Ritual Change

Ten years ago if someone would have told me that I wouldn’t be the same person as I was then, I know I really resisted that notion. At 28 I was pretty sure I had most of my life figured out. I was going to be teaching Women’s and Gender Studies and Chicanx Studies at an institution of higher education for the rest of my days. I was going to have a healthy retirement account but I wouldn’t even want to retire from my job because I loved what I was doing so much that would be impossible to consider. I was going to be one of the quintessential professor archetypes, grey-haired with thick glasses, tweed blazer with elbow patches to save my sleeves from the constant rubbing across the library tables where I conducted archival research at the pace of my desires. I'd be the kind of professor people would whisper about because I'd been such a fixture on campus, shuffling from my office to the library and back in heels no matter my age. I would be a distinguished chair of a department one day, having published several academic texts that changed the field as we know it. Dr. Kandace Creel Falcón was going to die in their office, never truly “worked” a day in their life, because they enjoyed their work so much it was a pleasure, not work. I was on that trajectory at 28, which now a decade later feels both like yesterday and also so very far away. Who was that person who naively believed she could make a difference to institutional structures that would later steal their joy? Who was that person who loved teaching undergraduate students, someone filled with excitement at the opportunity to curate a 75 minute course session, or a sixteen-week learning journey only to become someone who was afraid to stand in-front of a class of 80 students in an intro course, trembling from anxiety? Who would this person be after nearly 33 years of the same annual cycle of learn, break, learn, summer, learn, break, learn, summer, which eventually shifted to teach, break, teach, teach summer, teach, break, teach…

I’ve been sadistically sharing with friends and acquaintances who learn of my academic journey that I am in unhealthy relationship to the academy. Following a grueling few years that detrimentally impacted my health, I made the choice to quit my academic job; in this economy. Because if I didn’t, I was certain I would be paying for that choice with my lifespan. At least now, I’m only paying for that choice with my bank account. It’s August now, and while my employment condition has been effectively changed since over a year ago now, this is the first August I’m not connected to an institution of higher learning for the first time in 20 years. It’s the first time since I was 5 that I will not be going to a school for some purpose. The craving for higher ed is most evident by my most recent life decisions, after I quit my job, I decided to go back to school full-time to finish a degree in visual arts that I had begun in the spring of 2018, while I was still teaching. I can’t imagine doing anything (other than school) for 33 years in a row, and yet, my body constantly reminds me that we have a schedule that we’ve known for our entire recognizable existence.

August is the beginning of the school year. My anxiety dreams remind me that I’m due in the classroom soon, even though I’m truly not in the classroom this year. Not as professor, and not even as student. No browsing textbooks to assign or buy, no syllabi prep even though I sincerely flirted with that idea, complete with job interviews and preliminary course prep for an adjunct position I eventually turned down this summer. My heart just isn’t there right now, and the conditions were not right. Though, I would be interested in continuing to learn. Through this process I’ve learned I am a very good student. And it’s way more fun (for me anyway) to be a student than the professor, even as I thought that was the other way around during my first undergraduate journey. Even as that was my truth for some parts of the journey. Now, I’d much rather be a student, perpetually.

My body seems to remember this cycle in ways that I’ve decided to spend time paying more attention. In July, I felt the urge toward deep rest, thinking that I would need it because my body remembered August as the time when the school year began. Even now, mid-August my heart will occasionally skip a beat that I haven’t started my syllabus preparation yet! And then on the next beat I will breath a little easier and remind myself I am not on duty. I left that life. Even as it was the one I dreamed of for so long. I have been thinking a lot of change lately, as many of us have I’d suppose. And I’ve also been thinking a lot about what it means to choose to hold on. This August, I’m wrestling with what can I hold onto from my scholarly life, and what can I let go of to make room for other things. It’s requiring me to reflect on how to recognize my deep discomfort in saying “no” to opportunities when I’m so hungry for it all. I’m trying to shift my thinking from no as a restriction or an ending to no as an opportunity to say yes to something else. For now, I’m saying yes to the version of me who has adapted to a 16-week semester schedule. I’m choosing to enroll in an independent study of myself. And, let’s be real, I’ll have two new majors and a minor that I’ll finish in four years because I’ll enroll in 21 credits of self-study every semester. Some things don’t change even though the professors often do.

What I’m Reading

The only constant is change

Apsara Engine by Bishakh Som’s graphic collection of short stories is a beautiful interweaving of dreamy watercolors, pen and ink drawings, and stories that edge on creepy. The unsettling feelings evoked by Som however are met with a reverence for imagining new worlds and relationships to each other. It’s difficult to truly describe the collection better than this review. If you’re into graphic novels and short stories, this might be the collection for you, I’ve read through it twice now, thinking about the relationship between characters in the stories, and the way the stories work together to inform larger truths about gender, sex, intimacy, and relationships. It feels like a synchronistic release for our current global health concerns, where turning to queer and new ideas of relating to each other are in more need than ever.

