kjirstenseverson.com

Art show opening at The Joinery, downtown Portland! Friday, January 27, 2023, 5-8pm – 922 SW Yamhill

Parking Garage: Smart Park, 730 SW 10th

Or if you don’t mind a little walk, I’ve had good luck finding parking at SW Taylor and 14th Ave.

Come see a full circle, historically, literally, and metaphorically in the history of typography!

Typography is a hopping field once again thanks to technology put to creative use. This project, however, is not that. My use of silkscreen frames that bear the enlarged characters of a 1936 Smith Corona is anything but high-tech. My emphasis on black and white standard typography is a return but a return that is not the “Same” thanks to Dadaism and Futurism in the early 1900s and the typography of Jackson Mac Low and Ian Hamilton Finlay in the 1960s and 70s. These movements challenged the dominance of the black and white newspaper print that governed society with authority; Mac Low and Hamilton Finlay used color and refused linear sequencing.

In so doing, they wiped the slate clean and allowed me to return to the simplicity of black and white typeface in order to show the authority of that which makes all language possible – the authority of mystery –  the mystery behind language, the mystery by which language is born and creates; the mystery by which our senses of selves are born and create; the mystery of communion through text and image, and in this project specifically, TEXT AS IMAGE. Come check out this crossover of concrete minimalist poetry, typography, philosophy, and memoir at the Joinery, downtown Portland Friday, January 27^th, 5-8pm!

I have been saying I am queer since 1995. I was 25. I was on my way out of the Mormon church. I was on my way out of South Dakota. I was on my way to having the space to feel myself fully and not have to package it to the point of distortion. In 1998, I discovered the pronouns “sie” and “hir” through Leslie Feinberg’s Trans-liberation, and I felt that I finally could breathe as I self-referenced with them! And then I looked up from the book and I said out loud to myself, “Like that will ever happen in my lifetime.”

In fall 2019, I went to Icon Tattoo studio in Portland. I had hunted down a tattoo artist who had a style I sought. I wanted to restore, re-invent, re-story the four headed black dragon that had been inked on my low back in 2000. The front desk person flipped the Mac computer on the stand to face me and requested I fill out the paperwork. Mid-way through I was given three options to a question that was marked with a red asterisk, mandatory to answer:

What are your preferred pronouns? He/him; she/her; they/their? I had been here, in this awkward moment before, but differently, with only two options, the first two. And I had always capitulated to my assigned pronouns. This time, I couldn’t. I had finally been given a way out of the binary box and yet I still had no place there. I skipped the question. Finished the form. Flipped the Mac back and went and sat down. Quiet. A few minutes later, I was called back. “You didn’t answer a question.” “Oh, yeah? Which question?” “This one.” “Oh, yeah. Well, what if my preferred pronouns are not given as an option?”

The intake person lit up, became fully awake and bright, like I had just said the interpersonal equivalent of “Open sesame!”

“Oh, really?! Can you tell me what they are? Can you spell them? Can you write them down? Thank you so much for your feedback! We want to be inclusive!” I was elated, I felt like I was in flight! However, as soon as I returned to my seat, I started to panic. When called back, I finished my intake efficiently and made an appointment to return for the tattoo, and then I carried that panic home:

I had credited young people and social media to propel “they” and “them” forward, successfully breaking the binary barrier. I was seriously impressed, but I did not relate to they/them, so that success left my habits of capitulating into the binary system untouched. I did not (and still do not) personally know anyone who uses sie/hir pronouns. I know and have met several people who relate to and go by they/them pronouns. What if my pronoun preferences are unwanted? Seen as problematic? And myself marked as a trouble-making outlier taking away from the youth movement and the success of they/them?

