Hi friends,
It's been awhile since I've posted, at least a few weeks. One thing I’ve learned from Substack the platform on which I write and record this blog is to be consistent with my posts so that you open the emails and come back week after week. Apologies that I've been inconsistent of late and I have an excuse. A lame excuse, no pun intended: I broke my right arm and it's taken me a couple of weeks to work through the pain, to figure out how to type with my voice because yes of course it's my right arm and I'm right dominant. It’s been no fun at all but here we go again because a few of you have reached out to ask if I had deleted people from my list or if I had stopped posting or what had happened to me and I am so touched by the messages that you actually missed these posts.
I think back to February, March when I began this newsletter, the amount of research that I would do during the week and the hours that I would spend on a Sunday to write about a favorite painting, to think about close looking, to have gone on a really long hike that I could tell you about. The whole gist of The Solace Project is close looking at works of art for healing and taking walks for resilience and clearing the mind, and I almost feel now that I had to break my arm to really understand what it's like to not be able to look at art or go for walks because that's literally the situation in which I found myself over the past few weeks. I lost my privilege, the privilege of being able bodied, which I had taken for granted. Busted.
Because this post feels a little more personal than others I'll tell you what happened. I was driving home from South Bend, Indiana, where a lot of you know I spent most of the summer working at the South Bend Museum of Art, a glorious project that I was more than a little sorry had to end. I loaded up my car for the great ride home, a 775 mile drive that I've done countless times and was 9 hours into the 11 hour trip when I stopped at the familiar last rest stop on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, just before the mess that turns into New Jersey and the George Washington Bridge, a rest stop that I have stopped at many many times before, just one last chance to take a break, get some water, and get back in the car for the last couple of hours. I tripped on the curb, fell full body to the pavement. Adrenalized and longing to get home, I got myself right back into the car and drove the two and a half hours. Yes I was that woman that everyone curses, driving under the speed limit in the right-hand lane. But it got me safely across New Jersey, across the George Washington Bridge, and home to Harlem where I immediately burst into tears, fainted, and went to the emergency room. The break is called a proximal humerus fracture which needs no surgery nor cast, but complete immobilization hence my inability to type.
As part of a side narrative, I am one of three women in my close friend group who fell and broke an arm within the same week. A running friend who got entangled in a dog leash fell to the pavement and broke her arm, happened to be her left arm and she's a lefty. Another dear friend went for a walk and slipped on an acorn, broke her right arm on the same day as I broke mine. In my mind, I’m conjuring the Three Graces wearing arm slings, how beautiful we all are, a little disabled but not by a long shot compared to most.
Because art is healing and walking is essential to my way of being, a few days ago I started looking at art in my house: art created by my family and friends, works of art that have been hanging on the walls for a while, as if I'm in my own museum at home. And I started walking around the house, feeling sorry for myself that I can't be hiking the Appalachian Trail or doing glorious walks in nature but rather walking through a kitchen filled with houseplants, walking through a living room filled with sleeping cats, and finding that sense of peace, the nature RX that comes even from indoor beauty and by looking out the window.
Then I thought about a work of art that I saw just a week before all of this happened. I had the great fortune of going to the Denver Botanic Garden for a visit and went to Chatfield Farm, the Littleton branch, a working farm complete with community supported agriculture programs and environmental awareness. On the property is a beautiful immersive sculpture by the artist Patrick Dougherty, the sculpture is called One Fell Swoop. It’s site-specific and was created over the course of three weeks, not just by the artist but with the help of over 50 staff and volunteers, a group project gathering willow saplings and branches harvested from all over Colorado including some local to the farm. Walking through the piece, even in my mind three weeks later, brings a profoundly reassuring feeling, surrounded by nature, embraced by the twists and turns, a natural version of a Richard Serra, a glorious curving, sweet-smelling nest like a great warm hug.
And onward
So that now that I know how to voice type and my arm is feeling a little bit better, I will get back to consistency and writing, and hope to be a little more regular in this newsletter starting next week.
Until then as always keep walking, don't trip, keep looking slowly with curiosity and courage,
Carrie
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