Beautiful musings, thank you. I had a dream recently where all my memories were written on pieces of paper and put inside a small, wooden house. I was able to lift off the roof, select a memory, and time travel back to that specific moment. The objects within our homes may be lost but the memories are always with us. I think that’s what the dream was telling me.
…thought about you and your work yesterday on a run through the trash pile dregs where the final visible homeless population of west oakland has settled (half a block from a Target, nested between multiple reuse/junkyards…i wanted to take a picture of a certain mess that caught my eye and a man in a mask jumped from behind his burnt trailer waving barbed wire and middle fingers at me…i had no gift to give to calm down and start a conversation so I apologized and moved on…there are about 100 stories hidden down there and hoping to figure out a way to be helpful or at least connect and share them somehow…more to add later but your project, and your connection to the unhoused served me a reminder to give care and thought to that hidden and/or oft overlooked world…
You know, I struggle with that myself. There was once a photo journalist who came through the shelter I worked at and he gave a presentation on his work, because he wanted to build a relationship with one of the residents and document their lives through photography. He didn't have any luck. No one really wants to be seen in that state--how do you depict someone in that situation in a way that feels empowering and dignified?
This also made me think of one time when I was in college in a public health program and I was assigned a photo essay project. I decided to take some photos of an encampment, but I felt gross about it.
I think I'm hoping with my work to find a way to give the homeless an opportunity to create the image they want to share...maybe we shouldn't be the ones to take the photos?
...100%...probably shouldn't even be the ones telling the story either...i think all the time about Studs Terkel and his amazing work gathering so many oral histories and wonder why cities don't invest in creating those for the homeless (and just their regular citizens also) and selling them to seed money to assist those telling the stories...there has to be a better way than whatever it is we are doing now (in oakland, basically unhousing the unhoused to different locations in the city after the problem gets too vast or noticeable)...
Loved this piece, and I look forward to more. This column is talking about astrology, but makes great reference to attics being where servants and slaves slept - the people who we wanted to forget about; the people who we have forgot about; the attic as a place of forgetting. https://www.alicesparklykat.com/articles/297/The_Twelfth_House/
This is an amazing article!! Thank you so much for sharing. It is definitely a synchronicity. I've been digging deeper into my birth chart lately and learned my Taurus sun and moon are both in the twelfth house. I love the image here of taking ghosts for cab rides...this feels really resonant with things I've been working with. Thank you!
So the material of life is literally forgotten in the attic for you. My 12th house is empty, so it's not of great significance to me, but it's in Cancer, and the things in my attic are the reminders of being cared for. In truth, I think we all have childhood toys in the attic (should we have access to one) but how we frame the objects is what tells us who we are.
(I love Alice's work, she talks specifically and in depth about astrology and power struggles in very clear language, returning to medieval and ancient astrologers rather than modern astrology which sanitizes everything to uselessness, at best, to fascize, at worst.)
I love your project and I love the way you express your worries and your dreams. As a person who has had an innate fear of homelessness since childhood, I am grateful for your dollhouse project and your emotional, intellectual, and moral investigations in the dollhouse. Thank you for your dedication to your work.
Really appreciate your approach to writing this, and of course I agree with the sentiment. More and more, I don’t see disasters—natural or man-made, subtle or spectacular—as anomalies. They sure weren’t for most of our history. Tedium, routine and monotony: those are minor miracles. It’s incredible that stability has become so widespread that we’ve become deluded into thinking it’s something guaranteed.
Our own smallness I do actually find terrifying—sometimes it’s paralyzing. I know that this kind of mentality benefits no one, but it’s hard to shake. How great the ocean and all that. But I also give a lot of time and attention to small routines, and that does seem to help. It never occurred to me that these practices are proof of the worth of small things, but of course that's what they are. Thanks for that.
Beautiful and thought provoking. Are you on Bluesky as well? I don’t want your work to get lost in all the Substack I follow. I want to hear more about this.
Hi! Sorry I'm just seein this. I am, but I haven't gotten into the habit of using it very much yet. Should I change that? I feel like I don't understand how the platform works quite yet. Here's my link! Thank you for reading!! https://bsky.app/profile/patchworkprinciple.bsky.social
I feel like Bluesky is having a moment. Seems like lots of rapid growth. I like your visual art. I like the way you write about things. It feeds my creative soul.
