Photo by Marika
As very young children, we ventured out into the world in small bites, beginning with our family—immediate to extended. We explored the neighborhood in the secure presence of our parents, made a first trip to the store, to the park, to a side-by-side playdate, and then to “school”–one of the first experiences without the touchstone of our families. As we grew, our touchstones and circles of attachment multiplied to the point where we matured into adults, hopefully with a sense of identity, purpose, and mastery.
And now, here we are in a world nearly as small as it was many, many years ago: home, neighborhood, once-a-week visit to store, a periodic “visit” at a distance of 6-plus feet with one or two friends. This period of isolation feels like an odd developmental rewinding of my experiences as a very young child. On my bad days, I dream of the freedom of movement without planning and without considering the persistent and strange new calculus of risk’s return on investment.
Have we managed to reverse human progress to become a culture whose sense of survival overshadows the very natural orientation toward curiosity and exploration?
On my good days, I remember how fortunate I am to be living in a generous and supportive community, in a home with space and garden, and without financial exigencies, as both my husband and I are retired. I realize that this rewinding brings with it opportunity to reconsider these developmental stages through the lens and perspective of an adult. I now have the time and space to follow Jean Piaget’s tenets as a mechanism of psychic survival.
“Every response, whether it be an act directed towards the outside world or an act internalized as thought, takes the form of an adaptation or, better, of a re-adaptation.”
“Play is the answer to how anything new comes about.”
“What we see changes what we know. What we know changes what we see.”
“Experience precedes understanding.”
For today’s post, I asked several artists whose medium is photography to share images taken during the pandemic. With the generous sharing of their photographs came a desire to talk about what they noticed about this extraordinary period’s output.
All spoke about a continuous “thrumming” of anxiety residing in their subconscious—something that has proven to be deeply distracting, thus making the intense demands of creative work even more challenging.
“By midday, I am done, exhausted and so my work is morning work only.” Ann Cutting.
“Working in my garden is a sustainable future; more in some ways than my current work.” Dennis Keeley.
“I find myself working in two spaces: at home or alone, on daily walks in the street recording the most common of material—shadows and sidewalks.” Doris Hausmann.
There is a possibility that we are living through a psychic winter. We are storing our energy for a time when it feels safe once again to venture outside our narrowed comfort zone.
I choose to believe there will be an equally intense outpouring of creative and energetic work waiting for fear to be replaced with relief, breath, and finally wonder.
It is now that I hold onto my fifth-grade love of the “great civilizations” of the Fertile Crescent and all other periods of stability and plenty that led to productive brilliance in the arts and sciences. This too must come again. For now, there is the challenge of sudden and enduring constraint that on our good days acts as a stimulus for creative work. The loose affinity between photographic images and Piaget’s ideas seem most assuredly to express the increasingly smaller, but perhaps deeper exploration of our lives.
We now experience our world through extreme close ups, computer screens, or at a distance of at least six feet. There is no space between this tight focus and distance.
Photo by Ann Cutting
Photo by Dennis Keeley
Photo by Ann Cutting
Schedules are elastic, allowing for open-ended time and something I like to call deep noticing. What we see changes what we know.
Photo by Doris Hausmann
Photo by Doris Hausmann
We’ve got the whole world in our hands. Our young children are playing, but often singularly, in spaces created by parents to simulate our parks and playgrounds. We adults are finding deep wonder and a form of play in the most commonplace sources.
Photo by Elisa Callow
Photo by Dennis Keeley
Alternative celebrations are the finest exemplar of Piaget’s sense of re-adaptation. My gratitude “runneth over” when humanity expresses its honoring of connection combined with safety.
Photo by Elisa Callow
To close, as promised, the big as well as the small worlds—an eclectic list of links to the big world of cultural delights courtesy of Hope Tschopik Schneider, Esther Kang, Nicolas Gerpe, and yours truly, the Urban Forager:
Picks from Hope, knitter and sage:
Modern Daily Knitting - My favorite go-to link at the moment is a knitting link--truly extraordinary, connecting me with some of the best designers, fabric artists and yarn makers in the world.
The Los Angeles Philharmonic Watch and Listen
Pick from Esther: researcher and strategist
A needed respite from chaos, the eclectic newsletter Sprung.
Picks from Nic, pianist and faculty member of the Pasadena Conservatory of Music:
Piano Spheres - This longtime series is dedicated to contemporary piano music in Los Angeles, commissioning and premiering countless new works as well as presenting a range of new and little-known pieces and composers. Concerts from previous seasons are now being streamed.
Hear Now Music Festival - Since 2011, the Hear Now festival has been dedicated to promoting composers in Los Angeles and the greater Southern California area. This year, an e-Festival was launched to continue the group's mission of promoting local composers and showcasing new works.
Pasadena Conservatory of Music - PCM has been working tirelessly to continue their students' musical education and to provide opportunities and outreach in a variety of innovative ways during the COVID lockdown. Aside from online lessons and classes, PCM now has online series such as Keep Calm and Play On, Faculty Voices, and Artists in Residence.
