A man dies.

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Rest Peacefully, George Perry Floyd, Jr.
October 14, 1973 – May 25, 2020

Dear Mr. George Floyd, 

We breathe for you.

We inhale the last of your breath that called out to Mother. The breath that they expelled from your buckled body, leaving your daughter fatherless.

We feel the hate that compresses the backs of our bruised necks. It dampens our streets with the tears and blood that spills from our bodies and the bodies of our ancestors. It has been here since the beginning, long before it arrived on slave ships and warships and fishing boats.

We choke on lifetimes of cruelty, while dodging the darts of corrupt systems and wicked empires. They will be judged—if not in this lifetime, then in the next. As promised, power will be pulled from the filthy hands of they who wring the life out of the ones who are most vulnerable.

You will no longer bear witness to the affliction that your People have been made to endure.

Brother, you are free.

So we exhale. We howl ballads of lamentation, and follow with songs of freedom. We release the breath that sustained you for forty-six years, in time to give life to a new generation. We will remember you and the others as we kneel in prayer and in protest.

::

The looting began two nights ago. Unruly opportunists chose to deface the city rather than to shield it from this very violence, their anger inflaming mayhem. A hungry mob is an angry mob. Your lady, Courtney, spoke of your love for people, particularly the ones whom had been thrown away. In your honor, she pled for an end to the havoc that ensued in response to your murder: 

You can’t fight fire with fire…

Everything just burns… 

People hate.

They’re hating… 

and he would not want that... 

He would give grace.

To the people who rouse chaos rather than organize: How do these actions protect our people? How does this activate the justice that we long for? We must learn to project our warranted anger upon the actions that steer us toward solution and toward the peace that they try to suffocate. When we watch our people suffer, it is so very difficult to control the seething rage. But there are other ways to demand justice. We can look to our brethren who march the streets together in peaceful protest. They did, so that we could. They will show us how.

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On July 1, 1917, two white policemen were killed in East St. Louis, Illinois, in a ruckus caused by marauders attacking homes of blacks in the area. The incident sparked a race riot on July 2, which ended with forty-eight killed, hundreds injured, and thousands of homes burned. The police and state militia did little to prevent the carnage, which mostly targeted African Americans. On July 28, 1917, the NAACP protested with a Silent March of 10,000 black men, women, and children down New York’s Fifth Avenue. The women and children dressed in white and the men in black suits, marched behind a row of drummers carrying banners calling for justice and equal rights. The only sound was the beat of muffled drums. Today, the Silent March is considered New York’s, and most likely America’s, first African American civil rights march. (NAACP Records, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (254.01.00)

My belovèd husband said during one of our reflective, late-night drives around the city:

Anger may be justified, but anger is not the solution.

It only leads to violence when it becomes full-blown.

The violence may soothe the fire,

but that fire is not of God.

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April 14, 1960: Demonstrators in front of the F.W. Woolworth store in New York City. The majority of the protestors were ministers, sponsored by church committees in cooperation with the Congress of Racial Equality. The protest began when black students refused to leave after being denied service at Woolworth’s segregated lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina. (New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection. Library of Congress (LC-DIG-ppmsca-08096).

There are still those who remain willfully ignorant while claiming to preach truth. To them, we ask:

How many lives is the wool over your own eyes worth?

On our streets, vexation pulsed through the arms of peaceful protesters as they pushed the words high above their heads:

I don’t have to be black to be outraged.

Stop killing us. 

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.

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[Although often attributed to Reverend Martin Luther King Jr., these words did not come directly from his lips. Rather, the quote above paraphrases a portion of a sermon that he gave on March 8, 1965 at Brown Chapel in Selma, Alabama, the day after Bloody Sunday, on which the police brutalized civil rights protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge as they marched toward Montgomery.]  

During his preaching, Reverend King uttered these words:   

A man dies

when he refuses to stand up for that which is right.

A man dies

when he refuses to stand up for justice.

A man dies

when he refuses to take a stand for that which is true.

I rode through downtown on the way to the post office this afternoon, air thickened with some feeling that stooped in the liminal space between outrage and agony and hope. I remind myself that this hope must, at some point, be proclaimed as an active hope lest it grow timid and hide behind anguish. It is a treacherous thing when despair ensnares. When hope takes on material form—in gesture, in communion, in conversation, in prayer, in art—transitioning from noun to verb, it carries out its potential authority.

Massive wooden panels border our streets with the same matter from which thousands of our Black People and their children were lynched centuries ago. And here we are, in a new era, still witnessing modern-day lynchings. These trees were made to produce life-sustaining air for all people, but a large wooden wall that is pocked with knots echoes your call. It reads:  

I can’t breathe.

We breathe for you. 

Artists stand firm on crates as they paint your name in colorful messages of hope, solidarity, and justice. BLM is sprayed thick across raw boards. These initials trouble me, though, having been reduced to only three letters—they just do not carry the gravity of the message that they intend to proclaim.  

Say the words in their entirety, like we say their names. These words hold the weight of history, of life, of death. Every one of them.

The same way OMG does not fully bear the groaning plea for these human lives.

They same way RIP does not adequately describe what we wish for you and for all the others.

 

Your death rustles momentum as we march in love for our fallen brothers and sisters. Our firm steps trample upon the refuse of hate, violence, injustice, and immorality. We cup the ashes in our hands and loosen some with every exhale, our damp cheekbones hold the dust to our faces. We wear the ashes like delicate voile until they free themselves from our skin, swept by the same wind that billows white flags suspended from a mourning sky.

That horrific scene flickered in my memory as a devastated cityscape moved sluggishly past my peripheral like some dystopian nightmare come to life. Like so many other cities, our downtown is edged with splintering quilts of plywood, concealing the windows that, at one time, welcomed in life and light. (Hold fast, Neighbors. This too shall pass. Darkness shall not prevail.)

We mourn for you. 

::

When I arrived at the post office line, there were four people ahead of me, each one toeing a yellow dash to keep us safely distanced during this pandemic. (How much more are we to handle?) The man at the window was a disabled White Marine veteran. He moaned an overwhelming grief, which continued even after the woman stepped away from the window to retrieve his mail. Because his check had been redirected back to the post office, he was unable to pay his rent on time and now feared possible eviction.

The second person in line was a Latino man whose dark brown wavy hair hung down to the bow of his broad back. His black shirt untucked from army fatigue shorts, bare heels hatched with the cracks that told of a grueling trudge, pressing heavily upon black rubber sandals. A familiar road for some of us. Stamped on his left calf was a message that I strained to make out but couldn’t, pushing against a tattoo of an inverted cross.

The third person was a large-framed Black man who was draped in all black. The period of mourning continues. He stood still and strong, shoulders square, with his headphones shielding him from the sounds of a long-lived terror, protecting his stinging ears from any utterance of rage and despair. No sound of a rasping throat, eager to gulp air into the blackened lungs that have been polluted by hate. No sound of gurgling blood. Or of wheezing. Or gasping. No sound of his brother’s wailing for mercy, or the lifeless silence that followed soon after.

The fourth person in the line-up was an elderly Black man who was dressed in an old black suit that drooped over his lean stature. His wooly hair burst from between the straps of his face mask like silvery cotton in bloom. His profile hunched over the counter, shuffling through a stack of papers pulled from his black work bag that was greying with wear. It was a Swiss brand bag with a red cross logo that gripped onto the outer pocket like crosshairs. Or like a symbol of recovery, faith, peace, and refuge.

As I stood in line behind him, he said aggressively,

I’m not in line. I’m just paying bills.

Moving in front of him would have crowded everyone, so I said to him,

I’ll just wait here.

I smiled softly at him, but it was covered by my mask. He didn’t look at me, anyway. He grumbled to himself while fingering through his paperwork. Another four minutes passed and the veteran continued lamenting. These distressing sounds layered one atop another, echoing throughout the lobby. Finally, the line moved up, so I stepped widely around him.

I don’t know why you just stood there when I told you I wasn’t in line! his tight lips snapped.

I was trying to give you more space, Sir.

He continued muttering to himself, displeased with me.

It was out of respect for YOU, SIR, I said sternly. My face and chest tightened.

He paused. 

            Oh—Oh. Well, thank you, he said, startled.   

I didn’t turn back to look at him. I was too exhausted from the frustration—his, everyone else’s, my own. He continued speaking quietly to himself, but loud enough to witness to us the disrespect that he has encountered from too many others, the plight of having been the target of racism for too long, the ones who so readily call the police on him, and how they grow more unrestrained every day. I listened. I found myself faintly nodding as he bemoaned his grievances with a hurried voice; he knew there was not enough time to reveal all of it. And as I considered the people with whom I stood in line, my heart peeled from a blistering pain for each them, and for you, Brother, and for your daughter and your loved ones, and for the sufferers in communities everywhere. There we were, lined up as if waiting for another funeral procession to begin. Your brothers dressed in black, all of us standing in this narrow space, flanked by two walls—one of marble, the other tiled with antique brass mailbox doors, ornate like columbarium vaults that preserve the ashes of these whose lives have been looted during this long-winded war.

