"Yes, and"

Yes, things are awful, and fortunately there are folks are working to shift things….

The paragraph below is an excerpt from my book’s first chapter which I am publishing for paid subscribers today. If you can’t afford the lowest rate of subscription and want to read the book, please write me a note.

I just learned yesterday that my digital painting below is going to be published in a book about political art coming out in 2027. It was painted in 2001 during the second Intifada.

“Breathing through Terror” Healing Deity Series, digital painting, 2001

Excerpt from Chapter One of Beyond Dreaming: A Fractured Memoir Proposing Possible Futures.

This past Sunday evening, two friends in their 30s, my housemate and my improv teacher, joined me for dinner while we shared a beautiful bonfire in the backyard. It was a glorious Pacific Northwest evening with the sun still warming our faces. Two children from next door were enticed by both our laughter and the leaping flames and climbed the fence to join us. We played a story game where we each began a sentence with “fortunately” and “unfortunately” that hilariously made its way around the circle. As the flames died down to warm coals, our collective imagination conjured up s’mores. Stale marshmallows, chocolate kisses, & graham crackers were scavenged from next door and sticky messes popped into mouths. Not long after that, the children were reluctantly gathered & taken home by one of the moms. Our discussion drifted into the collapse of the medical system where one of them works, and all the resources being used to keep those who should be leaving the physical plane alive for a bit longer. Both friends spoke about the challenges that their generation faces in the current economy and how difficult it has been to cope with so much uncertainty. Sitting inside a relatively stable later chapter of my life, I felt deep empathy for their anxieties and the precarity we all feel. As we confront increasing contradictions daily and witness injustices that have become ever more visible since my childhood, I remind myself to hold up the phrase, “yes, and…,” a phrase used to train those who are doing improv so that they can go from a “declaration” to a response that offers possibilities. So, “yes” things are broken, have been broken and are continuing to break, AND there are new and inspiring things to notice and act upon, and we need to give those innovations energy.