Wild & Wise Wandering

"I love how old you are." - Mo Willems

Dear Readers and Friends,

Two months ago today my husband and I landed on the island of Mallorca to visit friends and they immediately swooped us up in their little car to go visit the Museo Sa Bassa Blanca, where a simple painting by Yoko Ono hangs on a wall amidst other artworks from all over the world. The museum is a visionary’s dream and a grand shrine to the devotion of collecting art. The museum is also the home of Yannick Vu and Ben Jakober, artists who are friends with Yoko Ono.

If you are a paid subscriber to Wanderlife (thank you!), you received a handmade postcard from me with Yoko’s words when I got back from Mallorca. For two months, the message written in my own handwriting has been like a billboard in my home office. I’m not sure why these words called out to me, but I carried them home to ponder.

And for two months I’ve been meaning to write something about the words and the inspiration of art and travel but, well, I got derailed by the shit sandwich.

---

Wild

The word wild carries layers of meaning, but I think it’s fair to say that the last two months of my life have been pretty wild! The kind of wild that gives a person whiplash and during which it is hard to remember what groundedness and balance feel like. Since visiting the museum and returning from Mallorca, the organization where I’ve worked for nearly twenty-five years has been forced to box up 53 years of history and suspend all projects and programs. The wild chaos let loose on the American people is feeling very personal for staff, including myself.

This new reality has been disheartening, terrifying, maddening, and also, if I’m honest, exhilarating. It reminds me of how I felt when I was twenty-five years old — all the wild emotions, all the untempered ideas, all the unruly inspiration, all the untethered energy. A kind of wild that feels like holding on to the mane of a horse set loose without a track or destination.

I am stretched wide with both grief and gratitude as I walk into the wild unknown.

---

Wise

Yoko Ono says you can be wild and still be wise. Two months after I read those words in Mallorca, I’m still thinking about how to live them. Is it permission or a challenge? What does it mean to ‘be wise’ in this modern world? Or is it more about ‘being’ wild while honoring your inherent wisdom. Do we all need a walk on the wild side regularly? And how can we ride the wild vagaries of the world with maturity and wisdom?

It’s wise, I think, to understand life as a long story. The personal as well as the larger narrative of history. Every chapter is inherently interesting.

The artist and writer

Miranda July

has captured the attention of many women my age with her latest book, All Fours. In it, the main character is toying with how to handle the wild energy that has erupted in herself at a stage of life when she believes she should not be so wild. I haven’t gotten to the end yet, but in the beginning of the book, she reflects on the perimenopausal stage of life in a way that resonated for me as I stare into the void of my next chapter:

“I didn’t think a lot about death [yet], but I was getting ready to. I understood that death was coming and that all my current preoccupations were kind of naive; I still operated as if I could win somehow. Not the vast and total winning I had hoped for in the previous decades, but a last chance to get it together before winter came, my final season.”

On good days, I’m quite excited for this next phase. And I’m grateful for the container of this Wanderlife project as it reminds me not only that I value and honor the wandering path, but that I truly enjoy the wandering.

Wander

The first time I saw the WANDER billboard, pictured above, I pulled over for a few minutes to marvel at it.

I learned later it was part of a project by the Madison-based artist Thomas Ferrella. Deeply interested in the power of words, he paid out-of-pocket to place ten carefully chosen words on billboards around the city (ENOUGH, FORGET, WONDER, BE, BEGIN, WITNESS, PRETEND, DRIFT, and REASON).

It so happens that I worked with Ferrella briefly in the summer of 2014 — his artwork was one of five pieces selected for an installation I co-curated called Reflections from the Banks of the Yahara River.

Ferrella hopes the billboards inspire people to create their own commentary.

For me, stumbling on the WANDER billboard out in the wild reminded me of the power of public art and the potential of public space. It also made me excited about all the ways people bring their creativity to the times and places in which they live. We have so much to share!

So I’ll take this chance to remind my Madison-area readers that we are one month out from Field to Frock events celebrating flax, linen, and our modern human connection with textiles! Please check it out and come out to learn where your interests intersect with the local fibershed movement.

We all wear clothes — but do you know who grew your clothes?

---

Thank you for wandering with me and for your ongoing interest in the journey. These are interesting times! What words are catching your interest? What creative forces are whipping you around? Where are your wanderings taking you?

---

Readers and friends, if you got this far, please take a minute to click the heart button! It helps, it really does! And I love getting your responses in the comments (texts and emails are nice, too!). Also, I added a new feature thanks to the kind advice of other writers that allows you to essentially drop a tip in my jar. Not necessary, but always a nice thing.