Tiny little boxes

It’s been a while

For the most part, I’ve been wrangling with family issues, nothing that’s mine to tell here. I’ve also been travelling (with family) to the US, which had me worked into a lather of anxiety, for, I think, obvious reasons. The activities of the current administration and its ICE goons have led to a marked decrease in tourists in the cities we went through.

But this is not about my trip, which had much joy in it (and a great deal of heat, but in order to avoid seeming pathetic I shall refrain from talking about it)(41c!!).

I have written many substack posts in my mind before actually writing this one. All seemed to be - futile. I am increasingly weary of the trappings of these newsletters. Too often they seem to become the place a writer might use to bolster their sense of themselves as wise creator. The burden of writing tips, delivered by people whose finest attention is better given in person, towards specific texts. It is easy to be grand and vague. I don’t think any of you are reading these for my insights into process - I trust that many of you, if you are writers yourselves, would find no need of my ideas. To me, anyway, the writing is all that matters, my source of expertise (such as it is).

But recently, recently. I have thought, why write at all? Against all I know of how art in all its forms has helped me in my life. Against the pleasure and structure it gives me to write. I recall an (ex) friend, in my hearing, saying loudly to someone “I’m going into [redacted environmental field]. I can’t believe I did writing for so long. It’s just so egotistical!” And isn’t there so much content, so much of a deluge. Why devote oneself to a small corner of art, to going after the perfection and joy of it, for a whole life, when one could be (grandly, theoretically) pursuing some greater work?

At the exhibition, there were many fine artworks, but I was struck by a poster on a door, talking about one artist who made boxes. I thought, from the pictures, that the boxes must be large. The size of bedding kists, or similar. But when I moved through the gallery and saw them in person, I saw that they were tiny, palm sized. They were made of highly polished, smooth wood. They took the shape of the waning moon, and this image was furthered by their lids, which were made of something opaque and white. I thought perhaps horn, lathed to thinness. Or smoked glass? The wooden sides, curved to match their lids, had a glossy yellowish tint, with darker freckles. I looked at them for a long while, thinking contradictory thoughts. That they were beautiful. That they were not to my taste. That someone had spent so long making something so impractical, so small - but not so small that the act of making them was in any way miraculous, as some truly miniature objects are.

I thought about devoting ones life to making tiny boxes. Surely quixotic. I thought, is it a waste? I thought, who would buy these, and have them in their home - would they quickly gather dust? What could they, in their curvedness, possibly hold. But I think perhaps they were made to be held. That the act of making them was enough, the act of imagining them made.

But always, coming back, why do I try to make art? Just to be published, to exist beyond myself, to have my imagination touch other imagination? Is it ego? Why are we here at all? What gives us meaning? All questions investigated together by more interrogative minds than mine. Consider the lilies. They make themselves from the materials around them. Their petals glow. insects sit on them a while, and their pollen drifts. Are they really enough? Are we?

A tiny well made box that holds nothing, or close to it. That will one day be lost, in a move, or down the back of something. A poem. A short story.