Beautiful musings, thank you. I had a dream recently where all my memories were written on pieces of paper and put inside a small, wooden house. I was able to lift off the roof, select a memory, and time travel back to that specific moment. The objects within our homes may be lost but the memories are always with us. I think that’s what the dream was telling me.
…thought about you and your work yesterday on a run through the trash pile dregs where the final visible homeless population of west oakland has settled (half a block from a Target, nested between multiple reuse/junkyards…i wanted to take a picture of a certain mess that caught my eye and a man in a mask jumped from behind his burnt trailer waving barbed wire and middle fingers at me…i had no gift to give to calm down and start a conversation so I apologized and moved on…there are about 100 stories hidden down there and hoping to figure out a way to be helpful or at least connect and share them somehow…more to add later but your project, and your connection to the unhoused served me a reminder to give care and thought to that hidden and/or oft overlooked world…
You know, I struggle with that myself. There was once a photo journalist who came through the shelter I worked at and he gave a presentation on his work, because he wanted to build a relationship with one of the residents and document their lives through photography. He didn't have any luck. No one really wants to be seen in that state--how do you depict someone in that situation in a way that feels empowering and dignified?
This also made me think of one time when I was in college in a public health program and I was assigned a photo essay project. I decided to take some photos of an encampment, but I felt gross about it.
I think I'm hoping with my work to find a way to give the homeless an opportunity to create the image they want to share...maybe we shouldn't be the ones to take the photos?
...100%...probably shouldn't even be the ones telling the story either...i think all the time about Studs Terkel and his amazing work gathering so many oral histories and wonder why cities don't invest in creating those for the homeless (and just their regular citizens also) and selling them to seed money to assist those telling the stories...there has to be a better way than whatever it is we are doing now (in oakland, basically unhousing the unhoused to different locations in the city after the problem gets too vast or noticeable)...
Loved this piece, and I look forward to more. This column is talking about astrology, but makes great reference to attics being where servants and slaves slept - the people who we wanted to forget about; the people who we have forgot about; the attic as a place of forgetting. https://www.alicesparklykat.com/articles/297/The_Twelfth_House/
This is an amazing article!! Thank you so much for sharing. It is definitely a synchronicity. I've been digging deeper into my birth chart lately and learned my Taurus sun and moon are both in the twelfth house. I love the image here of taking ghosts for cab rides...this feels really resonant with things I've been working with. Thank you!
So the material of life is literally forgotten in the attic for you. My 12th house is empty, so it's not of great significance to me, but it's in Cancer, and the things in my attic are the reminders of being cared for. In truth, I think we all have childhood toys in the attic (should we have access to one) but how we frame the objects is what tells us who we are.
(I love Alice's work, she talks specifically and in depth about astrology and power struggles in very clear language, returning to medieval and ancient astrologers rather than modern astrology which sanitizes everything to uselessness, at best, to fascize, at worst.)
I love your project and I love the way you express your worries and your dreams. As a person who has had an innate fear of homelessness since childhood, I am grateful for your dollhouse project and your emotional, intellectual, and moral investigations in the dollhouse. Thank you for your dedication to your work.
Really appreciate your approach to writing this, and of course I agree with the sentiment. More and more, I don’t see disasters—natural or man-made, subtle or spectacular—as anomalies. They sure weren’t for most of our history. Tedium, routine and monotony: those are minor miracles. It’s incredible that stability has become so widespread that we’ve become deluded into thinking it’s something guaranteed.
Our own smallness I do actually find terrifying—sometimes it’s paralyzing. I know that this kind of mentality benefits no one, but it’s hard to shake. How great the ocean and all that. But I also give a lot of time and attention to small routines, and that does seem to help. It never occurred to me that these practices are proof of the worth of small things, but of course that's what they are. Thanks for that.
Beautiful and thought provoking. Are you on Bluesky as well? I don’t want your work to get lost in all the Substack I follow. I want to hear more about this.
Hi! Sorry I'm just seein this. I am, but I haven't gotten into the habit of using it very much yet. Should I change that? I feel like I don't understand how the platform works quite yet. Here's my link! Thank you for reading!! https://bsky.app/profile/patchworkprinciple.bsky.social
I feel like Bluesky is having a moment. Seems like lots of rapid growth. I like your visual art. I like the way you write about things. It feeds my creative soul.