Clearing the Cache

Ventilation

This I know: We all have to be kind to ourselves, practice self-care, set ourselves up for success, not failure. I also know that it is wise to leave our windows open, even just a little crack, while we sleep, to let fresh air in because we always need to breathe and stale air just isn’t what your body wants or needs. We need ventilation, and to vent.

In acknowledgement of my evidently perpetual need to practice more self-care, a new plan has emerged for me: my goal with writing here on Substack is henceforth to be a weekly ritual. To hell with humpday! It is corporate lingo resultant of the tyranny of corporate capitalism and I am over it. Plus, there is less pressure for me this way — I don’t need to be squished into a lifeless diamond from the pressure. Diamonds can’t love or practice radical acceptance. When I was most regularly enforcing this as a humpday discipline, I was regularly losing sleep to do it. It seemed worth it at the time, but lack of sleep rarely pays off. Sleep clears our cache. My new self-discipline is protecting my sleep. It is not something to be cavalier about. It removes all the inconsequential memories and pernicious thoughts that take up so much of our bandwidth on a daily basis. It makes room for whatever the next day will bring. Sleep is our glorious and indiscriminate birthright, it is the birthplace of dreams — and it gently sweeps the cobwebs out of our minds.

Speaking of sleep: I slept barely enough last night and then today, I left home at 6:15 to go bang out 5 back-to-back eco-art workshops for art teachers at Ardsley High School in Westchester, NY. I spent a fair amount of time prepping for them, but prepping of all kinds is in. I devised 5 eco-art projects suitable for students ranging from K-12th grade. The art teachers were a breath of fresh air for me and they seemed quite happy with the workshops. One of the workshops was a version of a project my dear mother-in-law came up with when she taught “art on a cart” for ~30 years in Camden, NJ. (Art on a cart means she had no classroom! Can you imagine? I believe the term is badass.) Anyway, I translated one of her projects that used construction paper into one using upcycled materials, (old cereal boxes + plastic bottles). Nice to create lines of continuity, like little threads connecting dots of light.

I think art teachers are some of the most important yet undervalued members of society in the USA at the moment - which is astonishing to me since it seems pretty obvious that the situation here is going to require a lot of creative problem solving which is what artists and art teachers do.

On the topic of creative problem solving, here is photograph Marshall Coles took of me powerwashing the Ding Dang before they went on their last public exhibition. Doing this task at night worked best because the internal lights helped me see where dirt or bugs accumulated in them after they were hanging around outside for a long period of time. It looks like I’ve grown a giant pair no? I can’t be the only one who thinks that is at least a little funny.

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