#SOL17: Fascism

from my art journal

I. 

The other day I was listening to Mick Mulvaney, director of the Office of Management and Budget, rationalize Trump's budget blueprint. The blueprint represents about a third of federal spending (discretionary spending). I had already read about the budget, but I was interested in learning more. As I listened, I noticed that there's a certain swagger, hubris, and condescending attitude that Mulvaney wraps about himself when he speaks. He is not unlike many of Trump's inner circle (i.e., Bannon, Conway, Spicer) who take condescension to a higher art whenever they get in front of a camera and a mike. Given Trump's swagger this is not too surprising and in this regard, Mulvaney did not disappoint.

II. 

At a press conference, Mulvaney when asked about defunding the Public Broadcasting Corporation  and other arts-based entities, said this:

The message the president sent right now is, 'We want to defund those' for completely defensible reasons....It's a simple message by the way. I put myself in the shoes of that steel worker in Ohio, the coal miner, the coal mining family in West Virginia, the mother of two in Detroit and I'm ok, I have to go ask these folks for money and tell them where I'm going to spend it. Can I rally go to those folks, look them in the eye, say look, I want to take money from you and I want to give it to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. That is a really hard sale. And in fact something we don't think we can defend anymore.

There's irony here given the speaker of these words. Mulvaney, you might remember, is the guy who failed to pay $15,000 in payroll taxes for a household employee.  He hardly rubs elbows with the 'character types' he mentioned, let alone would know how to step into their shoes. But the poor are convenient props.

III.

It's irksome when people so distant from the folks mentioned--blue collar workers and single moms--use them to rationalize budget decisions. Unlike Mulvaney, I am a single mom. I'm a single mom who under Trump's tax plans will see an increase in my tax bill. 

Unlike Mulvaeny from South Carolina, I live in a state that pays the 6th highest total amount of taxes to the federal government ($153,917,572 in 2015). Of the top 10 states that provided $1.9 trillion of the $3.2 trillion 2015 federal budget--almost 2/3 of the funds for that budget came from states (7 out of 10) where Clinton, not Trump was the winner. Yet, interests from the majority of those voters who contribute the greatest amount to the federal government are not represented by this president or his advisors. 

IV.

Given our president's penchant for lying, I do not believe him when he says our military is depleted. How can it be depleted given the funding it receives?  For example, in FY 2015, the US had "a declared military and defense budget of $601 billion, which is more than the next 7 highest spending countries combined" (from here). Business Insider states, "The US military is unquestionably the dominant force on the planet." Doesn't seem too shabby.

What about our tax dollars that are proposed by Trump to finance his foolish southern wall? All his bravado about Mexico paying for the wall was bluster and lies. According to the New York Times, "The proposal, which includes a $2 billion down payment on Mr. Trump’s signature border wall, is one of the single largest investments in the president’s budget plan." 

V.

Apparently Mulvaney and crew have no difficulty asking the steel worker, coal mining family, and women like me to shell over hard earned money for a $54 billion increase in military spending and billions on a wall we don't need and will do nothing to correct issues regarding immigration. After that ridiculous wall is built, people wanting to stay in America illegally will do as they do now: They'll fly in and overstay their Visas.

What price are we paying for these poor decisions? Trump's proposed budget guts the EPA, foreign aid, diplomacy, community development block grant, 20 programs in Education (including feeding poor kids), specifically calls for the elimination of climate change research, and more. Every federal department except the military, Homeland Security, and Veterans Affairs will see massive deductions.

Make American great again? Hardly. What's behind this emphasis on might?

VI.

Nationalism is foundational for fascism. White nationalists currently occupying the White House, have a tendency to reference God being on their side, the need for dominant military power, and the unity of the country. In the early 1930s when the Nazis came to power--a fascist regime, Hitler promised to re-arm Germany and make it a military power. He told the people, "Providence shows no mercy to weak nations, but recognizes the right of existence-only of sound and strong nations…" 

At the inauguration in January, Trump told us, "We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement and, most importantly, we will be protected by God." 

And the God Trump references is a Christian God.  As Trump told a crowd of his followers, "...we're Christians. I'm Protestant. I'm Presbyterian..."I'm a true believer. And you're many true believers — I hope all — is everybody a true believer in this room? I think so. But Christianity is under tremendous siege" (from here).  

