BLACK HOLE (OR/OF) GRIEF

My understanding of a black hole--which is a hazy, non-scientist understanding, so take it for what it's worth--is that they're an exponentially intensified version of a diamond. Take coal and add pressure you get a diamond. Now add more pressure to that diamond. Now add more pressure. Add so much pressure that atoms are condensed, gravity drawing all matter in squeezing the living daylights out of it all.

There is a theory that black holes create universes. They act as a forge, spinning at unimaginable speeds trapping and wrapping matter up into a tiny seed particle which explodes on the other side of the black hole as a new universe. (1)

Once I had my heart break, only it didn't feel like breaking. It felt as though it was being tightly squeezed, painfully so. 

I imagine grief as a black hole, beginning as the heart is squeezed in an invisible fist of the irreversible weight of an ending, causing the collapse of the heart and drawing everything within range into the swirling blackness. For a while you wear the event horizon around you like a painful crown, you watch as everything you treasured, hoped for, dreamed of, and once were spins, torn from their place in the heavens where they should be. Then you are left on the other side of a one way door in a new universe. What will it be? Are there no familiar constellations to guide your ship by? Are there no ships? Would it be better to not remember as you walked into this new world?

I read Joan Didion's Year of Magical Thinking, because I saw this quote from it, "When we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. As we were. As we are no longer. As we will one day not be at all." I felt that painful heart squeeze for a person who was living and gone and for several people who were dead, whom I had felt die and then seen them picked out of the car and off the road and placed gently into the back of a pickup truck parked in the middle of a highway in Paraguay. It was for that I read Year of Magical Thinking. It was for the person who I was six years ago who couldn't stop seeing and feeling all those moments and aching painfully over the living and the dead. For that person who had no strength of will to go, to stretch, or to push herself. And for the girl she had been.

Grief is a beautiful awful thing.


(1) http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/02/140218-black-hole-blast-explains-big-bang/
(Another basic resource on black holes) http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/stories/nasa-knows/what-is-a-black-hole-k4.html

JOURNAL: THERE'S BLOOD ON MY MOTHERBOARD

 My biggest fear continues to be that people will find me boring. Or grow bored with me, I'm not sure if those are the same or two different things.

It's a thing that has haunted me for always. I used to think I could banish it, that I'd beat it and cast it off like a brilliant and powerful amazon (not the corporation) never to be held back again. But now I recognize it will probably always be there. It's become a thing to face, to test--to dance with and romance and then to shy away from again.



There's a lull in building friendships--a great gulf that scares me every time. The initial getting-to-know-facts-and-favorite-colors step is second nature now. The shy young kid who crept around her dorm building freshman year and sat paralyzed unable to speak to anyone in her classes has blossomed a bit. But there's this deep cavernous pit, a moon crater, or perhaps a Kola Superdeep Borehole--a scientific drilling project that I'm afraid of going into because I hate when we come away empty and walk away from each other. Perhaps it's better to look at these as expeditions in the name of science and in the pursuit of truth rather than feeling like I just shared a bit of my soul that I can't get back even though it's been rejected.

How do you even share when your raisons d'être are made of things like cupping your hands in front of your face and blowing at the honeysuckle petals in your hand to watch as they flutter in a puff of tiny brilliant orange specks? Marvels like that are so quiet and small, they're hard to share with most people.   

I'd been pondering this because I've dipped back into a reclusive phase and I'm feeling the need to break out in some way. Last night I was twiddling my thumbs reflecting when I knew what was needed was to film something. Anything. So I took a walk to a hidden little nature preserve I discovered a few months ago with a boy--I'd known for a long time I'd need to go back alone to make it mine. Even then as we'd held hands we felt like two solo units who happened to be there in step with each other. I walked there hoping I'd find it again, find it before it was dark. I found the stairs just as we had then and I climbed down into this beautiful place. And for a minute I filmed the stream as I looked around and breathed in the world. 


22 April 2016 from Marge Bjork on Vimeo.

HAS IT BEEN FOUR YEARS?

North Dakota

JOURNAL: AGE, WEAR, AND BLITHER

Sometimes I'm reminded that I need to write more. I've never seen myself as a writer, never felt the call to be an author. Rather, I have to write. I would not be a happy, well-adjusted, fairly confident individual without writing. I wouldn't be a lot of things so it's easier to say what I would be: miserable.

I've been biking for my work commute as we've been blessed of late with this fresh, spring weather. This is a ten mile round trip with plenty of up and downhills. Add to that my vague training for a 10K (running) race at the end of May...My body has been telling me it's aging this past year. I feel damaged much more quickly if I don't stretch it and rest it like it wants. It's a whole new phase of life with sciatic nerves and ligaments and strangely specific muscle aches. Where raising my arm while dancing to Sam Cooke on soul night can pull a muscle and take a couple of months to heal. Bodies are weird and precarious and really special.

Another part of aging probably speaks to why I blog so little as of late. What you may not realize is that most of my posts for the past year were scheduled long ago, these photographs that appear periodically were set up to appear on the anniversaries of their creation as precious mementos for myself. I blog so little because I no longer heavily feel the weight of existential dilemmas that I did eight years ago. I'm sure I'll face another wave of those as I near middle age. For now, I have no children so I can relax in my knowledge that I know nothing.