Change as nothing

How to do nothing: Resisting the attention economy by Jenny Odell

Why was I sleeping on this book? I started listening to this book and instantly felt connected to the author’s experience as an artist, someone deeply interested in the environment, and connected to the book in light of visioning the new life I want to lead now that August has come around and I don’t have a semester schedule to engage. Odell’s collection of essays the make up this text will encourage deep thinking on the relationship between our sense of self and our productivity. As an achiever I tend to lean toward wanting to fill my day with so much to get so much done, and as I’m learning from Odell that may be in direct contradiction to what I need for my life as an artist. In her work, I’m leaning into to a space of fiercely protecting one day of my week where I am only in my studio, instead. It’s given me permission to reframe “doing nothing” as necessary artist work. It’s helped me reframe my thinking around the value of doing nothing, and I’m grateful for new radical practices in my toolbox. I hope Odell would be proud that I’ve tried to only listen to her book (instead of multitasking) and have been listening to the text at the pace it was originally recorded. I’m learning!

What I’m Watching

Best Life by Jordan Michael Green - This fictionalized webseries centers Jordan’s life as a gay, Black, man living in LA. The series feels experimental at times, and at other times challenges typical narrative conventions. Season Two just began airing earlier this month and I wanted to highlight it here as a creative project that deserves more attention than the few views recorded on YouTube. I appreciate how the show really is a reflection of the everyday experiences of humans navigating life, and the perspective through Jordan’s view that is internally and externally processed through the span of these short episodes. Season Two is shifting toward foregrounding more explicitly the realities of race as structural concerns in addition to identitarian. Shout out to my bestie Nathan Tylutki for also playing a part in this webseries. New episodes drop on Fridays, and it’s been the best pre-pizza ritual Vaimo and I have added into our Friday routine.

Artist Offerings

• Kerry James Marshall’s new work is perfect for our times, the NYTimes thinks so too 
• Jaune Quick-to-See Smith's work is the first Native American work acquired by the National Gallery of Art for its permanent collection which is both great (finally) and terrible (why so long) at the same time
• Eternally fascinated by the circulation of images and our analysis of that circulation, this interactive art history A Picture of Change for a World in Constant Motion is truly a pleasure to dive into.
• I’m enthralled by Ryan Pfluger’s new series of interracial relationship portraits this one in particular has much to chew on. His style of portraiture is gorgeous and I love how intimacy is cultivated between himself and the subject as well as how he capture it between his subjects.
• My chapter about Feminist Studies praxis has been published in this digital book Persistence is Resistance: Celebrating 50 Years of Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies the digital book also features two paintings and my artists statement from my Interior Intimacies Series. 

Creative Ritual

The start of August has been a busy one for me, for sure. Most of it has been focused on applying for money for projects I’m interested in completing this year. I applied for an Otter Tail County Storymapping Project Grant inspired by my Kitchen Saints painting series that is informed by my deep interest in how Mexican food is a site of narrative activism. If the project is funded I will get to document the presence of Latinx foodways in our county. I’ve also applied for a more local grant for supplies and materials to inform my Kitchen Saints project. A lot of administrative time well spent, regardless of whether I receive these grants. I’ve identified and started dreaming about the larger connections for this food-focused work. In the previous newsletter I mentioned I applied to be a Passion Planner Ambassador. I have great news, I was accepted! If you’re interested in learning more about the Passion Planner and would like to order one, please use my referral code, 2020 planners are on deep discount right now. I’d be happy to answer any questions you have about the planner or other products. 

The Passion Planner is one of the ways I stay so focused on my creative goals! One thing my Passion Planner has helped me commit to is my weekly tiny tequila paintings. These small works in acrylic help me connect to the practice of painting and provide me opportunity for deep study of forms, volume, color, and texture. Besides my weekly tiny tequila painting, my creative production has been on the slower side because I recently completed my training to be an official census enumerator. I’m readjusting my August goals for myself, because the enumerators began hitting the doors in Minnesota this week. August has also been pretty full for me in terms of community projects beyond making art earlier this month I participated in an equity and human rights teach in event in Fergus Falls. There are so many opportunities for people to get involved in community work, what have you been doing? 

Questions to Ponder

What are you saying yes to right now?
How are you listening to your body in our seasons of change?
In Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower Lauren reminds us, “All that you touch you change. All that you change changes you,” how are you paying attention to change in your life?
How are you honoring your learning journeys, what else might you need to learn?

Thanks for journeying with me. I hope, as always, that you take what you need and leave the rest for someone else, or for another time. 

-KCF