In February, when Trump was speaking to conservatives, he told the assembled, "We will rebuild our military...We're also put...a massive budget request for our beloved military... Nobody will dare question our military might again..." (from here). 

I wonder if the good people living in Germany imagined that such horror that accompanies fascist states could not possibly be their future? I wonder if they turned a blind eye to the systematic build up that led to genocide?

Will we turn our heads too?  Are we?

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#SOL17: Mono Print Painting

I.

On Saturday, I took a class in Mono Print Painting taught by Nathalie Kalbach & Birgit Koopsen in Manhattan. We learned the basics of mixed media mono printing by playing with a Gelli Printing plate, acrylic paint, a brayer, and some paper. Diane Ackerman said, "Play is our brain’s favorite way of learning" and I found this to be true during the workshop.  Throughout the day, I simply played with color and image as I learned new art processes.

Below are two pages of prints I made. I imagine I will use portions of these papers in collage work I later do.

 


II.

Mono Print composition by Werkman. (from here)

Then Birgit demonstrated one technique based on the work of  H.N. Werkman. To create the composition we needed to think about the layers of the work. What is foregrounded in the image we are making? What is directly behind?  What is at the back? And then we needed to create multiple copies of the work on paper, cut out the different elements, and print from the foreground to the background, using masks to conceal already printed images and reveal the portion of the composition that was being printed.

Birgit demonstrating mono print painting

Nathalie then built from that work, demonstrating how she creates a mono print painting using a single masking process. She also showed us how she can alter the print using stamps and stencils. Birgit then showed us how she alters the print using self made tools and we then tried our hand at creating our own stamps.

I love learning new ways of making art and the mono printing composition work was brand new to me. I had never used a gelli plate before and enjoyed learning how to use one.


III.

Here are two examples I composed during the workshop.

(M.A. Reilly, 2017)

(M.A. Reilly, 2017)

#SOL17: Carrying

Putting a Burden Down (M.A. Reilly, 3.15.17)

I.

Many years ago, Rob, our friend, Michael and I were in a linguistics course together.  There we were introduced to the poet, Molly Peacock, and her poem, "Putting a Burden Down."  It is a poem about what we carry and the strangeness we first feel when we release ourselves from carrying the burdens shouldered.

The poem opens:

Putting a burden down feels so empty 

you almost want to hoist it up again, 

for to carry nothing means there is no “me” 

almost.  

I couldn't know then--when love was so young and light that years later I would understand the weight of this poem.



II.

Now and then, at the oddest times, a thought will form. This is my life, my mind seems to whisper and I am startled.

Last night, I was carrying laundry from the dryer to the bedroom to fold when I thought: I don't have to carry this grief. The whole world is before of me. What do I choose?


III.

Grief breaks up.

In doing so, it reveals pieces of hope we had thought were lost.  What we carry forms us, but how we carry it--well, that is a choice.


IV.

Mary Oliver, in the poem, "Heavy" tells us:

“It’s not the weight you carry  

but how you carry it—
books, bricks, grief—
it’s all in the way
you embrace it, balance it, carry it  

when you cannot, and would not,
put it down.” 

Books, brick, grief.


V.

I did not know that at first I would need to bend to grief, pull it about me like one dashing out for a quick cigarette in a down pour gathers a rain coat quickly about, cups the match and then inhales. Then grief feels almost protective.

I did not know that as time passed, grief would alter, change. How I carried it would need to change, too.


VI.

Books, brick, grief.

It's all the same:

                         a matter of physics and,


of course,
                     the heart.



Cited  
Mary Oliver, "Heavy" from Thirst: Poems (p. 53). Beacon Press.

  

#SOL17: What is Solace?

from my art journal

I.

Solace is no resting place.

I used to think of solace as a bit of nap--a way to turn off pain by retreating from the world. In the year after Rob's death, I know that solace is more demanding, than not. And I am grateful for that.

David Whyte (2015) writes that solace "is the art of asking the beautiful question, of ourselves, of our world or of one another, in fiercely difficult and un-beautiful moments."