I finally arrived at the window, snatched up my package, and darted out. But right before I reached the double doors, a still small voice told me to return to the elder. Hesitatingly, I did. I turned the corner and said quickly, before I could change my mind,

Sir, I’m not sure if you are a believing man, but everything that you are going through, everything that we all are going through…
God is bigger than all of this. We are going to make it through this together.

His ashen hairline and black mask framed his tired eyes. He said in a calming voice,

Actually, I am a believer.

Then we closed our eyes and prayed together for strength and for courage, and for justice to rise up—and quickly. We brought that boiling anger to a simmer that day at the post office—a moment of grace that Courtney said you would have hoped for, Mr. Floyd. Fittingly, the gentleman’s name was Victor.

I lay beside my husband that evening while folding my aching eyes into the pages that offer comfort beyond all understanding. These living words diffused from out of my mouth and into our ears, drowning out the sounds of the city:

If thou seeth the oppression of the poor,
and the violent perverting the judgement and the justice in a province,
Marvel not at the matter:
for he that is higher than the highest regardeth,
and there be higher than they.

– Ecclesiastes 5:8

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When I returned home, I opened my package to unloose a pile of star magnolia bones that were sent from a friend in Bloomington, Indiana. They might have held a different kind of beauty on any other day. But on this day, they lay like delicate bones—relics of things expired, once teeming with life and offering us breath. Too many bones. Your bones—no longer weary, George Floyd. In life and in death, your life, these lives, have always mattered.

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1942: A sign posted for warning. Jim Crow sign printed by Lonestar Restaurant Association, Dallas, TX. (N.D. Black History Collection, Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (024.00.00)
2020: A sign posted for protection. a message to the looters next to a message of fortitude: together we are stronger. Twelves Record Shop, Long Beach, California.

We’ve come a long way, but not far enough.  

In your memory, George Floyd, in memory of countless others
In memory of those who led the march from the beginnings
We, the mighty Peace Warriors press on.

We know we’ve got a long way to go.

It is certain, in any case, that ignorance, allied with power, is the most ferocious enemy justice can have.
- James Arthur Baldwin

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To the Black Community: In life and in death, your lives matter. The multitudes stand with you.
Holy Black Sister of Christ, 2020. By Isabella Ferch, age 15. A portrait study focusing on Christ’s love for all.
How Long, 2019. Detail showing fragmented scripture that reads: And they cried with voice, saying ‘how long’. Many men died. Was found without fault. (The rest of the piece reads: He has judged who corrupted. Woe is past. Behold, woe is past. Do not weep. Know that our brother has been set free. Those who dwell will marvel.)

Love without power is sentimental and anemic.
Power at its best is love implementing the demands of justice.
And justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.

- Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.

::

Lyrics to songs referenced:

Billy Holiday: Strange Fruit (1939)
Mahalia Jackson: Lord Don’t Move the Mountain (1958)
Bob Marley and the Wailers: Time Will Tell (1960)
Sam Cooke: A Change is Gonna Come (1964)
Abyssinians: Declaration of Rights (1969)
Marvin Gaye: What’s Going On (1971)
Bob Marley and the Wailers: Them Belly Full (But We Hungry) (1974)
Judy Mowatt: Black Woman (1980)
Barrington Levy: Oh Jah, Can’t You See (1982)
Sade: Slave Song (1999)

A reading of this letter to George Floyd

Words and Wars

a Vietnamese greenfinch extends a lifeline. blessèd be the allies.

Words rise from wars.

October 6, 1963. Fifty-six years ago to the day, Emperor Halie Selassie I stood in front of the United Nations General Assembly, and made a speech that called for a peace for his Ethiopian nation and beyond. He condemned the injustice that unfurled from a thirsty racism and rebuked the unabashed disregard for human life and the devaluation of the human spirit in all its sanctity. Inspired by his plea, Bob Marley wrote the song War, further beseeching for peace, equality, and justice for the People. Earlier that same year in April 1963, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is detained in Birmingham Jail for marching in protest. From the jail cell, he writes, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Five Aprils later, he’d give his last speech that would prelude his assassination the very next day. And nearly a century earlier, Jewish American writer and activist Emma Lazarus wrote, “Until we are all free, we are none of us free…” In 1883, she commands in the voice of our Lady Liberty, From her beacon-hand…cries she with silent lips. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Wars rise from words.

Oh, how I wish that our leaders would teach peace. They speak of a peace, but their gums drip thick with the sludge of deceit. They wage war upon the innocent. They bear false witness and then swear upon it. They are beasts that suit themselves up as man. How I wish for all of our citizens to see. But some don’t want to see. They weave their eyelashes shut, sutures tautly knotted. They fumble about the corpses that they don’t recognize as their very own. Perhaps they are afraid of seeing something they’ve never seen, becoming something they’ve never been.

There are some who believe that evil does not exist. Understandably so. Many of us would rather deny its existence than to be forced to look long and deep into its dark, clouded pupils. I need to know: What do we then call the spirit in they who satisfy in watching the sufferers anguish from under the rubbles of war?

The wars that we face fold themselves inside our nations, our communities, our households. But among the most strenuous ones are the wars that are fought within us—these internal battles that test a resilience that extends beyond our comprehension. These wars are not short-lived. They span the length of life, perhaps even extending to time thereafter. They tempt us toward the very edge and then threaten to push us over.

Where are we to look for our survival?

How do we thaw the cold that encrusts our hearts as we take part in this suffering world?

We continue loving.

We remember that this oppression breeds the power to oppose it.

And then we seize this power.

And we continue believing. But this ought not to be a blind faith. Never that. For even faith itself, in its truest form, asks to be questioned. We refer to lifetimes when we wrestled with chaos and destruction, and somehow found the means to obtain, and furthermore, retain, the peace that reverberates within, inhabiting our shifting insides during these times of crisis. We’ve seen it lived out in those whom we admire deeply, here and then—they who have survived severe loss and piercing pain, and have stood with hands punctured and bloodied, in an open field littered with broken arrows that have been smeared with persistent plagues. And none drew nigh to us. We stand fast in the midst of these seemingly hopeless wars because we know that hopelessness is a lie unto itself.

Verse revisited me. I’m not sure if I await her arrival, but when she draws near, I recognize my need. The words surged forcefully from the graphite onto the smooth of the pulp. I’ve relied deeply on these bound pages to document the details and revelations that have influenced my stories, visions, and path toward a peace that has been promised. I tinker clumsily, whittling my way into the heart of sturdy wood and sandstone veined with coarse granite. And without fail, God meets me there. I fill my murky lungs. I remember how to breathe again.

So, like Sir Marley, I glean from sources that press for the promises of peace, with a hope that I (we) may become more of it. I grip my brittle fingers onto a covenant of protection that we so desperately need to sustain life in this perilous world, praying fervently for refuge from the fowlers who feast upon the sufferers. There are many.

And furthermore, I expect it to cloak us like some thick, heavy blanket, doused with the salt water that will sanitize these lacerations that have opened and reopened.

: :

Many of the Psalms were written during times of war, lamenting suffering, rebuking those responsible for the suffering, protesting innocence, petitioning for divine assistance, anticipating collective response, and with sincere thanksgiving through it all.

After Psalm 91, a promise of protection:

from the snare of the fowler. September 2019. acrylic, charcoal, and hand embroidery on paper. 28 x 44”. A vietnamese greenfinch offers a lifeline to the refugee children.

“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself…”

Let us be reminded by Dr. King’s mighty words as we continue in this fight with a vigorous confidence.

*The word confidence derives from the Latin word confidere, which means “to have full trust” or “to have faith”.

Go forth in faith, Friends.
There are girded angels among us.

Interlude

I felt strong. I had been proactive. I was hopeful. Given severe personal circumstances, I felt bent but supported, fractured but productive, having just returned from a most encouraging springtime visit with university students who flanked the country. Together, on both coasts, we gleaned what history had left for us to examine and built bridges upon which we could meet and share our findings. This warming experience with the collective body lingered with me, and I was anxious to see how this inspiration would imprint the work once I returned to the studio.

But against my fantastic expectations, the studio pooled with an incongruous medley composed from recent in-depth conversations. On war and forgiveness. On the injustice that devastates families. On dark histories and promising futures. On the lingering residue of fear and how love and community can help rinse it away. On the horrors that we’ve witnessed and how art undeniably helps alleviate the heart from further shredding.

I felt like I had been swallowed up whole and dragged into the belly of confusion (both by life and by art; there is little difference between the two). It wasn’t that I hadn’t ideas from which to draw; neither was I sinking into a space where fear, resentment, and doubt merges. (I’ve waded tirelessly in that muddy sea times before. This wasn’t it. At least, I don’t think it was.)

