ANOTHER WORD FOR ADVENTURE
seeking worlds within worlds
I like people who I can build worlds with. Often when I’m getting antsy, wishing I was somewhere else, reminiscing about the times when my friends and I found play or made things--when I start feeling this way, I start digging for truth.
I know it’s time to dig now because I’m not upset about how my life is set up right now but I easily start playing pretend that something is wrong. I know it’s time to dig when I catch myself staring out the window of my car or house or studio, thinking about people who aren’t here but not really thinking about them. Staring blurry eyed into a non-memory like frosted glass or distance in a flat place.
Okay so I’m getting somewhere. I don’t want to be somewhere else, I want to feel something else. I want daily magic. But instead, the April storms have been a soundtrack for a song in my head that is singing ‘I wish so many things were different.’ I wish we still talked. I wish you were near. I wish it had felt right to return to the woods. I wish I’d met them earlier. I wish I didn’t feel like I’ve said a goodbye to the best community I’ve ever known.
In the wake of these anti-gratitude days, I’m beginning to imagine the discipline of meandering back to contentment using the metaphor of (or by making literal) containers. Containers like energetic spaces that house creativity, connection, movement. Containers that, when opened, transport you without you needing to move.
I will admit, conceptualizing these containers and actually being able to reliably open one and transport myself to a realm of peaceful creativity are two very different things. But I don’t see the goal as seamless teleportation as much as a practice in focusing attention on fostering things that feel good and exciting and spark curiosity.
I don’t want to lie to you. Lately, my containers have had stuck lids and I’ve been too tired or too scared or too sad to go and get the rubber gloves. Maybe this is also a lie. I have been opening doors for myself even if I haven’t been walking through them. I call my friends and we talk about serious things and silly things. I go to my little home studio and pull out a big piece of clay and start a new project. I allow myself to make things when I don’t know what they are or what they mean. I bind a new notebook. My most trusted container. I write you this letter because I know writing is the way through. Always.
I think most often, when I have forgotten about the places I can go without going, books—or more broadly the words of others—help bring me back.
I just finished Lidia Yuknavitch’s memoir The Chronology of Water, which was great by the way. But really what I’m stuck on is this passage towards the end where she transitions from breast feeding her new baby to shakespearean literary structures to this:
“As a motif, a chiasmus is a world within a world where transformation is possible. In the green world events and actions lost their origins. Like in dreams. Time loses itself. The impossible happens as if it were ordinary. First meanings are undone and remade by second meanings.”
The word chiasmus has been stuck to me like velcro. I say it to myself without moving my tongue chiasmus chiasmus chiasmus, as if it’s a magic word. As if it could open a portal. As if it’s a place I want to go. I sculpted the letters in clay so I could look at the word in three dimensions. I want to live in this green world that I know but can’t always find.
Chiasmus is better known as a term to explain a criss crossing literary device, or a phrase that doubles back on itself. The example Lidia uses is The Chronology of Water is “love’s fire heats water, water cools not love.” In my mind’s eye, it’s a crossroad. Or a cul-de-sac? This chiasmus business is new to me so I’ve got some researching to do. But in the meantime, I’m thinking about my best friends.
I’m thinking about how lucky I feel when I’m spending time with someone and something magical happens where we both become aware that we are on an adventure. This can happen while moving through space or in complete stillness. I’m not completely sure why sometimes two people are able to create chiasmuses so easily together, but I’ve recognized that that is what I’m craving. Not the woods or french fries or a call from a friend. I’m craving that feeling of clarity I get when we manage, through words or sounds or tastes or touch, to find ourselves somewhere where the world is full of potential and oh so fucking beautifully complex and we are just like the world.
Madeleine, who I made two zines with, one of which was linked two letters ago, is someone who I find it rather easy to find a chiasmus with. When I excitedly told her about this word I found for what we like to do, we talked about how it reminded us both of “the deeper place.” The deeper place is a concept I said while making our first book when I was unknowingly talking about these magical spaces that people create together with their actions and their energies. The rules are: you cannot go alone and all people involved must be capable of and desiring finding magic together. Our first book was called “we are feeling the same understanding of the thing.” Feels like a chiasmus to me.
Today, we walked to the lake on her dinner break. “Should we dangle our legs over the edge?” she said. “I think we must.” and while we sat there we talked about receiving gifts because we’re ready to see them, or more importantly, because we were able to see them as gifts. A nice view. A sunny spot in the city on a cloudy day where a red winged black bird sang us her song over and over again. “Like running up that hill” she said. My body replayed the memory in a millisecond. The pound pounding of our feet running up the road at Ox Bow on a dark night when we felt unable to see the magic. At the top of hill, we were met with the soft jingling fo wind chimes drifting drifting across the river. We stood there listening and laughing and we hugged knowing that for even just that moment, we’d set ourselves free.
However you’d like to interpret the meaning of “a world within a world where transformation is possible,” I know I have been transformed by the presence required to go to a magical place with someone, by the acute listening that accompanies presence, by the things I’ve found myself saying in a chiasmus, by the things I’ve heard my friends say, by the truths I’ve remembered while I was open and willing and safe and jumping off a cliff.
So, I’m realizing what I want to be doing is making things with my friends, calling our plans adventures because words are powerfully suggestive, setting up challenges for us to face, knots for us to untie. I do this alone too. Solo adventures are where I have done a great deal of transforming these last few years. But I’ve gotten a taste of the power that is a chiasmus buddy and something is telling me my work right now is to feed these connections, keep them warm and safe, grow them strong and ready to venture into the sun.
*disclaimer* I definitely used the word chiasmus incorrectly numerous times in the writing of this letter.
If, while reading this, you remembered how it felt to find a world within a world with someone, I’d love to hear how you think you got there. I don’t believe we have to stumble into these places. In fact, I think much of having an art practice is practicing how to get yourself (alone and with others), into these places of play and transformation more intentionally.
A few things I think of when I think of adventuring:
-have a conversation with someone with notebooks open, ready to draw and writ e
-find a grassy field and see what happens. bring your running shoes
-notice one thing that feels alive in your presence. see if it helps you notice more magical things. if you’re feeling lost, start with the sun.
-cook something new with someone
-shake your body until something opens
-write a letter so honest you’re cringing
That’s all for this letter. Let me know how you find the green world.