Later that week as I was working, I flipped into a resource given by my college’s Center for Teaching and Learning. It was an article by Sassafras Lowrey, a young trans-activist author. The point of the article? Hir personal preference for hir/sie (except spelled ze) pronouns! Wow. I couldn’t believe it nor the timing. I can exist today. I CAN exist today in language. I began to digest that possibility and started to tell people close in my life that a change in my pronouns was coming. Then, within just a few weeks, my trail-running co-pilot, my partner in life for 14 years, and overall, best teacher for how to be a good human, my dog Mona died. I hit a dark depression; most of my energy went to maintaining obligations and surviving. Next, a few months later, in March 2020, I was hit with Covid19 and contracted severe post-acute sequelae (Long Covid).

My symptoms incapacitated me for over a year. Notable healing began in April 2021, and started to accelerate June 2021 once I was connected with a knowledgeable occupational therapist. Unluckily, I contracted Covid19 again in September and my progress was derailed. I am still overcoming that interruption to my healing rhythm today. I am fully alert and less plagued by painful and debilitating symptoms, but still unable to make my big art, an incredibly physical activity, and my goal of returning to the studio this November will most likely be postponed. BUT. I am able to make a change that has been brewing in me for over two years:

I have just changed the she/her pronouns in my “about” section on my artist’s website to sie/hir, (pronounced “sze” and “here”).

And felt I needed to acknowledge this change with some words here even though acknowledging my trans-identity seems like an impossible project. There is always more to say. I am queer; I am genderqueer, I have witnessed my gender fluidity for 45 years, and I exist outside the binary expectations of male or female and the binary categorizations of either masculine or feminine. I am trans-gender; I exceed.

After 17 months of illness and recovery, I was finally able to teach a class this term. I chose Introduction to Women’s Studies over my philosophy classes. I did not know why I made that choice, I have always favored teaching philosophy (at its best, a spiritual tool to feel love of life even within the pain of existence) over the emotional agony of opening the wounds of patriarchy for examination. But, I trusted it would reveal itself. Today, I believe it was so I could be given a gift by a student to share here. Without it and its call for trans acknowledgment, I might never have gotten this acknowledgement started, and thus might not have initiated that much needed change “about” me.

For an assignment which requested resources that would help us feel empowered in all our varied gender expressions, they posted this discussion with Alok on the podcast, Man Enough. I leave it here as a gift for you:

It may not be apparent, but my art project is all about connecting us as humans. My gift is to focus on the hidden roots in the basement of our thought in order to allow for more connection than rational discourse allows. However, there comes a time when I must come upstairs to speak our everyday language. Now is one of those times.

This post is a collection of posts I made on FaceBook prior to today, election day 2020. No matter the outcome of the election and the events that may follow, you and I have a chance to empower democracy simply in the way we regard one another. And that is the core of my message below.

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Before I get to the heart of my message, I must note that one concept that has no useful place in our democracy is white supremacy. This nation never has been a white nation. It was built by the labor of black and brown people just as much as it was built by the labor of white people. It was built by white people who held no power as much as it was built by white people who held power. It was built by peoples whose descendents, generationally, have been abused and targeted with social and violent disdain.

This generational abuse was made possible by dividing the unification that occurred throughout the history of this country between poor whites and poor people of color. White supremacy was a weapon used against poor white people as well as against people of color, used to divest them of their allies.

Furthermore, the United States was built on land that was taken from people who had created well-established civilizations thoughout the “New World”. It was built by nearly exterminating numerous peoples whose progeny are now US citizens and have had to live in a twisted story which denied their lived histories and cultural wisdoms.

If we wish to unify, we must recognize that US Americans are ALL of US, the United States has no grounding without ALL of US. The United States does not exist without ALL of US.

In large part, President Trump won because he was able to capitalize on the unaddressed damage caused in this country by the (largely unintentional) arrogance and narrow-mindedness of intellectual urban elites. Their pride, to the point of conceit, had marginalized several different populations in this nation. Their dismissive attitudes toward uneducated; toward working class people; toward rural people; toward “America’s poor whites”; and toward religious believers, especially Christian, enabled Trump to sweep up a majority of them and transform them into his swing vote.