I could barely contain it all, and even worse, I couldn’t find the suitable expression to purge.

I began multiple projects with great fervor, but they spoke in incomprehensible tones and tenors that steered me even deeper into uncertainty. Perhaps it was because I was still transitioning back into quiet, still processing the good and dense and constant mind and heart activity during the previous weeks in Seattle and Cambridge. Everything that I had produced in the first two weeks upon my return from fellowship was essentially part of a disparate collection of busy work. My hands were grateful to be back in the sanctuary and were satisfied with pursuing all that they could handle. But my heart was tangled and my mind muddled, and they rendered a faltering performance, demonstrated by the littering of material that covered the walls and tables, like some mad scientist’s lab, sans hypotheses of any kind.

: :

I began four 48 x 36” oil paintings, inspired by shadows cast upon the waters below me as I flew from Seattle back to Orange County—these shadows that can sometimes help us more clearly see what dwells underneath the water’s surface below the layers of sediment. I thought about how the shadows cast upon life also have a way of leading us into knowledge and wisdom…but only if we can stand steadily in the sweeping stream and be patient enough to garner what will be offered to us in due time.  

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As these first passes stood in the corner, dripping with a somber yellow ochre, an even larger painting arose, surging with too many questions about the children who have been forced onto these threatening seas and treacherous roads, pried hastily from their parents, detained, destitute, and alone amidst the multitude. I wept for the parents who continue seeking inclusion, justice, answers, and liberation for their families and for their people.

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And while considering the children, I reflected on We, the descendants.

On Thanksgiving of 2015, I lay out a mosaic of papers upon my uncle’s wooden table. I was still coasting on the excitement of having completed a portrait of Bà Ngoại that had been drawn with my fingerprints, inspired by the thumbprints stamped upon the back of her Việt Nam identification card. I was compelled to collect the fingerprints of other family members, even though I was unsure of where this might lead.

After a four-year incubation period, I reexamined these vestiges. I studied the movement of line in each individual mark, unique and graceful, squeezed neatly into a small, imperfect seed. Then I tethered them together with a lifeline.

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Fingerprints collected from three generations

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I revisited my pebble collection, satisfied by the sound of their hollow knocks as I poured them out of a pickle jar. They scraped together in my palms, the grooves of my fingerprints gripping any slight grit that hadn’t yet been smoothed down by the waters that shaped them. I painted some of them gold and wrapped others with crimson thread—the lifeline from which we draw sustenance, the blood that binds us to the strength that exists within ourselves and the pulsing spirit of our ancestors. Then, I nestled some of them into a bed of rice so that they could lay comfortably beside one another while I figured out where this all might be going.

After some time, this all began feeling like play and this play made things feel less doubtful. A found jaw bone arrived on the scene. Then a seed pod. Lined and spotted leaves and kindred feather. And more stones. Always more stones.

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After she had passed, I found this lovely fragment of earth that Belle had begun anointing. The river stone sat on her studio floor, peeking timidly from behind the foot of her work table. I painted the break. And as I coated these rough surfaces with paint that I had inherited from her collection, I squinted at the vibrancy of gold against stone against the delicate text that curved with the natural grace of her hand. And while I was at it, I painted the break in one of my found gator vertebrae, just to see what might arise from these golden stones and broken bones. (Girl—look. Still golden.)

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I reexamined the extensive collection of Bà Ngoại’s letters that I promised her would remain unread. And then, in the madness of this creative rant, I rolled them into tight little scrolls and tucked them into cocoons woven by Vietnamese silkworms, like delicate vaults for these sensitive secrets that I vowed to protect.

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Springing from this notion, I began writing letters. Lots of letters. A letter to my mother. A letter to Bà Ngoại. A letter to my husband. A letter to fear itself. Letters stacked upon letters. Letters to God that interlaced themselves into these letters. On paper. On vellum. On cotton. With ink. With paint. With graphite. Letters to be read. Letters to remain unread. I even experimented with creating my own cryptography, twisting and bending the characters from the Roman alphabet, to be sure that they remained unread.

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It began feeling like the work stemmed from one to the next, after all. Belle and I would often speak on the struggle within our breath of mediums. Through our lengthy conversations, we’d confront the chattering noise that would peek its persistent head into our studios from time to time. We’d discuss how our body of work comprises all of the material that emerges from our hands, and that whether or not we recognized it immediately, the work does indeed weave its way back into itself. We’d confirm for one another and for ourselves that we needed to trust in curiosity, process, and inspiration—that it would all coalesce into something that would engrave itself into the timeline of our Life and Art practice. God, I love that girl.

I felt like I had been drifting aimlessly through string and stone and scattered substance, so I decided to press through this suspension of any entirely recognizable progress by returning to what I knew best—drawing—the foundation upon which my art practice had been raised. Perhaps it would help me regain some confidence and lead me toward some discernible direction.

I remember sitting on the cool hardwood floor of Bà Ngoại’s bedroom when I first came across this portrait of my mother at age fourteen. Face like mine. Mine in hers. When I was younger, people used to tell me that I looked like my father. As I grew into my teen years, they began telling me that I looked like my mother, that my voice and mannerisms echoed her own. I’m not sure that I ever truly saw what they saw until I discovered this photo in one of Bà Ngoại’s albums, sandwiched between the dozen others that stood neatly in her closet above her collection of woolen blazers and áo dài.

So, I began with a small drawing of my mother.

And this led me to working on smaller, more manageable pieces.

And that’s all that I could hope for—something manageable.

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And as I buông xả and let go, my hands vigorously leaped from one piece to the next as they informed one another. They stitched themselves together in memory, method, and motif. At first, I hadn’t recognized this as a cohesive collection of works, given each one’s divergent nature. Instead, I approached this as a critical endeavor to push my way through this block* that I had been laboring through.

*I’ve heard of this thing that other creatives might define as a block, but I personally don’t feel like the word sufficiently describes the complexities of this episode. It is not the lack of inspiration, but rather an overabundance of urgent thoughts that swell anxiously as they wait to emerge. The vessel that holds them has an opening that can only pour out a few at a time. I liken it unto a sluggish seeping of inspiration that wrestles with finding the right language with which to assert itself.

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Soon, it runneth over. The wall was quilted with these fragments that began as play, but had somehow become much more with every mark.

Mother came first. Then her mother. Then her mother’s mother. Then her mother’s mother’s mother. I arrived last as daughter in the work as in lineage. I burned candles for them as I peered into the eyes of these women who gave the life that gave life. I spilled the wax onto the paper to document the time. I mourned for them, I honored them, I delivered them from past into present, and then back into past. Thirty-six of these pieces came to life, each telling the relational stories that appeared on these mixed media pages.

From a fettering suspension in the studio, the Mẹ Ơi collection was born out of a desire to break through the lull by remaining obedient to the process by simply keeping my hands active. This discomforting experience renewed my faith in the idea that these intermissions are good for us. I liken them unto a training of sorts—an effort of the body and fingers, an awakening of the different facets of our imagination, an exertion of thought, an invitation to play with a volume of materials in a vocabulary of methods, a nudging for us listen to how they might converse, an experiment with matter as an exercise of mind and will.

It’s a wonder why I don’t welcome more of this. Perhaps, it stems from a fear of not having enough time. I’ve come to recognize that these interludes offer clues toward the more serious work (whatever this means)—the work that clutches our souls and wrings out the words, the images, the knowing that was within us all along. I want to remember this so that I can refer back to it when it arises again. (Honestly, how would I even manage a continuous stream of the more serious work, anyway? One might find me coiled in a bed of ash and stone on the studio floor. These respites may help save me from myself as I undertake the dense matters that often influence my work.) I tell myself:

The time I have is short. There is no time for shallow matters.

Except that none of this is shallow. These moments of pause invite us into a place of profound depth if we agree to wander and wade through the unknown and toward a skewed horizon. It summons us into a trust with the uneven terrain that will lead us to a banquet of creative wealth and wisdom.

Herein, lies our salvation.

Sometimes, forging meaning can give you the vocabulary you need to fight for your ultimate freedom.

-Andrew Solomon

Looking Ahead

We’ve made it. We arrive wounded and weary, but we’ve completed our pilgrimage around the sun once again.

As we move through this first day of the year two-thousand and eighteen, I squint in amazement. We’ve somehow survived. We are somehow still standing. The trials that we’ve faced this past year have stretched our patience and pulled aggressively at our knotted bones, but this has ultimately elongated our reach. And now, we are standing taller and more assured than before, our fingertips extending closer to that thing upon which we’ve fixed our promise and our gaze.

