "You’re still going to finish the drawings, aren't' you?" with such certainty, it took me by surprise. The utter silence of the abrupt end, of a death, ceased. The crickets and the birds resumed their chattering. I hadn't thought of that.⁠
⁠
My wallowing subsided. ⁠

You were right, it was a seed after all.

A TEAR AND A SEED IN MY HEART OFTEN REGISTER THE SAME