President Trump is the complete opposite of an uneducated person, a working class person, a rural person, a poor white person, a truly faithful religious person and yet he was able to sweep so many into his base because he HEARD them; he RECOGNIZED them; he UNDERSTOOD their experience of neglect; he SPOKE to them; and he SPOKE FOR them. Every jab and cheap shot Trump has taken at intellectuals, scientists, and party-politicians has felt incredibly satisfying to so many US Americans, regardless of their party affiliation, who had been neglected and belittled by the language, biases, and assumptions of the middle to upper educated urban classes.

If a vote for Joe Biden is to be believed to be a vote for a unified nation, then everyone who supports and promotes Biden must recognize their own arrogance and dismissive attitudes toward other US Americans who live in a different world than they do, are surrounded by different assumptions than they have, and frame concerns for this country in a different manner than they do.

I strongly believe there is opportunity for political unification if we can get beneath our own self-righteous tendencies, cultural assumptions, and partisan warring. Donald J. Trump’s approach and language as President of the United States, has been an unbelievably potent accelerant, exacerbating the already growing political polarization to near democratic death. This experience has plunged us into an urgent necessity of changing course and resituating how we approach political dialogue. If we do not do so, we will be heading toward a totalitarian state. If we cannot collaborate as a unified nation, we cannot govern ourselves. We cannot maintain democracy. We will fail our forefathers’ dream.

In order to act from the recognition that US Americans are all of us, I offer a list of suggestions as a starting place from which to begin a dramatic shift in our political dialogues. The change will not come easily; the partisan divide began decades ago, has been enflamed by social media, and is of tsunami strength today. However, please, let’s not give up. Let’s try to come together.

10 Ways to Strive for Unity: Creating the United States out of United Citizens

I believe each of the suggestions below is a requirement in order to come together and offer ourselves a solid place to start re-unifying the United States:

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1. Believe that our strength to overcome national hardships lies in our ability to unite; let all our words and actions be grounded first and foremost in a desire to unify US

2. Forgive each other their ignorance; ask for forgiveness for our own ignorance

3. Check our own self-righteous attitudes, ground ourselves in humility, accept constructive critique; strive to recognize how our own hurt is fueling anger, hatred, and distance

4. Do not accept or perpetuate demeaning attitudes toward poor white US Americans, uneducated US Americans, rural US Americans, and religious US Americans; do not accept or perpetuate dismissive, complacent attitudes in regards to the racism embedded within the US American judicial and economical systems and within every single American social institution

5. Seek to know better those whose experiences have been ignored and voices buried

6. Locate our common grounds by recognizing our different lived experiences, and thus our different perceptions, interpretations, and judgments

7. Recognize that both Biden supporters and Trump supporters have valid concerns, let’s not paint each other with broad strokes

8. Edit out the snarkiness of our posts, do not re-post snarky memes, gifs, posts; seek constructive information within others’ snarky posts, if you cannot find it, dismiss it without reply

9. Fact check any article we wish to forward, strive to use the most balanced sources, or at the least, acknowledge the leanings of our source and perhaps present as well the counterview of the topic from a publication that leans the other way

10. Demand fundamental collaboration from the two dominant US political parties; voice an abhorrence for voter suppression to your political leaders and on public forums

Over the last few decades, we have created a political environment in which we are unable to effectively collaborate. We now play a game of all or nothing. As a result, we no longer listen to perspectives that have discord with our own. We have forgotten that other perspectives necessarily hold value precisely because they are not our own perspective. Other people’s perspectives hold a wealth of information for me and if I learn to take their perspective into account, I gain a broader understanding than I have from my view alone.

However, in the current political climate, we have learned to shut down other perspectives. We close the door without considering their value. We do not allow them to correct our own thinking and thinking continually requires correction. Other voices alert us when our perception has closed in around us to the point of distortion. Our ability to consider the alerts of those outside our own perspective is an essential tool within democracy. Unfortunately for us, this tool has been eroding within our democracy markedly during the last five decades, my own lifetime.

