That is a Really Big Leaf, the Man Said
as he passed. I looked up from where I knelt and said, Yes it is.
Truth & Dare is a monthly post that offers one Truth (a writing prompt) and one Dare (an artistic gesture in the world). You might also find: thoughts on writing, art, books and paying attention. You won’t find: a paywall or a thicket of hyperlinks taking you someplace else. Just a clean read, a cup of herbal tea poured over your frontal lobe. No noise. No distraction. Thanks for being here.
Last month my post1 was about using words as a protective coating against the crazier unmooring forces at work in the world, the jittery distraction of the internet, and the potential tumult of the election, which was at the time still coming for us. Now these weeks later, I’m contemplating ways to find the same kind of refuge in the natural world. For me, I find solace in the forest behind my parent’s place in rural Washington, or at the ocean. But there’s plenty to appreciate in my own yard in Portland, (the golden crowned sparrow + 2 Maple trees + the Peanut Board with its crew of crows and a scrubjay). I’m a fan of the artist Andy Goldsworthy and the way so much of his work over the years has required that he commit to a place and show up there regularly over time, through changing seasons, paying attention to alteration in the landscape. Even his more temporary “installations” require time and patience, whether it’s creating a shadow on the earth (lying still during a rain storm, say) or a colorful leaf sculpture.
But recently on a walk I realized that the trees were doing their own Goldsworthy’s, and they had been doing it all along, leaving their print, installing their exhibit, performing their own work in a showy bit of flair every bit as breathtaking as what the artist creates. Here they were, leaving their own canopy shadow — no art grant or audience necessary. And though this epiphany felt like an illuminated thought, it also felt familiar, like I should have been noticing it all along, (a nature epiphany to file under the Duh category). Do you ever feel like that? There must certainly be a German word for it: A sheepish epiphany? Duh-piphany?
After the election in 2016, artist Jenny Odell started making a daily pilgrimage to the rose garden in her neighborhood in Oakland. Part of it was political fall-out from the recent election and part of it was grieving the deaths of so many artists who had died in the fire at the artist warehouse, Ghost Ship. She went to the rose garden to sit and think, and sometimes to read. She noticed the birds around her and petted a gray cat that came to sit on top of the book on her lap. I recently reread the transcript from her 2017 lecture2 that would eventually become her book, How to Do Nothing.3 I like looking back over that initial talk she gave to see the images, drawings and text that would shape her thinking when she crafted a book.
Now that we’ve come back around to a political situation that resembles that of 2016, it feels essential to call on the same modes of response we used then. Part of it is to make our various art forms and allow ourselves the time and space out of doors to breathe fresh air and have fresh thoughts. A daily pilgrimage to a place can help. And in this way, we push back at what the British photographer Sean Tucker calls “evolving disorder.” He writes:
We collectively intuited, long before science gave us the language, that the universe bends toward entropy, and every act of creation on our part is an act of defiance in the face of that evolving disorder. When we pick up a paintbrush, or compose elements through our camera viewfinders, or press fingers into wet clay to sculpt form from a shapeless lump, we are bending things back toward Order and wrestling them from Chaos.
Let’s do that together, shall we? Wrestle things back from Chaos? I’m starting with a collaboration between my yard birds and me — will report back soon.
And now it’s time for Truth & Dare:
Gonna reverse it this time:
Dare: Find an art show in your neighborhood that nature is putting on for free. Can be composed of bird, water, earth, tree, blustery wind, etc. Take it in like you would any other work of art (optional: stroll around it, stroke chin, gaze up into space, maybe get arrested for loitering).
Truth: Describe the show you’re looking at. Write with as much descriptive detail as possible, and then turn it into a report that you submit, (to a friend in a postal letter, to your housemate, to this substack in the comments, to yourself in your journal). Let some days pass, and then go back to visit it again.
A Drive through Central Iowa
Last night we took a drive during the golden hour. Though the roads we traveled were absolutely straight, we drove over rolling hills and crossed winding creeks. The bare trees and corn stubble from the fallow fields caught the golden light, making what at noontime could look bleak and barren, like coming upon the Emerald City, though in this case it sparkled topaz. Because of the hills and gullies, the creeks have been allowed to travel their natural winding way. Ash, oak, walnut and poplar trees have been left alone in the gullies and along the creeks’ paths to grow tall and wide. Leafless branches stretching up and out, creating small forests of golden filigree against the deepening blue horizon.