Our hands may be calloused, but they’ve grown more confident in our ability to clutch firmly onto the Truth and the vigor that has incited the changes that we need to make, and the change that we are indeed becoming. We’ve scraped our knees upon the tenacity by which we live—this grit that has thrust itself under our skin as we stagger about this toilsome path. But this is the path that we have chosen because we know to the Core that we are capable, and that the reward will be much greater because Faith tells us so. Our faces are bruised from the blows that the year’s dreadful events have hurled at our eyes, but we still can feel the sun brushing her beaming warmth upon our foreheads, anointing us as we begin again.

Today, we inherit the wisdom gained from yesterday's adversity.

They thought that they could blind us, but we are seeing more clearly now. When we squint, it is not because we are afraid, but because it is the nature of our eyelids to shield us from the appalling tragedies that abound. We squint because we are deeply focused on the horizon. We squint because this Hope glistens much too brightly for our eyes to absorb all at once. And as we squint, we come that much closer to closing our eyes and approaching that necessary pause—the moment when we dim the noise, meditate on our intentions, pray for resolve and the strength to carry through with our plan for action. When we close our eyes, it would be dismissive to say that it fades to black. If we take the time to observe closely, we’ll see that the darkness that lies behind our eyelids contains an entire spectrum of color. These colors are created by the light that exists within our eyes. How utterly sublime this is. Not only do we contain this light, but we also have the ability to reflect this light that we are. 

Sometimes we need to close our eyes to see in the dark.

Life will sometimes blindfold us before sending us down paths that are dappled with stumbling blocks, but we’ll use them as stepping stones. We’ve learned that they serve us better this way. At first, we’ll teeter precariously upon the rugged boulders that pierce cold our feet. But our soles are warm with life and with purpose, and they will soften the stone beneath us, just as water does to clay that's been freshly plucked from earth. And we’ll be able to sink our toes into the footholds that have been molded by our weight and the load that we’ve carried upon our weary shoulders. Then we’ll release these burdens so that we can move ahead, sure-footed on this Journey that knows us by name.

Time is on our side. And once again, she has carried us into this moment so that we can begin anew. Time has kept her eyes and hands upon us, propelling us full circle with such grace and precision around our ever-illuminating sun. We start again. This time, with more insight, more knowledge, and more experience to guide us.

And so we meet this new cycle with great hope for the forthcoming year as we call for a more robust determination to crystalize our dreams, a more vigorous fight for a better world (the world within and the world without), an enduring courage to make wiser choices (even when they are not the easier ones to make), an openness that allows for deeper insight, and a faith that will surpass all understanding, setting into motion all that exists in the realm of possibility. We will bind the wrists of impeding falsehoods that insist on taking root whenever the world tries to convince us of our limits. We will recognize the deception. And we’ll cast aside those decaying seeds and plant new ones in the rich soil that we’ve tilled with our scathed hands. These we’ll bury in fertile plots wherein young sprouts are called forth by our benevolent Sun. We will trust in the process and know, without doubt, that they will take root because the verb for Faith is Knowing. And they (we) will multiply. 

They tried to bury us. They didn't know we were seeds. - Mexican proverb

Like those young saplings, we shall rise. Like flame.

Let’s set it afire so that we can contribute to its purification in the way that fire refines gold. Let’s set it ablaze with the passion and zeal that we have for the betterment of humankind. Let's set it aflame and offer kindling to the things that roam the earth with us. We'll watch the sparks scatter upon those that root deep toward Earth's center, and we'll stir up that fire as they yield for us the fruits that sustain Life.                                                                                                                               

May this forthcoming year, and all the days thereafter, quicken our Spirits with a flooding of hope and possibility.

May we go forth in peace that we might bring Peace to others. 

May we have the courage to claim the Abundance that awaits our arrival.   

May we lengthen our spines so that we can confidently march with our shoulders square, striding toward the land that we’ve been promised.

And so it is. 

We're Golden.

Our belovèd sister departed from us one week ago today. Seven days. That's seven times the sun arose so that we could roam this earth and see where we were headed, even though it's been hard to pull our chins from our chests to even look ahead. That's seven times the phthalo darkness fell upon us like a thick shroud under which we've wept together. So we're left to continue this long, arduous, beautiful search without her--this search through which her heart led her hands and her hands led her heart. She now knows all of the answers. 

But I still don’t. So my fingers frantically fumble for any tools nearby because that’s what they know to do when things are unclear and unknown. We are the co-creators of resolve. We are the seekers who know that the work will faithfully reveal the answers to us. And sometimes, the answer is the path itself, and the good work leads us up to resting points where we can sit quietly with our breath. But at times, the chest expands far too wide with the Whys and the Hows and it's much too immense to contain. And the words get lost in this cavernous chamber. And these eyes were not made to see in the dark all of the time. But these hands were. So I extend my arms until my fingertips scrape up against some rough, grainy, perceived boundary so that I can feel where I am again.

I sit with heavy shoulders and a weakened spine that cradles these saturated lungs as I sip the savory tears caught between my lips. The birds squawk articulately. We know they mourn with us. They unfurl our sorrows toward the firmament, but I'm not sure why. Don't they know that a grief like this won't dissolve? But I must trust those birds. They know her well. They've watched her. And they're waiting for us to start singing again. 

Clusters of words wrap hastily around loose sketches. Knotted thoughts. Entangled texts that will take order in some form, at some time, hopefully in this life. Emotions that have been given names that can't nearly encompass the density of what they truly are. Remembering the mourning doves who nested on our terrace last spring, whose fledglings realized the power in their wings and left us. I wish they would have stayed longer so that we could continue watching them grow and build. They still visit us from time to time. 

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Run free with thy Golden heart. You're Home.

Oh, Belle. I can still feel you here. Since your passing, your wings have been swinging freely from my ears. With every slight tug, they comfort me, and their weight sinks my heels a little deeper into earth wherein we so often found our balance. Or something close to balance. I waited for them to whisper verse to me. And they did. 

These wings. And the birds that they carry. The grace of these birds, their reverence for the sun, their diligence in building and rebuilding majestic sanctuaries. From season to season, putting to use the splendid gifts that they have been granted as one of nature’s most brilliant architects. We have inherited this same proficiency. So we have striven to be like them—putting in that wholehearted work to construct this thing that will shelter our loved ones, one feather, one hair, one moss-smudged twig at a time. And like the swallows and the umber doves, we build it together. This thing that quickens our hearts. These things that keep our feet soaked in optimism… because what is more optimistic than believing that something can be made from a something that does not yet exist, and believing in that thing which brings them forth into the light so that we can see them and hold onto them? These things that help us shed the detritus of life from our souls. These things that help us mourn knowingly. Our life’s work-- to gather it all up, every crumb, and to reintroduce them with our hands and our mouths in ways that bring more meaning, light, and understanding to our grieving world.

You laughed easily and loved life fully. You revered your time here, keeping your soles, and your Soul, patinated with the precious minerals you found sprouting from damp soil. You honored the breathing, heaving world around you. And the earth returned its love for you as it latched onto your heels when you’d wander into her cathedrals that have been built with confident gesture and ever unfolding limbs, continually reaching for light. We’ve learned so much from them, haven’t we?

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Peace be. Self portraits by Kelly Clark

My hands remember your studio. The puddles of silver and her brethren and sistren hue. The gnarled stones that had travelled and travailed from all over the crust of earth to find their way into your soothing palms. The humming musings stamped upon your sun-drenched walls. The tools that aligned upright like soldiers awaiting assignment. The brushes smudged with the colors that helped tell the story of Life. The unfinished paintings that sat patiently for you because they understood your needing time to catch your breath. The meticulous watercolors that bled so willingly and effortlessly for you as you rendered with swift hands.

Seeing the fluidity of your hand in those intimate paintings encouraged me to reintroduce myself to the watercolors again. It had been months, maybe even years. It’s difficult to gauge time these days. It might have always been that way for us. (“I’ll just finish up this bird’s wing” easily led to gessoing a fresh canvas because the palette we’ve mixed for that single wing would, of course, need its own canvas.) But you have a different relationship with time now. Perhaps, now, it no longer exists. And I am so very excited about that for you. 

There's so much I want to share with you. And I'll continue doing so. I promise.

Like, this word that has been wafting toward me consistently over the past week:

 

Gold. 

It’s been presenting itself in moments unexpected, and I've kept it pressed up against my sternum so that it can stand face to face with the heart to prepare for the search. I’ve purchased four gold pens and my stack of gold leaf eagerly sits on the corner of the drawing table.

Some things I've learned about gold: In its purest form, gold is dense and soft and malleable. Gold is a noble metal. It’s elemental symbol, Au, derives from the Latin word aurum, which means “shining dawn”, whose ancestor is the Proto-Indo-European*h₂é-h₂us-o-, meaning "glow".  Oh, Belle, you are the shining dawn. Your light still glows in the things, in the moments, and in the people that you've left behind. We will keep these dense embers aflame in our bruised, softened hearts.

Oh, how I wish you would have stayed longer.

