The Art of KCF Newsletter Turns 2!

I'm celebrating 2 years of my newsletter's launch. And because I'm me, I thought you all deserve a little treat. So, I schemed up this new way to enjoy the essay from my newsletter - a narrated version for your ears as well as the written version here for your eyes/screen reader and if all goes well, hopefully hitting your inbox a day early so you all can truly celebrate the newsletter's birthday tomorrow.

I intend to embed the podcast version for those whose email allows and will provide the link to where you can listen in the title of the essay in each newsletter going forward. If the technologies allow, you may listen in the newsletter and/or subscribe wherever pods are found and it will show up in your feed where you listen. The podcast will, for now, only include the essay in audio form. You'll still need to come back to the email version if you'd like to see the media reviews, artist offerings or my creative practice updates. Happy reading and listening... thanks for celebrating this milestone with me!

The Art of Collapse

At my previous place of employment, colleagues in the Anthropology Department offered a course called Collapse. As an avid learner I longed for a different scenario in which I could have taken the course and experienced a fulfilling and rich learning community digging deeply into the subject. As it stands, I did not get to take the course and on a quick glance at my previous place of employment’s website I was unable to find the course still being offered today so sadly I cannot report the verbatim course description for you here. What I can remember is that it was an elective course, most likely fulfilling the learning of non-anthro majors hitting on the general ed requirements, and it explored the collapse of society. I liked the idea of a course looking at the the collapse of civilizations, not because I want civilizations to fail, but rather it helped me feel hopeful about the future. We live in a future I can only imagine was rather inconceivable to people of the Roman Empire. And yet, their civilization collapsed, the empire fell, and the world kept turning.

It’s difficult for me to stay out of despair in these times. On the other hand however, I have food on my table, a large roof over my head, a view of the lake, and these things help me sleep at night if only to acknowledge that this may not be forever, but it is now, and for that I remain grateful. These reminders help keep my nervous system in check: I am currently safe. I am loved and cared for by friends and family. I love my wife, I love our home. I am mostly able to tap into my joy everyday I get to paint, or spend any time in my home studio. It’s a pretty good place to be if the world collapsed.

Do you ever think about how our heart has a finite amount of beats? I think about this a lot, maybe more than most because I’m an anxious human, but also because I have an irregular irregular heartbeat. Meaning my heartbeat is not steady it regularly skips and flutters and the skips arrive in an irregular manner. Sometimes I imagine this is good, that my heart is uniquely suited to this body. And the doctors assure me all is in good working order. When the heart flutters become too much for me I ask for a monitor. And after the insurance provider with no medical training approves my doctor’s orders I get to live with a monitor taped to my chest for three days as I diligently push the button when I feel “an event.” These events are studied and I receive the word back from the evaluators that all is fine.

Did you know that it is more likely for you to feel your heart flutter when you lay on your right side? This knowledge brought to you by a late night google session on a glowing phone in the dark. As I laid awake taking deep breaths and trying not to panic as I laid on my right side and imagined my heart doing the equivalent of an Olympic-level women’s gymnastic floor routine within my chest cavity. At nighttime the terror creeps in the most. What’s that sound?! I think as the house creaks. Or when something taps against the exterior of the walls keeping me safe from the outside. Vaimo sleeps so soundly, hardly ever awoken by the terrors of night. I like to think its because I stay vigilant, on alert, hand hovering ever so slightly brushing her back as I ensure she’s breathing.

I am most aware of my breath in times of panic and on my yoga mat. I can always tell how my mental health is by my ability to make it to my mat. The last two months I have finally made it back to a consistent practice. Though, shavasana remains a least favorite place of mine. The thumping of my heart while I lie in repose and the attempt to clear my mind is just a lot for me to handle. So I try to name “thinking” as the thoughts come, I try to “watch them go by,” I try my best to simply observe and be without judgment even as the non-yoga mat version of myself totally judges this over-thinker, this person who cannot succeed at what some call the most difficult yoga pose - lying still with a blank mind at the end of practice.

The animals who I’ve had the pleasure of observing from my mat in the six-o-clock hour have been helping me make sense of our collapse. My collapse. Last month when the lake was still frozen I thought I saw a fox crossing from across the way. As it got closer to our side of the shore, after I yelled about it to Vaimo and as she saw it yelled back up, “wow, that’s really big for a fox.” And as the figure gained clarity as it neared, we simultaneously recognized it was in fact a coyote trotting without a care in the world. It didn’t meander, it didn’t waver, it seemed purposeful in where it was heading. The confidence she had in crossing the lake was admirable. My irregular irregular heartbeat quickens anytime I go somewhere that is new to me. Sometimes, even when going somewhere I’m familar with, the feeling of not belonging, not being “allowed” will strike me. But this coyote, she belonged, without question. Even as the humans began to frantically gather the instruments to keep her away from our chicken friends, the coyote did not waver from her journey. Later Vaimo looked up that one way you can tell the tracks of a coyote as different from a similar dog’s paw print is in the way they travel. Dogs tend to travel like my irregular irregular heartbeat, weaving in and out going hither and yon, sniffing anything that comes their way. Whereas coyotes travel in a straight line.

