summer afternoon coffee (This is good.)

Published: Thu, 07/10/25

** continuing * anthroposophy * iced * envy **

(This is good.) summer afternoon coffee (3 drops of purple liquid) / For me one of the worst things about being human is the way time, events, people, things, ages just GO ON without making a mark or leaving a trace. Moment after moment just VANISHES. Millions, pachillions of them. It's horrifying. / Last week I read a book of poems that felt like a record of a mind at different moments. / (half-empty jar of decaf coffee powder, tall glass with small amount of
brown powder at the bottom, spoon with some brown flakes in it)

The 2 friends I read / talked about the book with didn't love most of the poems, and one didn't feel like they "added up to" enough— or maybe didn't MEAN enough all together. / And my response was: that's ok with me! It's more important that she WROTE all these — that here they are! A human being's pages and pages of pretty unadorned noticings. (carolyn pouring oat milk into glass, oat milk turning brown as it mixes with the powder)

My friend Timothy shared a poetry manuscript full of traces of daily activities and thoughts, and one of the big comments I wrote on it was, "I'm jealous." / I am full of gratitude and — yes — envy for art that demonstrates endurance — the ability to continue making & making & making in one vein, one form, without stopping or being stopped.

(carolyn pumping lavender syrup into the glass, the oat milk coffee turning pinkish purple as the syrup mixes in) / I have a pretty strong tendency to ask, "What does it MEAN?!," and sometimes that has propelled me forward (whatever direction THAT is) — through a lot of education and a lot of books. To Nepal and back. Into and out of a lot of churches and meditation centers. / I've been reading about Hilma af Klint, a turn-of-the-20th-century Swedish
painter and mystic. She was classically trained and able to draw/paint (say) a flawless and intricate realistic image of a sheaf of wheat. And other things.

But mainly she is famous for abstract images — circles inside of circles. Prisms, squiggles, grids, colors. / For 10 years, she and 4 friends held séances where spirits guided their hands to make pencil drawings. I've seen some of these, and each one on its own is pretty uninteresting to me. But that there are 5 notebooks full of them! Pages and pages, made over a decade! That impresses me. / Hilma af Klint went on to paint on her own, hundreds of abstract
works that she said were making the invisible visible. Subjects that the spirit world had revealed to her, including a glossary interpreting the meaning of each shape, color, and word.

(carolyn stirring the pinky-purple-brown liquid in the glass.the spoon going ting ting ting ting against the glass)

The wild part of it is, Hilma af Klint was desparate to have someone tell her what her work MEANT. She kept basically stalking Rudolf Steiner and begging for his interpretation, and he kept telling her, essentially, "It's not for me to say." / (glass of pinky-purple-brown liquid in front of carolyn, carolyn twisting an ice tray, the tray making the sound, krackksh — carolyn looking thoughtful or possibly confused) / Anyway, like the pencil spirit
drawings, each of these individually (these paintings), I could kind of take or leave. But the accumulation — THAT is something. That she kept laying down this trace of her living, this thread that dissolves so much less quickly than the rest of her doings have.

I have received disappointingly few revelations from the spirit world. And as important as my question-asking has been, it has also often been the thing that stops me. / (ice cubes falling into the glass of pinky-purple-brown liquid, condensation on the side of the glass and on the table around it) / I start a creative practice that does what I admire — leaves a trace of the ephemeral — and after a few weeks or months I look AROUND at all the floods and fires,
all the people without a safe place to be — and/or I look BACK at what I've made so far — and think "What does this MEAN?! How is this significant enough to DO?" And, very often, stop.

But I think I am developing a new way of hearing and responding to the part of myself that constantly asks "But WHY?" / (carolyn curled up on a couch, drinking from the glass, condensation dripping off of it)

Please share This is good. with others who might like it!

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