You came to me fleetingly in a dream last night, only long enough to declare your new name. Phi. (spelled Phi, rhymes with free.)
You wrote it down for me on a piece of paper and said it out loud so that I was sure to understand.

Phi.

ϕ.

The Golden Ratio. 

(Spelled Phi, rhymes with fly. And sigh. And why. And cry.)

Phi. The Fibonacci sequence. This proportion that appears in countless patterns in nature, reminding us that in her elegant imperfections, she is indeed perfect. This sequence that has been believed by artists to attend to that which is aesthetically pleasing. Some know it to be universal law. You will ever be a part of this ephemeral sequence that we here must still tread through.

Meet us in our dreams, Belle. Tell us the secrets of eternity. Tell us about these things you now know.

Hand in hand, we shall come forth as gold.

One more thing...

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cyclical nature by kelly clark

An excerpt from a poem by Mary Mackey:

love comes from years
of breathing
skin to skin
tangled in each other’s dreams
until each night
weaves another thread
in the same web
of blood and sleep

and I have only
passed through you quickly
like light
and you have only
surrounded me suddenly
like flame

I love you. 

We love you.

Kelly Nichole Tripp Clark

Born on the morn of April 11, 1980
Passed on the morn of July 14, 2017

Kelly is survived by her warrior husband, Brad, who adored her deeply, her nurturing parents, Kathy and Jay, who fueled her curiosity for life and for all things living, her two beautiful sisters, Aubrey and Laurel, whom she loved dearly, her two pups, Sancho and Dagny, whose paws are just as grimy as were her own, and her tribe of warmhearted visionaries who walked alongside her on this colorful journey.  

oh, blessèd life.

Leaving Few Stones Unturned

The weight of a stone holds a profound beauty within itself. Some of the stones I've collected have been formed by the steady pushing and pulling of ocean waters over hundreds of years, tumbling with the everchanging tide and storm. And yet their beauty feels effortless. I find such joy in collaborating with Earth. For me, it has been a way of combining our histories, an acknowledgment that we are made of the same stuff and that we have seen similar miracles and wars and changes and expansion. 

Will you do something with me? The next time a stone catches your eye, whether on ocean shores, or in dense woods, or on the sidewalk of a city street, pick it up. Take some time to smooth your fingers over it as if it carries the brail that will tell you its secrets (it might). Then hold it in the palm of your hand. Close your eyes for a moment, and just feel the weight of it sink deep into your palm as you absorb its history so that it can become a part of you. 

Here is the Truth: This is me, striving to find beauty in the burdens that Life requires us to carry. Selah. 

 THESE BEAUTIES ARE PART OF MY CURRENT SHOW, LIFELINE, WHICH SPEAKS ON THIS WEIGHT THAT CAN BE LIFTED IN TIME, EVEN IF PARTIALLY, THROUGH FAITH, WORK, AND TOGETHERNESS.

Surrounded by History

Last evening, I decided to make a video to talk myself through my thought process before the handcrafting begins. I talk about a few of my family members and the artifacts that I've inherited from them. It was extremely helpful for me to hear my thoughts out loud. Thank you for being on the other end of this conversation!

Fighting Wars | Knighting Warriors

Homeless Nepalese children (Photo: Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)

We live in a world where families are displaced, homeless children stand on corners, lifeless ones are washed ashore, and a dark history repeats itself. A world where "home" is a word that cannot be defined for many, although they give their lives in trying to do so. Where the innocent are assaulted, persecuted, and killed because all men and women are still not seen as equal. Where the caring of our mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, brothers and sisters is seen as a burden upon the state, fathers are absent, and single mothers wish that they could give more to their children. Where slavery, murder, and rape exists, and the evil ones who defile these victims are acquitted. 

We live in a world where the value of life is compromised by the love of money and power. Where those who hold high seats ignore their oath to serve the People, and instead, choose to serve themselves. Where values are willingly replaced with fame, where children are continuously exposed to the messages and images that impair their self-love and sow the seeds of materialism, and where there is a void that is so great, that death is sometimes perceived as a better option than Life. We live in a world where hate spreads like cancer, and cancer just won’t die. In a world where this hate continues fighting, even though it knows that Love will win. 

During a protest near the CVS pharmacy that was set on fire during rioting after the funeral of Freddie Gray, on April 28, 2015 in Baltimore, Maryland. (Photo: Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

My heart can hardly bear it. For my own good and sanity, I continue searching for beauty and reason, wherever they may lie, squinting to blur out the darkness when my eyes have had enough. As difficult as this life is, as often as it plays the antagonist, as unfair as it may seem at times, it is still the greatest gift of all. I did not earn this life; I did not earn myself to be born. This life was given to me, and there is still beauty here. Amidst the anguish and despair, beauty indeed lives here still. With us. And inside of us. And all this suffering – Oh, this suffering – it, too, has a way of revealing just how much love lives within us –  this heavy-on-the-bones, heart-scarring, chest-swelling, fist-clenching love that we feel for others when we witness their immense distress because we have known and we can remember for ourselves. 

With these dark events that cloud our reality, I ask myself, How appropriate is it for me to claim my own time to make art? How appropriate is it for me to allow myself to be swept up in the whirlwind of my “struggle” in resolving a painting, the “stress” in preparing for a show? How appropriate is it for me to be funneled into the rush of the NBA Championships? I’ve come to the conclusion that it is not only appropriate, but even necessary, because these kinds of activities keep the idea of potential in our eye line. In taking part, we keep this optimism alive, in the Spirit of humanity and in all that is possible. 

Making Art.

Creativity is the practice of seeing the potential in something, in anything. It is believing that there is a way to make things better, and taking part in the process of making it happen. It’s the outward working of an inward faith toward a chance that there is something greater taking shape, and trusting that this Faith, as verb and as noun, will endure. It’s the voice that reminds us, “There is something important happening here, and I have not walked through this fire in vain.” It’s making beauty, and putting more of it out there in a world whose darkness can shroud the abundant beauty that is here for us to see, and feel, to absorb, and to remember. As our dear friend Brother Jesus Hernandez said: 

The artist has the imagination to create a better world

and then to escape to it.

And might I add, “… and invite others to escape with them.” Creativity is the proof that potential and optimism are alive and well. And this is surely something this world needs more of, wouldn't you agree?

Reaching higher and back to roots with faith in potential

Making Threes. 

(How about, like, 11 of them?)

This is equally as important. At a time when gentrification continues displacing communities, families, and artists throughout the Bay Area and beyond, the heart of the Golden State Warriors activates a spirit within us that reminds us that we are capable, resilient, and that we can find our strength in our fight, and in our numbers.

[Note: The Warriors took home the 2015 Championship, but before then, it hadn’t been since the spring of 1975, when they swept Washington in the Finals. Meanwhile, on the other side of the world, Vietnamese families are swept out to sea. They fight for survival, fleeing from a communist Vietnam, with the hope of drifting toward freedom.]

1975: LEFT: GOLDEN STATE WARRIORS VS. THE WASHINGTON BULLETS IN THE NBA FINALS (VINCENT MAGGIORA, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE)
1975: RIGHT: A CARGO NET LIFTS REFUGEES FROM A BARGE ONTO THE SS PIONEER CONTENDER FOR EVACUATION FROM THE FALLEN CITY OF Đà Nẵng, VIETNAM. it took EIGHT HOURS TO LOAD SOME 6,000 REFUGEES ABOARD THE SHIP. (AP/PETER O'LOUGHLIN)

The Golden State Warriors are among the remarkable community-oriented, socially-active leaders of our San Francisco Bay Area, and have been put in a position to elevate the community at large. Some of us watched as they fought back to win from a 23-point first-half deficit. We watched when our MVP returned from a knee injury, only to grow hungrier, and score 40 points on his first game back. We witnessed their coronation as the Western Conference Champions, marching them into the Finals by the sweat of their brows and the fire in their bellies.

But we also watched with heavy hearts while some of the Warriors’ confidence wavered, causing hesitation and panic which resulted in a several losses. I sat on the edge of the couch, with my hand on a swollen heart, quietly repeating to Steph and his teammates:

Just remember who you are. 

It is just that simple. But not so simple after all. 

I thought, if they could just remember who they are, they could find their rhythm again. That’s the thing about excellence. It is so grand, that it sometimes has a way of taking on this role of being superhuman, so that mistakes somehow become intolerable to us. But this divine excellence is also contained in part within humanity, and we are all but perfect. If we could just brush off the dirt from our glistening shoulders with our scathed palms, and remember who we are at the core, revisit that which we know to do, recount the inherent gifts that we’ve been given, and recall this Will that will set it all in motion to take us where we hope to go, this is all we need to know.

Just remember who you are. 