Solace is not a nap, but rather a necessity. It is more a necessity of questioning at moments when life is less like a river flowing and more like deep, thick sludge. What we ask helps us to climb out from the depths we have sunk.

II.

After the loss of my husband, I found myself being healed by asking aloud questions that arose through what I wrote, read, discussed, and painted.  Some were:

• How will I bear this loss? How will I bear it today? Tomorrow? Five years from now?
• How is loss a reflection of self? Is it mutable? Transforming?
• How do I get Rob back? What did his life mean? How did I live with him for decades and not see all the beauty of his life while he lived?
• Who am I without him? Where do I begin and end? How have I matured?
• What happened to my future? Is there a future?
• How will loss shape our son?
• Will I be a good enough parent on my own? Will I be enough for him? 
• Who will I lean on when our son has troubles and needs help, advice, patience?
• What is the truer nature of love? Does it endure? 
• How will I live brilliantly as Rob asked in this world where I know I live temporarily?

III.

Solace is not found by evading questions and hiding away. Solace arises alongside the hard questions we pose and ponder.  Whyte concludes that "[s]olace is the beautiful, imaginative home we make where disappointment can go to be rehabilitated."

Trying to Find Home (M.A. Reilly, 2011)

I have made
and am making
that home here on this blog
and through the paint
I splatter in journals.

I am making that home
when I talk and listen
in a circle of women,
or at dinner with family
and friends.

I am making that home
each time I step
beyond comfort
and articulate
the nature of this loss.








Cited: 
Whyte, David. (2015). Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. Many Rivers Press. Kindle Edition.  

#SOL17: Reading and Readers

Devon reading as a child.

I.

I'm reading The End of Your Life Book Club and the author, Will Schwalbe, is describing an exchange he and his mother had regarding Ian McEwan's On Chesil Beach.

He writes,

...I talked about the book's fascinating and melancholy coda, which explains what will happen to each of the two main characters. On Chesil Beach had moved me so much that I didn't want to pick up a new book for awhile" (p.15).

I know just how he feels.


II.

Sometimes when I have read a really good novel--I don't want to pick up a new book for awhile, too. Sometimes it's about the ambiguity.  I need time to think. Other times, it's simply that I am not ready to push those characters who are living in my mind--out, just yet. I don't want to chance having them leave as new characters, settings, and plots from the next book show up.

I think about this desire to not read just yet and how it contrasts with the pace of school reading. There the push to read one text after the next--like eating a steady stream of after-dinner mints, is more often what gets privileged.

And that's a shame.


III.

Where do children learn that there are some books that we savor so much even after we stop reading that we need time to cleanse our pallet before partaking again? Where do children learn that we need time for the characters, the setting, plot, and ambiguities to slip from our daily thoughts?


IV.

I'm a mom. When the Common Core was first published and I read that children would be taught to read texts via the close reading approach for 13 years, I cringed. I remember saying to Rob that if this was the definition of being a proficient reader, I'd prefer Devon not be one. We also were not interested in him being 'college-ready' as determined by a 2-hour test given across three days in May.

We wanted him to savor, reject, argue with, pause, stop, reread, and determine the course of his reading, as he does his life.  We wanted him to be a thoughtful, emotional, confused, and reactionary reader.

Reading well is more about agency, than it is about genre knowledge, plot, theme and the like.

#SOL17: A Reading Habit

Forgetful (M.A. Reilly, 2010)

...Gradually, you will learn acquaintance
With the invisible form of your departed...
                        - John O’Donohue

I. 

A woman. A new widow.
I am reading her like a movie playing slowly,
remembering as I read and nodding alongside her starts and stops.
I know her words like I know my own hands.
Veined.
Deep.
Necessary.


II.

I amassed so many books in the months following Rob's death and read them all in a gulp. I was mad reading, trying to find a shore. 
A spit of ground to stand on. 
Something to make the unfamiliar waves of widowhood more familiar. 

I was so fucking lost.


III.

Some books I best remember, like Paul Kalanithi's When Breath Becomes Air. I read this while Rob was at home dying. 
At night as my husband slept fitfully, I read. 
Most days he was mute and I read. 
Kalanithi's words spoke to me--revealed the shrouded silence of my husband as he died.