Picks from the Urban Forager:
Neighbor Mwï Epalle’s website - It is truly inspiring to experience a young and talented person spread her exquisite wings.
This Land - Rebecca Nagle’s fascinating and beautifully narrated podcast about the Muscogee Creek Nation’s fight to maintain sovereignty over eastern Oklahoma, as promised after The Trail of Tears.
The Ojai Virtual Music Festival - I recommend watching this glorious Festival sitting outside, over dinner, without interruption, just like we used to do.
And for you ballet fans: Misty Copeland and Roberto Bolle in Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet
Restorative adventures with food:
Photo by Ann Cutting
Masako’s beautiful home baked weekly delights are available every Saturday. Masako, baker extraordinaire, bakes bread and other exquisite treats including this August’s take on The Urban Forager’s Polenta Almond Cake.
Two “safe” shopping adventures: Highland Park Farmers’ Market For those of you newly venturing out to open air markets, this one is a good bridge to the larger markets. It is one “lane” of fresh produce vendors, carefully monitored to assure safety, and never very crowded. Cookbook Market - A small and beautifully curated collection of small farm based produce, dairy, grains, oils, and vinegars. The Highland Park location is large enough to allow three shoppers at a time. All is carefully monitored for health safety.
And further afield: Bloom Ranch of Acton —Peach season is coming and nothing feels more relaxing than a visit to the open space of a happy farm. A small store sells fresh produce, eggs, and other goodies. Call ahead for peaches, as these are some of the best you will ever taste.
Recipes for “Pods”
Marionne’s Cucumber Gazpacho, Summertime is Here: Fried Green Tomatoes with Basil Mayonnaise, and Campsite Pan Fried Layered Toast —a breakfast treat.
And three poems for our time:
Pandemania
By Daniel Halpern, Poetry Foundation, March 2013
There are fewer introductions
In plague years,
Hands held back, jocularity
No longer bellicose,
Even among men.
Breathing’s generally wary,
Labored, as they say, when
The end is at hand.
But this is the everyday intake
Of the imperceptible life force,
Willed now, slow —
Well, just cautious
In inhabited air.
As for ongoing dialogue,
No longer an exuberant plosive
To make a point,
But a new squirreling of air space,
A new sense of boundary.
Genghis Khan said the hand
Is the first thing one man gives
To another. Not in this war.
A gesture of limited distance
Now suffices, a nod,
A minor smile or a hand
Slightly raised,
Not in search of its counterpart,
Just a warning within
The acknowledgment to stand back.
Each beautiful stranger a barbarian
Breathing on the other side of the gate.
The End of Poetry
Ada Limón, Together in a Sudden Strangeness, 2020
Enough of osseous and chickadee and sunflower
and snowshoes, maple and seeds, samara and shoot, enough chiaroscuro, enough of thus and prophecy
and the stoic farmer and faith and our father and tis
of thee, enough of bosom and bud, skin and god
not forgetting and star bodies and frozen birds,
enough of the will to go on and not go on or how
a certain light does a certain thing, enough
of the kneeling and the rising and the looking
inward and the looking up, enough of the gun,
the drama, and the acquaintance’s suicide, the long-lost
letter on the dresser, enough of the longing and
the ego and the obliteration of ego, enough
of the mother and the child and the father and the child
and enough of the pointing to the world, weary
and desperate, enough of the brutal and the border,
enough of can you see me, can you hear me, enough
I am human, enough I am alone and I am desperate,
enough of the animal saving me, enough of the high
water, enough sorrow, enough of the air and its ease,
I am asking you to touch me.
Snow Day
By Billy Collins from Sailing Around the Room, 2001
Today we woke up to a revolution of snow,
its white flag waving over everything,
the landscape vanished,
not a single mouse to punctuate the blankness,
and beyond these windows
the government buildings smothered,
schools and libraries buried, the post office lost
under the noiseless drift,
the paths of trains softly blocked,
the world fallen under this falling.
In a while, I will put on some boots
and step out like someone walking in water,
and the dog will porpoise through the drifts,
and I will shake a laden branch
sending a cold shower down on us both.
But for now I am a willing prisoner in this house,
a sympathizer with the anarchic cause of snow.
I will make a pot of tea
and listen to the plastic radio on the counter,
as glad as anyone to hear the news
that the Kiddie Corner School is closed,
the Ding-Dong School, closed.
the All Aboard Children’s School, closed,
the Hi-Ho Nursery School, closed,
along with—some will be delighted to hear—
the Toadstool School, the Little School,
Little Sparrows Nursery School,
Little Stars Pre-School, Peas-and-Carrots Day School
the Tom Thumb Child Center, all closed,
and—clap your hands—the Peanuts Play School.
So this is where the children hide all day,
These are the nests where they letter and draw,
where they put on their bright miniature jackets,
all darting and climbing and sliding,
all but the few girls whispering by the fence.
And now I am listening hard
in the grandiose silence of the snow,
trying to hear what those three girls are plotting,
what riot is afoot,
which small queen is about to be brought down.
Til Next Time. Stay healthy in heart, mind, and soul.
Photo by Nori Durham