It’s the coming together as a team to defend something worth defending. It’s the grasping onto potential and claiming it as our own. It’s the way these Warriors light up that court with the fire that spreads through the Spirit of the People, and with the confidence that a long-awaited change is coming. It’s witnessing their fight, and fighting alongside them, whether on or off the court. This stirs up that Warrior fight within us, transcending the arena and weaves its way into our lives, reminding us that we can and that we will. We all have been downtrodden by naysayers (both the haters who surround us, and those pesky discouraging voices from within), who will strive to fuel that self-doubt, and continue to poke and prod and test our Will. And this is when we learn what we are made of. And whether we are made of mud, Klay, or iron, there is still space to grow into more. There is a potential to be realized here.  

Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson now reign as the cornerstones of the Golden State Warriors, but not long ago, before splashing into the league, their potential was questioned by many, and neither of them were highly touted. Could this be where the fight is born? When we are compelled to prove to ourselves that we are good enough, and that we deserve more? When we also feel the need to make a statement to both those who unjustifiably crown themselves as judges over us, and to the ones who have marched faithfully with us all along? 

The highly inspirational triumphant tales of the true underdog ignite a flare within us, and this is enough to give me permission to be enraptured by the NBA Finals. The Warriors lead this fight on their battlegrounds in our belovèd Oakland, California, who stands firm. Even as an underdog in her own right, she fights beside her bretheren and sistren cities all across the globe who have grown fatigued from the racism, violence, hatred, and poverty that they face in their neighborhoods. By bearing witness to the success that has come from these whose capabilities were once heavily debated, we are reminded that there exists an opportunity to fight the worthy fight. 

The world can be a wearisome place, but if we can just learn to believe in this significant fight wholeheartedly, through hope and habit, we will see that here in the center of this tempest lives the potential, possibility, and strength that has been waiting for this moment to burst forth.

Making Promises from Potential.

There is a beauty in the way that talent and will has opened that window for so many, even if just by a sliver, to offer a new space in which we can use these gifts to begin building something new, necessary, and beautiful. This will that finds fulfillment in the work itself, and scans the horizon for the open meandering roads that it may lead to.

There are stories of exceptional young athletes, and many of their stories, though few heard, have pressed heavily upon us, leaving deep imprints that only an unyielding strength can leave. Some of these athletes came from a destitute life of bitter struggle. For some, their sense of home is whittled down to a place to sleep, after the chaos of day has simmered, and the coming of night often does not guarantee quiet, but instead, brings about another fight for survival. Some of them help raise their younger siblings out of the motels that they call home. Some have mothers who wander the streets as addicts and prostitutes, broken women who are unable to cope with the reality that the fathers of their children have been sentenced to a life in prison (some guilty, and some innocent, made guilty by a flawed system). And yet, these young ones continue fighting because faith tells them that life can be better. These are among our true Warriors - the youth who have sprouted hastily into men and women because Life needed them to become the strong oaks that they are. 

Many of these children are children of color, having been driven from home to home, heaving from the cold, contrary winds, from abuse, and from a broken system that cannot adequately assist them. Because they suffer from such strenuous home lives, most of them have learning disabilities and have a difficult time focusing, which results in their significant troubles in school. (Why would math homework even be a priority, when Sister is hungry and crying because Mother has gone missing again?) Although some possess the utmost inherent athletic ability and character, they grapple with the handsome challenge of proving to universities nationwide that they deserve a higher education and a spot on the roster. Out of this trial, we witness a different kind of fight being born - an extension of the fight they've come to know so well ...

This resplendent, astounding fight.

 This pressure that refines them into the diamonds they were born to be. 

*The word diamond derives from the ancient Greek ἀδάμας – adámas, which means “unbreakable”. 

Yes. You were and are.

For most of their lives, these youth have fought for survival, sustenance, and safety, and now they have stepped up and through a threshold that offers them an education, a chance to live life on their own accord, and some space to build a better life for themselves and for their loved ones. We’ve witnessed their confidence thicken, ushering them into manhood, as they take the necessary steps to reinforce the tenacity that had them dominating the field to begin with.

Would these individuals have fought with the same persistence and heart had they not endured the kinds of trials they've faced? My guess is no.  

These struggles, although hardly welcomed, are necessary in building the character that tenderizes the Compassion within us, this Love that can sometimes be hardened by the horrifying condition of the world. These overbearing internal, external, socio-political, economical, physical, emotional wars are all too real, and it is this need to create that helps align our spines to keep us moving forward with hope. 

Creativity has a way of bringing the community together with a shared agenda, with our eyes fixed on a simple and important goal – to triumph in materializing our ideas and desires, one iota at a time, into our reality. It offers another solution, another way of thinking, another path, another life to those whose Will will take them there. Its reason is long-lasting. Its hopes are to bring those intangible dreams to matter and to enlighten a dark world with a beauty and intelligence that lies within us.

Whether it be creating a greater sense of self-worth or community and team-mentality, creating a home, creating a family, creating a future, creating more healing and progression, creating art, or creating Peace, this act of creating is our promise to being proactive in crystalizing this optimism into a substance that adds beauty, worth, and fulfillment to this life, even if to just make it more bearable.

Ride on, Warriors. 

We are nearly there. 

To all the Warriors out there: Remember who you are.

This Sacred Gift

As the year comes to a quiet close, I sit across from my twelve-year-old niece, Trinhity, as she patiently works on her study of a kingfisher. This memory is one of many that I will store in my mind and heart, this moment when her fervor for art blossoms so much so, in fact, that she walked out of her bedroom at 7:00 am this morning with drawing book in hand, and drew for about an hour before she realized she hadn’t brushed her teeth. (No judgement, here, young lady, I empathize completely.) It takes me back to when I received my first art set that came in a heavy plastic ultramarine blue suitcase, complete with color and graphite pencils, a glossy paperback “how to draw” book, and a watercolor set. That suitcase made me feel like a legitimate artist, even at nine years old. In my best handwriting, I wrote an essay that I titled “I want to be an artist when I grow up”, mounted it on cardboard, and kept it in that suitcase.  

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I am thankful for these things and many things. But, recently, I realized that there is one treasured thing that I have in my life, a thing for which I realized I may have never given proper thanks. This precious thing that can be shared and inherited. This glorious thing that enables us to relive our joys. This extraordinary thing that allows us to spend precious time with those we love, even after they have passed on. This significant thing that imparts wisdom upon us as we refer to the lessons we’ve previously learned. This special gift that we often take for granted.

This gift of Memory.

I was recently invited by the Alzheimer's Orange County to take part in a collaborative project, for which I was to choose one painting that was made by an artist in the Memories in the Making class, a program that provides persons with Alzheimer’s disease an opportunity to express themselves through art. I was inspired by a painting called Only There by Dr. Justin Call, a Salt Lake City native who grew up marveling at the beauty of his Wasatch Mountains as he would ski the slopes, later finding his calling in pediatrics, child psychiatry and psychoanalysis.  My task was to create a piece of my own in response to his painting.

I was drawn into its stillness and its movement - the earth above, strong and still, beneath the surface, a fluid and ever changing substance, much like this substance that we call Life. I thought about how the painting might describe what Dr. Call experiences in his day to day life - the ebb and flow of memory, the divergence and convergence of moments passed, the sparks of a familiar feeling and the fading of something once known.

I spent some time with Dr. Call at his residence. And as we got to know each other, I wondered how much of it he would remember. Born in 1923, he witnessed a time when talking movies, bubble gum, sliced bread, and M&Ms were invented. The Great Gatsby was published and Babe Ruth set the home-run record. T-shirts, bikinis, and ballpoint pens were introduced. He lived through the Great Depression and WWII, and a time when Ann Frank went into hiding, the Golden Gate Bridge opened, Social Security was enacted in the United States, and Superman first appeared in comic books. And I wondered how many of these moments he remembered.

We discussed our common desire and need to understand human emotion and behavior, and the ways in which these feelings can be harbored and expressed. For him, his early psychiatry practice allowed him to better understand these emotions, and later in his life, he would begin making sense of these feelings through painting. As I studied his piece, I wondered about his very specific marks, where they all came from, where their roots led, and which of the windows in his mind he looked through as he painted them. These marks felt like they were very carefully considered, even if by the marks themselves, that each knew its purpose, existing to serve as a foundation for the mental image of Dr. Call’s beloved Wasatch Mountains. A confident smudge of red-orange, a strong stroke of deep blue, a gentle fleck of radiant red, all surrounding a mountain peak that stands proudly among the glorious landscape that has rooted deeply and lives on in his memory.

My life's work touches deeply on spiritual understanding, family history, and inherited memory, and I could not imagine what my life would be like without this gift, without the ability to reference moments passed and lessons learned, faces known and connections made, curiosities fulfilled and things discovered. So as one cycle ends and another begins, I take this time to honor all the memories that I've collected in my years, to give thanks for them, and to treasure them as the sacred gifts that I've been given. 