In my mid-twenties, I watched Democrats cheaply and blindly defend President Clinton and his actions during his impeachment. This last year I watched an even more absurd degree of denial by Republicans during President Trump’s impeachment. That increase is not due to the different political party; it is due to the exponentially increasing political polarization that occurred within the two decades between those two impeachments. Our ability to listen to the warnings of those not mired in admiration, to hear their concerns raised, and to willingly investigate must be regained if we wish to proceed toward a stronger democracy.

I do not know what my perception would be, or what I would allow it to become, if I found myself with a US President that was a dream come true to me, but who inspired deep concerns from the other half of our nation’s population.

What would I do if my favorite US President, when considering the national pandemic statistics, publicly suggested that we not count the states that hold a majority of people who did not vote for him? Would it give me pause? If so, would that pause make me stop and question the impact of such a statement?

What if I had a US President who successfully advanced my own personal political priorities, but who, in a public debate, rallied a white supremacist domestic terrorist group to “stand by”? Would I even be able to acknowledge the impact of such a statement on our US Americans targeted by such groups? Or its divisive effect on this nation?

If I made myself answer these questions, my answers would only be part of a thought experiment, for I am not actually in the position these questions describe and I never have been. I would *like* to believe I would be open to discovering if danger was at my doorstep like a wolf in sheep’s clothing. But, taking into account all the factors that would be shaping my response (and even shaping the level of my awareness!), I cannot know with certainty that I would be.

For many of you, these questions are not a mere thought experiment. They describe your current political reality. And you will have a chance to know with certainty the choice you made. Deep breath; may you reflect and own your choice with full awareness, whatever it may be.

Lastly, I must make an uncomfortable confession that I believe will bring some needed context for my list of suggestions, my thought experiment (both given above) and to our current situation as a nation:

Until 2016, I had never voted in a Presidential election. I held no allegiance toward either of the two dominant political parties. I hold as many conservative values as I hold progressive values. And I have always believed, and now more than ever I still believe, that only by integrating these values wisely and willingly into the foundations of our political policies and actions (rather than on the surface through forced compromise which has proven disastrous in the past), can we fulfill the seeds of democratic governance that we have been gifted in our US Constitution. My choice to not vote was my political voice; I did not want to contribute to the increasing party polarization that was creating monstrous discourse, policies, and law.

The 2016 Republican primaries dramatically changed the context in which I had always made the choice to not vote. For the 2016 Democratic Oregon primary, I changed my Independent voter registration to Democrat (as was required in Oregon) so I could vote against Hillary Clinton. I then voted for her in the national election as a vote against Donald J. Trump. As self-serving as I believe Bill Clinton was as President, and expected Hillary Clinton to be, I had an even more dire premonition:

Donald J. Trump’s sole interest as President would be to increase his personal power; he would have no other loyalty. And I believe that has been the case. If we compare Republican senators’, representatives’, and governors’ hesitance and, in some cases, overt negativity toward Trump prior to his win as the Republican nominee, to their subservience to him since his election, it seems apparent that Trump has taken the power of the Republican Party and now holds it for himself. The Republican Party now seems to represent Donald J. Trump, rather than the other way around.

President Trump is absolutely gifting the Republican Party with many “rewards” for being his party.

Nevertheless, during my observations of these last four years, I have been reminded of the parable of the scorpion and the frog. And those in the most power of the Republican Party must surely recognize the sting of the scorpion’s tail which has already occurred. They have been no match for Donald J. Trump. The party is now his.

However, for now, he is only as strong as the US Americans that support him and that support comes from diverse motivations. While fanatics may be the loudest, they must not be the only voices heard. They are merely insulation and any reduction of Trump supporters to those voices alone does none of us any favors. Supporters of Joe Biden must not fail in conversations to listen, learn, and work to understand the lived experiences that have led to each underlying motivation. Many motivations are worthy of attention and deserve political collaboration, while only a handful do not.