IV. 

In the months following Rob's death, I found myself trying to make Spicy Red Lentil and Tomato Curry--Elizabeth Alexander's husband's recipe that she included in her stirring memoir The Light of the World: A Memoir. It is a recounting of her young husband's sudden death and their life together. 

It is painful as it is whole. 


V.

And then there was C.S. Lewis' A Grief Observed. 
I made images with his words. I painted and sketched. 
His words were truths I knew in my bones.


VI. 

Like one reads a treasure map, I studied these books. 
I read them like a mad woman seeking a trail of necessity. 
I wanted direction, knowledge,
a map.


In those early days the world is mostly unformed.

VII.

I have no recipes to pass along here.
No wisdom either.
There are few words I know and none of them heal.

What I do have--is a list.
A list of 50 books that helped me find confidence in words once again.

Sometimes, friends it is that simple.
Reading offered a moment of grace. 

Here's the list (imperfect at that):

1. What the Living Do: Poems (Marie Howe)
2. The Afterlife (not sure of the author. I came home to find this waiting for me from a friend)
3. Daily Meditation book: Healing After Loss
4. The Cure for Sorrow: A Book of Blessings for Times of Grief (Jan Richardson)
5. The Year of Magical Thinking (Joan Didion)
6. Love and Living (Thomas Merton)
7. Hello from Heaven (Bill Guggenheim)
8. The Inner Voice of Love (Henri Nouwen)
9. World Made and Unmade (Jane Mead)
10. A Grief Observed (C.S. Lewis I read this over and over..)
11. When Husbands Die (Shirley McNally)
12. The Light of the World: A Memoir (Elizabeth Alexander)
13. Ambiguous Loss: Learning to Live with Unresolved Grief (Pauline Boss)
14. Widow to Widow (Genevieve Ginsburg)
15. The Other Side of Sadness (George Bonanno)
16. The Gene: An Intimate History (Siddgarta Mukherjee)
17. Heartbroken: Healing from the Loss (Gary Roe)
18. I'm Grieving as Fast as I Can (Linda Feinberg)
19. On Grief and Grieving (Elisabeth Kubler-Ross)
20. The Cancer Journals (Audre Lorde)
21. Mortality (Christopher Hitchens)
22. When Breath Becomes Air (Paul Kalanithi)
23. Second Firsts: Live, Laugh and Love Again (Christina Rasmussen)
24. Getting to the Other Side of Grief (Susan J. Zonnebelt-Smeenge)
25. Gabriel: A Poem (E.D. Hirsch)
26. Final Payment (Mary Gordon)
27. H is for Hawk (Helen Macdonald)
28. Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope (Anne Lamont)
29. Being Mortal (Atul Gawande)
30. Radical Remissions: Surviving Cancer Against All Odds (Kelly A. Turner)
31. Echoes of Memory (John O'Donohue)
32. Seven Choices: Finding Daylight After Loss Shatters Your World
33. New and Selected Poems, Volume I (Mary Oliver)
34. Thirst (Mary Oliver)
35. The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
36. Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words (David Whyte)
37. Death's Door: Modern Dying and the Ways We Grieve (Sandra Gilbert)
38. Patrimony (Philip Roth)
39. Dying, A Memoir (Cory Taylor)
40. Grief Cottage (Gail Godwin)
41. All at Sea (Decca Aitkenhead)
42. After (Jane Hirshfield)
43. Levels of Living (Julian Barnes)
44. Milk and Honey (Rupi Kaur)
45. Sorry for Your Troubles (Padraig O Tuama)
46. Option B:Facing Adversity, Building Resilience (Sheryl Sandberg, Adam Grant) 
47. Kayak Morning: Reflections on Love, Grief, and Small Boats (Roger Rosenblatt)
48. Grief and it's Transcendence: Memory, Identity, Creativity (Adele Tutter & Leon Wurmser)
49. The Best of Us (Joyce Maynard) 
50. Heaven's Coast: A Memoir (Mark Doty)

#SOL17: Weather Report

Winter Birds (M.A. Reilly, Ringwood, NJ 2015)

Through weak sunlight,
the riotous call of birds 
forecasts coming snow.