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Only There by Dr. Justin Call, watercolor on paper

** May this blesséd new year bring us an abundance of loving, soul-soaking memories and cherished moments to cradle in our palms and press dear to our hearts. Moments that we can reach back into, and smooth over our skin to relive its enduring warmth. This is my wish for this upcoming year and evermore. God bless us, every one. **

Always with Love, Trinh

Hôm Nay, Hồn Này (Today, These Souls) have made home right where we are.

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SAIGON, 1975 – 

Grandmother and Grandfather rushed the children out of the house and out onto the docks, with the hope that one of these boats could take them away from the bombs that ravaged their neighborhood. After arriving at the docks, Mother and her cousin were sent quickly back to the house to pick up more food, but as their motorbike turned the corner, a tank rolled onto their street from the other end. The trip back to the docks was a blur. As the family boarded the boat, their only plan was to live. Uncle Hưng was also sent back with another cousin, but they took a different route. They never made it on the boat.

[ This is a photo of my uncle, Phan Quốc Hưng. Born July 25, 1956. Missing 1975. I found the photo along with a wealth of old documents in my grandfather's suitcase which my grandmother kept under her bed. I did not discover this suitcase until after she had passed. ]

Meanwhile, my father was miles away from shore, serving in the Republic of Vietnam’s Navy. When his ship caught news of the Fall of Saigon, they rerouted, and he would never again step foot onto the soil of his homeland, for in moments there would no longer be a South Vietnam. A son was forced to leave his parents and his ten brothers and sisters behind. He was the first of his clan to arrive in the Americas.

After settling in refugee camps in the Philippines and then in Guam, my parents’ journey brought them to Pennsylvania where they met. In 1978, I was born. In this sense, I was born out of the war. Perhaps not to the degree as those who were born in the refugee and labor camps, but through some divine intersection of life’s details, I was born.  But unlike these, this is a war that I do not know except through the answers found from the curiosities of my own heart and the willingness of those who will relive the time to help me understand. The same war that stripped my parents of their freedoms was the same war that gave me mine. It was this war that generously afforded me the opportunity to live my dream openly, and to freely find salvation in the pursuit of truth. These are one in the same.

This 30th day of April marks the 40th year anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the birthplace of my mother and my father. It is a day when our country is remembered and Her stories are honored and shared. And though tears stream in mourning for our fallen loved ones (this, of course, includes our beloved South Vietnam), they also flow with immense gratitude for those who fought for our lives, for these lives that were spared, and for this life that we have been given to tell Her story. History. This story. 

Hôm Nay (Today)

Now here we are, having made our home right off of Interstate 405 in Orange County, home to the largest Vietnamese population outside of Vietnam. Bà Ngoại remembers the boat from which they witnessed their country dissolve into the horizon of the waters that saved them - this little boat that drifted aimlessly in the vastness of ocean for days before being rescued by the United States Navy. It was marked “405”.  We have come full circle.

Hồn Này (These Souls)

I have been handed the humbling, daunting, and and awe-inspiring task to peruse through the rich information provided by both the Vietnamese American Oral History Project and the Orange County & Southeast Asian Archive of the University of California, Irvine, and recount these stories. My duty is to find what inspires me and make work that will help bring a visual art component to these important textual and textural stories. (Good Lord Almighty, is this real? Is this my life? Is this the task that I have really been given? *sigh*) Our team is currently developing a show for the community called VIETNAMESE FOCUS: Generations of Stories.

For this show, I've begun working on a project which I am calling Quiet. It is a piece which intends to bid peace, but the process has been grievous and burdensome, and a peaceful practice it has not been (not at this time, at least). It has called for the quiet space in which I’ve worked, in reverence of these lives lost. The quiet that came before the storm that funneled so tightly around our people. The quiet in which they walked, treading on dead leaves and the detritus of life around them. The voices that were made to quiet in the jungles while hiding from enemy forces. The quiet in which they prayed to their God and to their Ancestors as they pled for their lives and the lives of those they loved. This quiet that heavily drapes over us when we gather to mourn the departed. The quiet in which prayer flags billow. This quiet in which I write this because there are some things that at this moment, the letters can express, and a painting cannot, things for which, in this moment, the written word gives time, but the spoken word might not.

[Quiet (in progress), ink on voile, 9 x 144" each sash. One of the funerary rituals in Vietnamese tradition is for the family members to wear white sashes upon their heads to signify their relationship to the departed. Here, using the typewriter that I’ve inherited from my youngest auntie, I retype letters written by family members upon each of their individual mourning bands.]

This piece is composed of the faces of those who fell alongside their Sài Gòn - those whose ashes have been scattered among the ruins of war and still mist the air we breathe today. As I work, I peer into their eyes with grief in knowing that these eyes did not live to see freedom come. These are not just stories, or photos, or units contributing to the more than 2,000,000 lives that were taken by the monstrosities of this war, or the hundreds of thousands who went missing and whose stories were never given a definite ending. They were real people -- individuals who had dreams, who loved and were (are) loved, who weren’t given more time to contribute more to this life.

This is the burden of empathy and compassion, the weight of a love for those whom I’ve never met, whose suffering I can never fathom. This is for the ones who loved their country and died in the struggle toward the freedom that I’ve known for my entire life. Their deaths are keen reminders that Life and Freedom are fragile, and perhaps a reminder to live this life to its fullest capacity because this is the precious gift that we have been given.

A fist extended strong and high to those who have survived the struggle, to those who are in the midst of the struggle. You are not alone. To those who have yet to overcome the struggle, we shall overcome. To those who have died in the struggle, rest ye in peace.

*Listen here to the interview that I had with 89.1 KPCC, a series produced to commemorate the 40th year anniversary of the Fall.
  Read about our exhibit here in OC Weekly and also in the OC Register.

Quiet, 2015, Ink on voile. Artist statement.

A Good Life Was Lived

My grandmother visited me in a dream last night, less than one week after her passing. As I struggled to balance a stack of newspapers in my arms, she walked out to meet me on the front porch of the house in which my mother was raised. I dropped the papers, and wrapped my arms around her waist, lifting her. She laughed. I thought, "She lives!", and I felt bad for having gathered her obituaries because there she was, living. And that's exactly it. She continues living. Thank you for the reminder, Bà Ngoại. Looking forward to our next visit. Shall we meet in the garden? Your hoa mai is blooming one blossom at a time, and your soursop is ripening quite nicely. 

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Cecilia Trần Thị Kim Trân
November 13, 1927 - November 3, 2014

To our beloved Great-Grandmother, Bà Ngoại, Mother, Sister, Trần Thị Kim Trân:

The name Trân reminds us of Trân Châu, which means “precious pearl”. And that is exactly what you are to us. Precious. And we are so blessed to have had you in our lives and to have witnessed so much of life’s beauty while standing beside you. Your name, Kim, means "gold". You have been the rock of our family, the corner stone, and your love, pure and golden.

Your life began in Kiến An during the time when fall was transitioning into winter, on the thirteenth day of November, 1927. Born to Ông Bà Trần Văn Hóa, you inherited the loving and compassionate heart of your faithful mother and father. You followed in their footsteps, and beginning from a very young age, you had already developed such a great love for humanity. When you were a little girl growing up in Kiến An, your parents built a children’s shelter in the back yard, and named it “Nhà Thiên Thần”, or “The House of Angels”. You cared for those babies with such affection and wonder. And here we are today, gathering as fall is once again transitioning into winter, after the first rains of the season have fallen. We come full circle as you return to the House of Angels that God has prepared for you.

You are the sister of seven brothers and four sisters, a family of twelve literary, musical, creative-thinking, intellectual, driven, and devout individuals. You were raised in a God-revering household, and with four brothers who have served in the priesthood, and two sisters who have devoted their lives to God’s work as sisters of the Church. You were one seed of God’s very special crop, and what a bountiful life you have harvested.

You were blessed with a devoted marriage to your loving husband, Phan Văn Học, a man who loved his people, loved his children, and adored you. What a gift it is, that the time has finally come for you to be reunited with him and your third son. From this devoted love, sprang your ten beautiful children – your five beloved sons and five beautiful daughters, twelve grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren, all of whom have taken on your likeness in our own unique ways. We know how much you loved all of us, as you would remind us how you kept each one of us in constant prayer.

You will live on through us. We will preserve these precious memories, and try our best to live life with the courage, the vigor, the faith, the gentleness, the kindness, the patience, and the love with which you had lived your life. You are loved by so many, because you had so much love to give, and you gave it so generously. You lived a life of gratitude, fully embraced the joys of life, and led by example. When we speak your name, when we care for one another, when we carry on your traditions, when we witness those first blooms in your garden and eat of the fruit, we will remember you.

Through your life, we have witnessed:  

The power in God’s forgiveness.
The beauty in God’s grace.
The strength in God’s love.

So, although we gather here today to mourn the ending of your presence here in this life, we rejoice with God and all His angels, for His belovèd child has come home.

This is a joyous occasion. A good life was lived.

Read Vietnamese translation by my mother, Phan Ánh Huy.