Regardless of the stormy events we will witness and experience in these upcoming months, remember, we the people now have valuable material to help us continue to work toward a healthy democracy which includes ALL of US. These tumultuous times are the very means by which we will earn the right to continue toward democracy, if we so desire. We haven’t even begun to tackle the fundamental issue within democracy which is the root of our troubles today: The tyranny of the majority. IF we survive this momentous moment intact as a nation, we might actually get a chance to take democracy to a fuller, richer, healthier expression by learning how to be a democracy without the cheap trick of a tyranny of the majority.

we are in the chomp of the ouroboros as i’ve been laid up with what has been coined a “long hauler’s” case of covid19. those stories for another time. for now: the paradoxical us.

the pandemic has illuminated the layers upon layers of dis-unity that is dissolving the united states. this inability to unify is largely a product of human perception. an individual’s perception is created by environment, experience, exposure, and inherited value systems. our lived experiences of “being american” differ radically from one another. comfort as well as fear often keep us from a communion with those that do not share our experiences nor our translations of our own lived-experiences. we live divided from one another.

the world wide web can be used to step into the perception-creating shoes of another. however, instead, our divisions, generally, have been deepened by commercial algorithms that prevent our different lived-realities from “naturally” or easily or effortlessly informing each other. some powerful interests across the political divide are invested in exacerbating the divide. human tendency toward arrogance and self-righteousness enflame the divide. habits of language fortify the divide.

most people who live in the usa have similar underlying cardinal values. we want opportunities to flourish. we want children to escape violence. we disagree about the practices and policies that might enliven these cardinal values. our secondary values clash. let’s not enter those conversations until we establish first and foremost a single shared vision:

is there a bountiful belief among us to create a social environment where no us american child born, no matter the body of that child, emerges with a target tattooed into their flesh and with social nourishment, support, and affection devoid or thin at best?

that aim does not match american history nor contemporary institutional structures and practices. as such movement toward that single shared vision will require change, but this shared belief can serve new us america with a common ground if we anchor ourselves to it unwaveringly. And right now “race” as a social identity is the most fertile place to examine that ground.

some white people are addicted to the story of white supremacy and the social, psychological, and economic advantages it gives to them as individuals and families. some white people do not wish to navigate their human existence without those advantages. for some white people the idea of white supremacy might be their most deeply felt social advantage. they have felt waves of social scorn, but at least they think (if even so quietly that they themselves do not notice), i am white.

race is a critical concept in us society due to its economic roles. due to slavery in the usa, white us americans received an inflated sense of return. they worked hard and this new country flourished. the labor black slaves contributed was not included in the accounting. their labor was invisibilized. likewise, continuing systemic racist ideologies, practices, and policies gave white us americans an elevated sense of themselves as a group. black us americans were not establishing economic self-sufficiency at the same rate. the additional barriers, obstacles, and down-right active dehumanization of black us americans did not inform white us americans’ perceptional frames. except perhaps as a permission slip.

meanwhile, us classism mixed with the american dream enhancing economic standing as a moral index by which to judge and value or de-value individuals. white us americans born into poverty have been and still are targeted with social disdain and excessively hampered by social stigma, bias, and systemic classism that largely lock in their legacy as poor whites. their disadvantages go unrecognized. frequently, they are judged, even by each other, as if their relation to the american dream were identical to ivanka trump’s. only racism prevents them from being found at the bottom of swamp.

the ouroboros symbolizes that everything is connected. but we often do not realize it until we have severed our own body. intense emotional responses to our perception of our experiences are inevitable. and valid. and worthy of respect and honor. by recognizing them, feeling them, and breathing through them, they become equipped to lead us to a deepening empathy, a wider reflection, and a grounding humility. once our emotions pass through those corridors, our best choice may be violent change. but it might not be. violence has a way of re-seeding itself with no loyalty to its farmer.

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Consider non-violent communication as a primary tool for your participation in this revolution. Marshall Rosenberg’s book of that title is an excellent introduction. Also, George Lackoff’s classic, Don’t Think of an Elephant holds insights to help you speak more effectively with those who live outside your perceptional frame. It is also a good lesson on how to be mindful with the creation of slogans so they reach a wider audience than those who already think and perceive similarly to you.

