Word of the year

I’ve been choosing a word of the year and making annual art goals ever since beginning to listen to the #AmWriting podcast. They talk about goals you control (finishing a book, submitting to an art residency) instead of goals you don’t (getting a book published, receiving an art residency). Usually I have a pretty strong list for myself, but this year I am in month two of an eight month physical therapy program for POTS, which seems to be more and more associated with long covid. I am gradually feeling better, but my biggest goal for the year is to stick with the PT, the morning POTS routine (very slow starts), and other modifications that are making me feel better. The image in my mind is kintsugi, the Japanese form of mending pottery with visible cracks enhanced by gold or silver. The idea is that “whole” does not mean the same as “just like you were before.” You wear the cracks while becoming functional again in spite of them and with a different beauty. I don’t expect to get back to my pre-long covid self at this point three years later, but I am hoping for better functionality and ultimately more hours to use for my art again as I become better able to tolerate being upright again.

So “mend” is to remind me of that goal, to remind me that it’s ok to take the time I need to reach it, and that even reaching it will not mean I’m back to normal necessarily (though, man, that would be welcome). But it also has wider implications. I love to buy clothes at the thrift store and mend them to make them functional again. I love the visible mending trend that makes those mends a thing of beauty instead of invisibility. And I love the wholesale rejection of fast fashion in favor of reuse and environmental sustainability. Even larger, I hope we can begin to mend our country by reaching out with kindness to other people and beginning to knit those cracks together, but also by mending the places where the ideals it was founded on have gone astray. That’s a lot of work for one small word to do, but I am starting the year in hope for all of these things.

As always, I process things primarily through art, so I took this snow day to use one of my more recent wood font acquisitions (another second-hand passion) to do a small print on studio scraps to remind myself.