The Potting Bench II

mixed-media

Acrylic, cut paper, collage, gold foil, glitter, beads, & rhinestones; the original print of miss baddie Barbara Mock.

….

I thought about the planter label phrase for a long time. It had to be something that recognizes the project: this idea that we’re in a period of renewal that refuses the way things are, that it is what it is; a period that reverses our points of view.

The words came to mind in days of silent meditation. Walking away from an affective sit, I hear Alan Watts in my head: “All space becomes your mind… [time carries you along like a river… and you no longer have to fight to kill it]” (1966). This was one of many recent moments where something I knew made sense for the first time—via thinking less, feeling more.

But if I were to articulate “All space becomes your mind…,” I’d mention how Vipassana has us feeling sensation neutrally throughout our bodies, finding all pain and pleasure as part of the “equanimous” mind extended to all space within. Add to it Alan Watts: that “the world outside your skin is just as much you as the world inside.” Or, as Buddha teaches: our thoughts are not our own—that “all of nature thinks, and human consciousness is a reflection of the consciousness of all” (Parry 2015). &, of course, Krishnamurti, who writes of an attention without centre.

Then I think of Carolyn Elliot in Existential Kink (2020), describing how our current experience is the subjective projection of our entire lives; that everybody is a light wearing a unique, snowflakey lampshade of a psychological schemata that their light shines through. I wonder literally if all space becomes our minds, what kind of world have we created? And like this, there’s the mindfulness of making worlds where everyone can live peacefully with everything they need.

I added the Statue of Liberty to highlight the influence of not only the U.S. but imperialism writ large and the myth of freedom within capitalism. In a culture projecting the idea that anything goes in pursuit of the “new,” I hope instead we can reflect and readjust in favor of restitution and reparations.

June 2024

30x24”