When I worship, it is not for any god. It is for us. Godness is the worship and the worship is my religion. I can return to its feeling, trusting “us” whenever I like. It is fortifying. Though, from time to time, interrupting my seamless movement from this faith is a healthy skepticism tugging my shirt: But. What if you trust it and then it dissolves like all the other religious beliefs you’ve held before? Those times of dissolution are difficult, so perhaps it is wise to prevent such a time, give way to cynicism and to not trust in anything.

I answer: Every belief I have will change, will transform and will end. If I lose You, I will refinde You. Not define. Refinde. It’s not from our definitions of Godness that we find Godness. Finding Godness includes the difficult times of transforming my beliefs, and those difficult times have proven to be the richest.

On noticing the inevitable location in which I find myself in the journey of the ghost in the machine today:

I am 48. It got here so quickly. Inevitably I feel like I need more time. I could continue to “wake up” for the number of days that humanity has existed (and will continue to exist) as a creature that is waking up to our humanity, to my own humanity. My fraction of existence is scant. Even so, now I feel I must begin drawing up; the time for pure observation is over. I must make a sketch of a foundation that might describe what I pull out of this journey as useful and thus begin the creation of my memorial:

Nothing matters except the great motion (everything is part of the Great Motion) and what I can contribute to this motion; and what I can contribute are my beliefs, which are the fertile plains ushering forth my voice and my actions. They are not Truths. My beliefs are handcrafted stories for the Great Motion.  What story am I telling through the tapestry of all my beliefs woven as this life we call kjirsten?

To notice.

That is the post-contemporary direction. To notice. To notice what we are clinging to and why. And if our findings edify us (“us” as the world with humans in it), add them to the Great Motion as our offerings, our gifts. And here Godness and us unify. These offerings are for all the usses that are of the Great Motion.  And for the Godness that all of us together manifest.

I use Godness instead of goodness because I do not see Godness as pure goodness. It’s too simple. Godness is the composite of all expressions, manifest and unmanifest. Godness is everything AND, necessarily, less. Godness is everything and less. It’s the unendingness of two mirrors facing each other with the unequationability of life itself spotted in the center of each. It cannot be known when it arrives, its arrival can only be recorded as Godness.

I can no longer believe the supreme mystery is pure goodness. “Everything” is our word to symbolize all the nuances of being alive. We, as different bodies, exemplify how vast the nuances are. It’s up to us to deal with it. Not to make it perfect (which is at the unobtainable “end” of a process), but to face up to the moments in the now which is and are unending.  These moments are formatted according to our attention and our inattentions (everything and less).

And while we are flighty herd animals, we are also taking in the journey differently than one another with the radical face of our souls doing the recording.  It ain’t “all pretty” because there is no such thing when we are talking about the human us. What is pretty to me is not to someone else, somewhere else, somewhen else. Necessarily. Because the universe expresses in multiplicities beyond current imagination. Unmappable coordinates. There are patterns and there are surprises. The two co-exist. We coexist.

Recursive and rhizomatic are my models. And they themselves are mutually necessary. Rhizocursive? Every view is possible. Every view is infinite and timeless. Which all views that we remember and discuss through generations are. And even within a generation each view has a timeless quality in the moment called now.

I don’t feel finished. But that’s the conundrumical paradox. There is no finish. So we won’t feel finished. It’s divine; this unfinished feeling is reminding us that that is indeed the case for the ghost in the machine. This I speaking, this ghost, dies, “drops out” while the world spins and weaves. This ghost that erupted in space with your eyes and voice pulling I-kjirsten into existence moment by moment. This kjirsten will end. Lucky am I that I feel a raw love for her, for this project called kjirsten. A love that has taken decades to cultivate and sprout, fertilized continually with the humility to forgive within and without. I feel my fortune.

And from that fortune, I find myself more capable of seeing you along with You, of loving you along with You. And from that love, I find myself in Us and loving us, allowing the becoming of us in all our divergence and dissonance.