We Are Warriors

The Warrior. The fight of the Warrior. The flight of the Warrior. The height of the Warrior. Foresight of the Warrior.

For the past few months, these reoccuring themes have found themselves taking their stance all over the pages of my sketchbook, marching upon the studio walls, and charging into some of my recent work, such as in this piece and this piece. The theme came about when I, beside a few of my loved ones, found ourselves in the midst of combat, these wars we were determined to overcome. Out of the inspiration drawn from their great strength and perseverance, and the need to find bravery somewhere within those timid, fearful places of my own, the Warrior Spirit became increasingly present.

With hearts swelling with courage and with eyes set on victory, we find that there are a few key things that the Warrior must face, and learn, and relearn while in battle. Of these, here are two that I think are among the most important lessons, also perhaps the most difficult to remember:

Only through necessity do we find hope (for there is no need to hope for the things that we already possess).

When circumstances draw us to our knees, weak and pleading, we are forced to dig much further into our Core to pull to surface that strength that may have lain dormant for a time (for in favorable conditions, this tremendous strength is not needed).

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View the collection of works made especially for this cause here. 

With the Warrior Spirit stirring, I thought about all of us who are all striving to victor over our own battles, and it saddened me to think that far too often, I am unable to do as much as I deem sufficient to help alleviate the strain for others, especially when these aching knees struggle to stand in their own fight.

Then, Life answered right on time, just as always. I was given an opportunity to contribute to the Golden State Warriors Community Foundation. (And, yes, what golden Warriors we all are.) Moreover, the day that my work was confirmed for this show was exactly one year to the day since my last benefit show. Life's confirmations never cease to astound me. I was reminded, once again, that I will always be able to give as much as I can with what I have, according to my ability and circumstance, and more importantly, my will to do so. And that, itself, is sufficient.

In hope, in love, and in courage, may we continue marching beside those with whom we fight, making our way to gather with those who are awaiting our arrival.

And these are also plenty.

The Wisdom of Water

As usual, when a certain issue starts tugging at my heart, everything around me begins swirling around the subject to prepare me for my lesson. Recently, the discouraging topic of failure arose during a thoroughly encouraging conversation with a friend. 

We discussed how Life, like water in nature, moves along until its flow is disrupted by an object, at which point the water will move around, through, or over the object so that it may continue moving forward. Such is the flow of Life. Like water, life will find its own channels, even creating its own path. I believe that water, one of the most powerful forces on the planet, does not recognize this change in direction as failure. Perhaps these obstructions are the way that life guides us, keeping us on this journey which is ours, and ours alone.

This photo was taken a few weeks ago in the studio. I watched in awe as the intricate design began slowly taking form. The water from my palette, stained with blue paint, crept its way into the white paint, creating its own path to make this beautiful pattern.

I then came across Conan O'Brien's 2011 commencement address at Dartmouth College, during which he said: 

There are few things more liberating in this life than having your worst fear realized...

One's dream is constantly evolving, rising and falling, changing course. This happens in every job, but because I've worked in comedy for 25 years, I can probably speak best about my own profession. Way back in the 1940's, there was a very, very funny man named Jack Benny. He was a giant star, easily one of the greatest comedians of his generation, and a much younger man named Johnny Carson wanted very much to be Jack Benny. In some ways he was, but in many ways he wasn't. He emulated Jack Benny, but his own quirks and mannerisms, along with the changing medium, pulled him in a different direction. And yet, his failure to completely become his hero made him the funniest person of his generation. David Letterman wanted to be Johnny Carson, and was not, and as a result, my generation of comedians wanted to be David Letterman. And none of us are. My peers and I have all missed that mark in a thousand different ways, but the point is this: 

It is our failure to become our perceived ideal that ultimately defines us and makes us unique. It's not easy, but if you accept your misfortune and handle it right, your perceived failure can become a catalyst for profound reinvention.

If we can perceive these stumbling blocks as the stepping stones that will help redirect us to our path, we gain the ability to find meaning, purpose, and appreciation in life. And as we adapt to new realities, processing the pain, anguish, and disappointment that is caused by these perceived failures, our character is developed and strengthened, and our evolution is called forth. We are now able to see the possibilities that we might have never known existed for us. And because our own path is unique, these possibilities exist just for us if only we will claim them as our own.

The ancient wisdom of water tells me this is true.

Making Memories. Together.

I’m not sure what is in the air this season, besides the guava still breezing through our windows, but a wealth of commission work has found itself ripening on the studio walls, tables, and floors. The first commission piece I had ever worked on was back in 2003 while still in school. It took me months to even begin creating it, though, since I was given a reference to work from and had struggled with idea of it not being completely “my own work”. 

As I’ve matured, I’ve learned to embrace these commissions as collaborations, and I have been exceedingly blessed with clients who have given me complete liberty to translate the stories they've shared and the inspiration I've gathered into whichever method, medium, and imagery resonates most organically with me. It has become a joyful co-creative experience and a true honor to help the clients narrate their stories, honor their loved ones, and exalt the very important things in their lives.  

A few weeks ago, I delivered "Little Bunnies" to Judith A. Kaluzny. We leaned the piece against her low-sitting drum coffee table, sat on her living room floor looking and discussing, and I was thrilled that she loved the piece as much as I loved creating it. Her response to the work confirmed for me, once again as always, that the language of art is potent, universal and transcendent.

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My creative process often requires a considerable amount of research and reference-building, and I find that the more invested I am in time, in thought, and in soul, the more that mutual heart will translate in the work. 

Judith and I rummaged through several boxes of photographs before finding the ones which spoke of the nuances I had hoped to capture in her piece – these tender moments to be memorialized. She had generously shared with me some of her precious memories from her childhood in the Fox River Valley of Wisconsin. Herein, we found our inspiration for our piece. 

I thought about this experience of co-creation. As I remind myself to apply the very same concept to Life, I could spend it gathering meaningful references, create revelatory moments, and make beautiful things (tangible and intangible), all to contribute to the quality of life. And I believe I am here to do that very thing -  to collaborate with the world around me in order create these moments that will inevitably become history. Hers, his, mine, ours.

These Quiet Wars

Bob Dylan sang to me in a dream last night.

"I sing songs of war. Some are hard. And some are quiet", he said. As several of us gathered at the counter to listen, I wondered what the quiet ones sounded like to him.

From behind the bar, he plucked his acoustic in the agile fashion as he had always done, quickly and gracefully against his waling voice. I couldn’t make out any of his words, but still, it resonated.

I listened vigilantly with my elbow anchored to the counter, chin nestled in the pad of my palm, knuckles sealing my lips. But perhaps this secret is one of the ones we are allowed to share. We caught eyes only briefly, but he continued inching his face closer to mine as he examined the cracks in my hands. These lines must have told him that I had similar stories to share.

These quiet wars. They are patient, but persistent. They give us time to reflect, process, and decide how to handle them or how to ignore them, even if just for now. They stir steadily inside and sometimes offer their own solutions (or at least a portion of the solution) if only we are quiet enough to hear. I wondered if I had gathered enough wisdom to listen.

These pleas don’t always take word form. They reside in mood, in feeling, in tone. And, like prayer, the intentions and sincerity of these pleas transcend beyond words and can carry our song, even when we have only enough breath left to pant.

Beauty Beyond Measure

We are made of rhythm. This eternal, glorious, perfect rhythm which continues to pour life into us. The pacing of our breath, the expansion and compression of our lungs, the  timbre of our hearts. These rhythms with which the worlds within coincide with the worlds without, and all to their own measure.

Perhaps the reason why the sun takes her time in climbing high into her pool of sky is to give my heart ample time to find its own meter, before we both submerge back into the calm of the Pacific. The rising and subsiding of the tides are surely a testimony to the patience that I, too, have the potential to inherit. And meanwhile, the wind rolls through like a swooping stream, in unison with the ocean current and those currents which flow far deeper into the core of this mound of clay which I call Me, and this magnificent mound of dirt that we call Home.

The small, quiet voice tells me, “Wait. Just for a moment. There is something more I’d like to show you.”

And herein I find the inspiration that awaits me, weaving its way through my memory, my ideas, my words, my pulse, my hands, my brush, these illuminations that leave me much wiser than just moments prior.

The sublime motifs of nature. Oh, their majesty. And as they flutter into my ears and eyes, I study with wide-eyed wonderment all the beauty of the delicate details that are offered here. And I'll expect them to echo upon a myriad of planes to be regarded with great consideration. They always do. And they always are.

* pit * pat * pat * pit * pat*

This is the cadence of my bare feet upon this ancient sandstone. Or perhaps it’s my throbbing heart, wild with admiration and gratitude. Or maybe it’s these dozen feathered wings beating, circling gracefully above me in stride with the swirling waters at my feet. It’s hard to tell the difference on days like these, if there is, indeed, any difference at all.