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The calendar has just turned over to October. Spiders are filling the yard again. I notice the tang of autumn in the air, the cold that seeps into my toes, the mold blooming delicately across the paintings left out in the dewy yard. I feel oddly comforted by the decay, the ritual loss of letting go, giving over to nature. I see what changes, day to day, and what stays the same: the posts, the earth, the grass growing and glowing green this time of year. Abundance and decay. The new wooden pallet walls fit right in: makeshift, elegantly reclaimed, splintering yet sturdy enough for one more winter at least. Temporary, joining us while we are here. We are here. In this space, in this place and time.
This is what happened in the last month: just after hosting the project “soft opening” (which was lovely; see above), my sweet, funny, kind, musically talented, generous, hardworking, loving, and loved brother died. What does this have to do with “Matrescence: Becoming Mother Nature”? Everything, it turns out. I have been building a dwelling space, literally and metaphorically, to hold monumental grief, change, new life, and loss of the old. It is simple, but not easy. I have been trying to learn what the Earth has to teach me, in letting go of our very human need for control, and giving in to the ebbs and flows of time. It has taken me so long to get to where I am today, and I’m still not finished. And now I look out into the backyard and see it taking shape: the beams, the roof, the walls, the hands that will hold up the weeping sky coming through, and I know that it’s exactly where I am supposed to be. I am learning how to let go, how to move forward, how to be made new once again. How to hold myself gently; how to carry the ghosts of the past and present in my heart. Once I gather my strength, I will continue sculpting and documenting this project - which incidentally has already been holding these themes for me as it has grown from idea to reality over the last year. For now, I am grateful for art, family, community, cycles of nature, and for rituals of grief, mourning, rest, and resetting.
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