To my reader:

How sublime that we get to see and feel our own existence and our interwoven selvings! What a gift. What a trip. And I find myself grateful for you; this ride would be lonely without you. Love comes from us being in it together. I have found that I prefer the terror and joy of unpredictable human behavior and the terror and joy of your witnessing my buffoonery over a “cleaner” isolated existence. I bow my head to you, thank you and ask you, do you feel that raw love for yourself as well? It takes root from the stillness deep within.

By now you may well know that I am spellbound by our very existence, and more precisely, my very existence, since that is the only one to which I have such mad access! Needless to say I spend as much time as I can meditating on this strange-cake phenomenon I get to call me. Many of my meditations are like those of Descartes, a wondering wandering mind aligning itself along a ladder of rational links of thought.

Many of them are otherwise, when I take the approach to not interact with my thoughts, to not make inferences of any sort, but aim only to observe them as they come, linger and as they go. I focus on my breath in order to resist entanglement. I don’t always succeed, and sometimes I even choose to converge these two meditation styles. Every once in awhile, they mix in such a way and create a dumbfounding experience. This is my first attempt at describing it:

I begin with my breath meditation, I breathe in, I breathe out. I notice where there may be tightness in this path from my nostrils, down my throat, into the breadth of my chest, the bottom of my lungs and deep into the bowl of my belly, and then as it climbs back up and out through my mouth. Once I can maintain the relaxation in that path, I place my attention on my body, looking for places of tension in order to replace it with ease. I know the places to look – shoulders, brow, mouth. Sometimes I discover unexpected tightness – toes, scalp, biceps. I breathe, I relax. Breath, relax.

Once I’ve been occupying this space, when I think I am simply maintaining relaxation, suddenly and without preparation, I will feel a surge of electricity shock me alert and the lightning leaves words in its wake: All of this will die.

My eyes snap open, wide. I attempt to settle myself with focus on my breath. All of this will die. And I try to find relaxation amid the unfathomable: All of this will die. Breath in 1-2-3, breathe out 1-2-3-4-5. Repeat. Sometimes I stick with it, eventually restoring my calm, allowing this thought to leave, and continuing my breathing meditation.

Other times, I allow myself to begin to dissect this thought, “All of this will die.” I begin with myself. That is what “all of this” is. I am the static cling of these experiences called “Kjirsten”. I know Kjirsten will end as necessarily as a wave cresting must crash. I know my actions and presence are itsy bitsy particles on a line of a thumbprint on a painting by Chuck Close, even though to me they feel absolutely central.

I understand that the stories I are, are dime store novels from 1950, quickly drifting, evaporating, disappearing, buried amid the fertility of existence. The “I” in me quiets, doesn’t fight, moves toward its undoing and . . . when synchronicity allows . . . within its own thoughtful dissolution, it somehow becomes isn’t. My I, existing and dissipating, feels outside this is. And for a brief moment, there is a thrill of ecstatic comprehension before my thoughts turn into incomprehensible mush.

This unsustainable impossibility tantalizes me philosophically. It is this very moment which fuels my passion for philosophy and which has fueled these pages of manuscript that I reproduce now as art, and which continues to fuel my exploration on canvas.

To express the impossible. To illuminate where the intellect is dark. To feel the becoming beauty of the not behind the is. It makes the is so delicious.

Nietzsche asks in The Genealogy of Morals, “. . . what would be ‘beautiful’ if the contradiction had not first become conscious of itself, if the ugly had not first said to itself: ‘I am ugly’?” This quote inspires me to ask, without humans, is there such a thing as “beautiful” and “ugly”? Is a sunset, in itself, beautiful? Is clear-cut, in itself, ugly, as my good friend commented during a hike? Or do we “find” beauty and ugliness only in ourselves? Is everything in our human sense of “reality” confined to mind as Kant might say (can humanity only ever “see” or “experience” through its own constructs of mind), or even more so, is everything human confined to my Bodymind, as I would frame it? And if so, are we trapped by our visceral responses and the intellectual judgments that arise from them? Is that which I call “ugly” destined to impact me with repulsion necessitating my response of distancing, denial, vitriol and/or abrasive action against it?

