Our quarter-life crisis.
[No. 25]
I CAN’T THINK OF A QUESTION, BUT I WANTED TO BE PART.
“If we walk far enough, we shall sometime come to someplace.”
L Frank Baum, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
When we began, I humbly invited each of you to ask me something you’ve never asked anyone before, publicly or otherwise.
Where are we headed?
Like a twenty-something freshly out of school and a little wobbly, we are a quarter of the way through our questions, and I feel ripe for a deep breath. I contemplate where we have been and why we started. [WE ARE PART OF THE GREATER LANDSCAPE, AND WHEN WE TEND TO OUR INNER LANDSCAPE, THE ECOSYSTEM BECOMES MORE GORGEOUS.] This is my mantra.
We will be more grown-up by the time we arrive at No. 99; nevertheless, it is mysterious. On their new album, Christine and the Queens sings,
“Is it really sweet to be this lost?
Is it really worth it?”
Image by Paolo Roversi
Likewise, the other night, I came across an essay about the American multi-media artist Dorothy Iannone, published by Hauser & Wirth. She was interested in depicting “ecstatic unity.” She married in 1958 and left a doctoral program at Stanford to follow her husband to New York. However, “Filled with a sense of the vast promise of the world,” she wrote, “marriage was in no way a substitute for one’s own work.”
She painted in stolen hours and then, while on holiday in Iceland with her husband, met a Germany-based Swiss artist named Dieter Roth. She left her marriage one week later and lived the rest of her life in Berlin.
I imagine a young boy leaving behind belongings to lighten his load after running away.
You see, we [FEEL] more than think our way home. We do not know the directions, per se. Instead, we look around. We stop at gas stations late at night. We ask. When we stay open to the ephemeral moment, we often find ourselves caught in the infinite.
[No. 26]
I WANT TO BE PART OF THIS NEW CHAPTER. OK?
“Our inability to comprehend the inner workings of the universe may actually bring us more in tune with its infinitude. The magic is not in the analyzing or the understanding. The magic lives in the wonder of what we do not know.”
Rick Rubin
To aliens 25 and 26, I must admit there is a part of me that loves the fact that you elected to be included without really having a question in hand. [YES.] Come. Walk through the forest, lost, and your question will find you. Look at your hands. Look all around you. Look at your favorite sentences in your favorite books. What words do you like? How is it possible that this is real, that we are not dreaming?
Even if nothing comes to you, come along, still.
You’re okay.
You’re on the way.
You belong.
To society, to Mother Earth!
Hold a hand and step, unknown but not alone.
Once, Dorothy Iannone was traveling with a copy of Henry Miller’s Tropic of Cancer, a book that’d been banned for questioning accepted models of sexual morality. After it was confiscated she worked with the NYCLU to not only get the book back, but to get the ban lifted. Badass. Despite working diligently through the sixties, seventies, eighties, and nineties, her first solo exhibition was in 2009.
Happiness happens accidentally in the margins, when you’re trying to answer a question. Life is in the breezes and in-betweens. “And we will agree that love can be blind…”
Maybe your story is a story about the hand you hold when you’re feeling lost. Perhaps that’s why we each leave home, in the end. To find our family. Our destiny. I fear if we never felt hungry or lonesome, we wouldn’t have ever left. And yet,
So much to see.
So much to believe.
So much to seek.
So much to breathe.
So much to be.
Can you see your Emerald City on the horizon?