Last week I did yoga with a beaver. I was doing my standing posture series, breathing calmly, stretching my body and my abilities when I noticed a large mass rustling in the sumac. I figured it was Pancho, our large gray cat who prowls the grounds, but as the animal continued to travel closer to being seen by my third floor perch, I realized it was a beaver. Vaimo and I recently noticed a mowed down grove of small trees that provided evidence of the nearby creature. On this morning the beaver joined me at yoga! She slithered down into the pond and did a couple of laps. And then headed back into the sumac path and worked her way back to the lake. “My my, aren’t you a busy little beaver” I muttered as I watched her. I love that Beaver is allowed to work to her heart’s content. What is rest to a beaver? Probably glorious in her den. Does Beaver start in the night when she hears a weird sound? Or does she snooze peacefully like Vaimo, safe in the dark, free in her spirit?

Here’s what I know, or rather, what I believe I know. Coyote and Beaver are likely not up at night worrying about the state of abortion access in the United States. Though to be frank, many of us have been worried about this for more than just the last week. Just as we have been worried about our transgender friends being able to access the healthcare they need. Just as we have worried and worked to protect ourselves and our friends to be able to survive a peaceful assembly protesting police violence. Just as we have about our friends being able to resist pipelines in hopes of upholding treaty rights signed into law years ago. Just as we have enter any number of social challenges that we have either gained or lost in the last four decades. It is a burden to be able to see a connecting line between anti-abortion organizing by the conservative religious right and lapse of the Voting Rights Act. It is a burden to see the thread that runs from the whittling down of Affirmative Action to school segregation to gerrymandering. It is a burden to witness, to grieve, to mourn, to have to work for some sense of freedom for us all.

I began this newsletter practice two years ago. As a way for me to process my private feelings in public. This time two years ago we were in a different yet similar place in terms of this pandemic. Some of you, dear readers have been with me since the beginning of this project. Two years ago, I shared I would commit to a year of writing and reassess. Here we are, another year has passed. I’m committing to another one. With new innovations to keep me busy and more hope in the lessons that showing up, staying present, observing and learning can bring peace in the collapse. There will be art at the end of the world. There must be, and connection, and joy, and life finding a way. I wish you the calm of the deer trio that graze the land outside our living room window these days. The confidence of Coyote. The industriousness of Beaver. The calm of a sleeping and well-rested Vaimo. The joy of birdsong. Pleasure in the ruins to fuel our fight today, and tomorrow. As long as this planet will have us.

What I’m Reading

The Sentence by Louise Erdrich 

I dutifully waited months to listen to this book via my library audio book service, so when my time came up to listen I basically dropped everything and said yes to the book. Vaimo had listened to it ages ago and I politely asked her to not share anything about the book with me because I didn’t want anything spoiled. Gratefully, I went into the book knowing as much as I did when the buzz about it hit my social media channels, it’s a ghost story, and Louise (the author) is in the book as the owner of Birchbark Books which is a bit of non-fiction reality in this fictional novel. And oh, what a novel. If you’re not a Minnesotan, and/or familiar with Minneapolis, this novel provides such a beautifully haunting representation of the 2020 summer uprisings launched in response to the police murder of George Floyd. We may also recall that this corresponded to year one of the pandemic we’re still in, which Erdrich also takes up as a major plot point. Perhaps that is the true innovation of the book that while it is a work of fiction, it pulls from so much non-fiction in its inspiration, which is in turn also mapped onto other plots of which the story is concerned. The main thread involves a haunting, so yes, this is a ghost story, though like any good ghost story more ghosts emerge along the way. I will not spoil it for you, if you have not yet read it, though if one is not moved to think about the ghosts of white settler colonialism after reading, then you need more Indigenous people and books in your life. Given much of the story takes place within Birchbark Books there are books and writing gems galore. A true treat for the avid reader and for those of us who like to play with words.

Artist Offerings

• I'm a part of a critique group facilitated by Cate White (yes, THE CATE WHITE of How Do You Paint fame). Check out the Painter Friend Group Exhibition she's hosting digitally on her page which includes some paintings of mine and the other cool folks in the last round of PF!
• ​This exhibition about Malinche - fascinating, timely, and needed!
• “Painting from an inter-dimensional place” Giselle Fernandez speaking with Yolanda González has me completely obsessed with González’s paintings
• I’ve read this poem: V’ahavta by Aurora Levins Morales every day in light of recent news of the likely overturning of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court
• Spots still available for SLP's cool, embodied writing workshop taking place through The Loft Literary Center

Creative Ritual

Submitted that huge fellowship application - cross your fingers for me please if it's my time to have the resources connected with that opportunity! Kitchen Saints is still up through May 20th at New York Mills Cultural Center where I'll be on site for the closing reception from 3-5pm. There has been so much great press about the show, looking forward to getting the saints to their new homes after it comes down!  My segment came out on the last episode of season 13 of the Emmy-award winning show PBS Postcards!! I'm grateful for the response the segment has received! My dear friend Chan won their choice of a painting for the 3rd Annual High Island Lake Opener Challenge, which ended up being the chair that is my new logo for my podcast. I've got three paintings in progress and have been diligently working daily on my canvases in paint and even started stitching a little mouse on another one that has moved beyond the paint phase. See... there will be art at the end of the world! 

Questions to ponder

How's your heartbeat? 
How have you connected to your breath lately? 
What animals or other natural cycles are you observing? 
What needs witnessing right now?

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. Please also let me know what you think about this new format, I promise I'll improve my narrations the more I work at it, stick with me!

-KCF

PS: Want to know another way you can support this creative labor? One time or recurring donations to my Ko-Fi site help keep these offerings free for all. Sincere gratitude to the six sustaining supporters whose monthly donation helps keep my spirits and my paint supply afloat! <3