We feel visceral responses to the balanced and unbalanced, to the validating and the threatening, to a fresh young face and an old decrepit, dying body. The “ugly” is often an object of disgust and fear. And even more complicated, we feel visceral responses to practices, ideas and values. Not always are our visceral responses directly triggered by the aesthetic appearance of a thing or event. However, that thing or event may symbolize a practice, idea, or value that chafes us within, or incites disgust, such as with my friend and the ugliness of clear-cut.

As I sit with these thoughts, I find my mind migrating toward people that seem to overcome the visceral reflex and intellectual judgments of “the ugly”. Sister Helen Prejean seems a fitting example here. She must find the crimes of death row inmates repugnant, and if there is any arrogance or righteous attitudes among them, that repugnance , I would guess, must be even higher. If she does experience disgust and repugnance and find them “ugly” creatures, she seems to have found an alchemical secret of transforming her Bodymind experience of repulsion to connection.

Prejean claims that the less lovable a person is, the more we must find the means to love them. If we are bound by our humanity within the loops of Bodymind, bodily responses and intellectual judgments informing our perceptions, which inform our bodily responses and intellectual judgments, then how does one transcend the obviousness of the ugly as she seems to have done?

As “ugly” is within us, I believe that within us, too, we can find the alchemical secret that seems to cut through, or see through the loops of our perceptions, bodily responses and intellectual judgments. Within myself is “the ugly”. Back to Nietzsche’s quote, he wrote it in context of investigating how certain values come to be esteemed. In so doing, he makes the claim that we all know “ugly” from within. We create this name and it is useful. However, its reverberations may crowd the moment and we get lost in them. We forget that it is a category within us and we stop there, left in our sensations of disgust and repugnance, locked in our judgments they inspire. Are we thus tied to actions of walking away from, detaching from or compartmentalizing that which incites those feelings and leaving them as “other” or forgotten? I don’t believe so.

As “ugly” is a category found within human Bodymind, it necessarily carries with it the possibility of compassion. Compassion (acting from empathy), not only “overcomes” the barriers between us and that which we feel to be “ugly”, but could not exist without “ugliness”, ugliness that I know to be mine. To place ugliness on an outside entity, I must have entertained it internally.

It’s as if that which repels and repulses not only uses the same highway system as compassion, it is the same highway system. The only difference is how our awareness travels it. If I follow my judgments on external ugliness inward, I find myself. And in so doing, I have found a way to respond to it through connection rather than retreat or enmity. The reverberations of “ugliness” dissipate, unveiling a cleaner terrain from which to act and from which to connect through empathetic action.

I might guess that Sister Helen Prejean knows she lives a different life than those with whom she works, however, I would also guess she doesn’t feel entirely alienated from them. She has found the inner roadway of compassion by riding the wave of the emotions that might come from being face to face with humans that have actualized their internal ugliness onto other people’s bodies and lives until she finds their roots in her own internalized self-disgust wrought by her own “ugliness within”. She has cultivated that kindness (of the same “kind”) to extend to the nether lands of human behavior incited by others’ own “ugliness within”. As remarkable as I find that to be, I also find it to be simple, not in the sense that it is easy, but rather that the means for doing so are entirely within our reach every moment, indeed they are within us, within human Bodymind.

And by now you may be wondering, what does the above topic have to do with this art project? Simply put, we have habits of perception, thought and interpretation which this art project attempts to interrupt. The interruption is not a destruction, but rather an illumination of other possibilities within human Bodymind. The art itself makes no suggestions of what those possibilities might be, for that is up to each viewer individually. The possibilities are not radical. They come from small tweaks as illustrated by this above story of ugliness and compassion, small tweaks made possible by the slightest off-beat, the subtlest variation and the needle left to skip if only for a moment. The smallest tweaks that have the power to turn repulsion into love.