Lost power
Mary-Kim Arnold Mary-Kim Arnold

Lost power

You are always on display, you china doll, you morning flower. Downtown, you imagine throwing yourself into traffic. You want a house on a hill. You want a house by the sea. You want your mother back, or someone else’s mother. A better one.

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Spark joy
Mary-Kim Arnold Mary-Kim Arnold

Spark joy

But in the day-to-day work of an organization, no matter what its finely-crafted mission statement might promise, the necessary and often dulling tasks of building and sustaining the systems and processes to support the work, is not what many would consider to "spark joy."

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Strange and monstrous treasure
Mary-Kim Arnold Mary-Kim Arnold

Strange and monstrous treasure

“So it gives us everything, it gives us the end of the world; to be human we need to experience the end of the world.”

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Courtyards: A Collaboration
Mary-Kim Arnold Mary-Kim Arnold

Courtyards: A Collaboration

From our individual practices, we bring preoccupations with speech and language acts, sonic textures, improvisational methods, and experimental textual forms.

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Touchpoints
Mary-Kim Arnold Mary-Kim Arnold

Touchpoints

standing face to face with the memory of it. it misses. it's missing. still. what of time. not more. remains there. misses nothing. time, what is. all else. all things else. all things other. subject time. must answer to time. time dictates all else, except for some. it misses. all installed in time.

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Back in the 90s
Mary-Kim Arnold Mary-Kim Arnold

Back in the 90s

Why now, you think. Why revisit. The 90s in the zeitgeist again? The chunky platform shoes and plaid skirts?

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Why write?
Mary-Kim Arnold Mary-Kim Arnold

Why write?

We drove out to a small seaside town, where a friend of ours had a house on a hill. Behind the house, a path leading down to a stretch of pebbled beach punctuated by sharp black rock formations.

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in memory
Mary-Kim Arnold Mary-Kim Arnold

in memory

In the parking lot of the converted barn where we held rehearsals, we paced and argued for what seemed like hours. He was doing me a favor, she said. We can't do that to him.

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incommensurable
Mary-Kim Arnold Mary-Kim Arnold

incommensurable

Susan Sontag (1964): “I valued professional competence + force, think (since age four?) that that was, at least, more attainable than being lovable as ‘just as a person.’”

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anticipatory
Mary-Kim Arnold Mary-Kim Arnold

anticipatory

There is the pressure to rush on, lean in, to pretend that there has ever been a “normal” to return to, to be in it, not only to pick up where we left off, but to make up for all the lost time.

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old selves
Mary-Kim Arnold Mary-Kim Arnold

old selves

I'm making my way back to writing projects that I'd abandoned. Returning to them, the pages and pages of notes, printed, hand-written, with post-it notes and strike-throughs. All the evidence of having engaged with and invested in sentences that now seem unfamiliar and stubbornly obstructive.

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close, vivid, saturated
Mary-Kim Arnold Mary-Kim Arnold

close, vivid, saturated

Even in the dream, the persistence of the phone alerts, the messages and reminders of never quite being free from the needs and demands of others. But as I say this I know how often this tether can be our only lifeline.

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to make and unmake
Mary-Kim Arnold Mary-Kim Arnold

to make and unmake

Nabila Lovelace: “In the ‘Ars Poetica’ is a question worth daily consideration: what are we willing to do with language?”

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background, exhibit, argument, theory
Mary-Kim Arnold Mary-Kim Arnold

background, exhibit, argument, theory

Took some notes on an essay about walking that I’ve promised. Cleared away a few administrative tasks. Made dinner for a very dear friend I had not seen since summer.

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small things
Mary-Kim Arnold Mary-Kim Arnold

small things

I wheeled a shopping cart through the streets. I joined a yoga class on a stage while artists and performers milled about around me.

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the further you go
Mary-Kim Arnold Mary-Kim Arnold

the further you go

This morning, I took a little time to make some notes on a project and it only took a few minutes to realize that it needed to be completely re-conceived. Perhaps this is what I have been avoiding all along.

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accident and time
Mary-Kim Arnold Mary-Kim Arnold

accident and time

It's been difficult to write, so I work with my hands instead, sewing, drawing patterns, mending socks and sweaters.

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