Guys, I can comprehend now that I'll near middle age. Before you know it I'll be 30 and then it's just a fleetly, flittly, flying leap to 40. I can see 40 approaching. I've always seen years stretching out before me like a strange day (but year) planner, white boxes enclosed in structured black lines. Which is funny because no one actually experiences time this way, but I've always had this image and it continues on, now with 38, 39, and 40 in view.

Well, anyway, this is total blither meant to just get me to write for a few minutes. And I'll post because this is the internet which is comprised largely by blither and who doesn't want to fit in? Let's all be lemmings.

LAST YEAR ON THIS DAY

British Natural History Museum

JOURNAL/ILLUSTRATION: PEOPLE IN APRIL

This is what happens when I'm sitting next to my boyfriend while drawing in my notebook:

Cut off in this picture is the caption, "What happens when you become a star." 
I thought that was a great joke.

I wrote the speech bubble by the worm, "We're good friends," thinking this was such an adorable, sweet friendship and he made the bat respond with, "Yeah! Now I'ma eat you!" which sparked the debate that encircles the original sketch. This was after he requested I draw a worm hole so I drew a worm, he requested a Batarang which I guess is the name for Batman's throwing star/bats so I drew a bat,  he said the bat should have a superman shield emblem so I drew a CTR emblem.

LAST YEAR ON THIS DAY

THREE YEARS AGO: I LONG FOR YOU, I RUN AWAY FROM YOU

North Dakota

THREE YEARS AGO TODAY

North Dakota

& THREE YEARS AGO TODAY

North Dakota

JOURNAL: A GROWING NEED

I'M MORE
COMFORTABLE
THAN EVER
WITH MYSELF
BUT
ALL I WANT
TO DO
IS PRETEND
TO BE
OTHER PEOPLE.

THREE YEARS AGO TODAY

North Dakota.

THREE YEARS AGO TODAY BUT IT TAKES ME BACK FURTHER STILL

Family home

ILLUSTRATION: FINNISH RUNNING ROBOTS

LOOK,
THEY'RE SO JOYOUS!

JOURNAL: REMOVAL FROM REALITY

I would dearly like a day removed from reality, removed from linear time––just the capsule of my bedroom transplanted to the forested mountain wilds. A pile of books around my bedside table and pillows, some black licorice for snacking, and giant windows looking onto a universe where there are no people: that's what I long for. The evening would call for a thick, knit sweater and a crackling fire.

PHOTO: CLOUD DAY // NOSTALGIA OF A PRAIRIE SKY

JOURNAL: DEALING WITH THE IRREGULARLITY OF BUSES

The bus is regularly 20-40 minutes late, not on my way to work, happily, but the buses to take me home. It's going to keep happening and I really don't like being mad. It's fruitless and frustrating. There must be a good reason the bus is late, right? Just because I don't see any traffic and all the other buses seem to be running just fine doesn't mean there's not a valid reason. I just have to make one up.

My first thought was that maybe there's some sort of sparkly rainbow cat that holds the bus up and demands the driver and passengers dance around to annoying pop music until it's thoroughly amused before it let's them pass. It would be a traumatic experience for all involved so when the middle-aged, tired-faced bus driver greats me as I board I should give him a reassuring smile.

 

After thinking of that story the bus pulled up, I gave the driver a reassuring smile, and I gave up imagining reasons for why it was late.

 

This week I've completely fallen under the spell of Stromae, a Belgian human of pop amazingness. He's really popular in Europe so I heard him all the time last year and thought, "Oh yeah, this guy's pretty good but let's listen to some Bob Dylan." But this week I've been obsessed. Last night on my bus ride home (that was only ten minutes late) I watched this music video over and over and over, you should too. All of you. To give you a brief synopsis, one of the lines in the song translates to: "Everybody knows how to make babies but nobody knows how to make dads." (Which isn't true, I must say, I can't keep quiet on that. Some people do know how to be dads. I know some excellent fathers including my own marvelous Dad.) Now keeping that in mind listen to the music and watch the video and wonder at the layers of what is going on here. And even though you may not understand the lyrics, rest assured he's exceedingly clever at playing on words (at least according to this French novice who's typing this up) to say what he wants.



And in closing, I need to work on my bacon cooking skills.  

JOURNAL: POLAND IS A LAND YOU MUST PAY ATTENTION TO

This is so incredibly important. You need, need, need, need, need, need, NEED to know about Franek Kimono. He's brilliant. Imagine Rocky if he were Polish and decided to record a disco album. 



My coworker and I discovered him during a morning absorbed in Polish music exploration, a pursuit I highly recommend. Time and time again I've found Poland is a frequently overlooked rich treasure trove.

Franek is actually the creation of a man whose name, Piotr Fronczewski, I cannot pronounce but nevertheless is an actor and singer who in 1983 decided to record the Franek Kimono album as a joke and stumbled into success. I am not in the least surprised, the album is incredibly delightful.


A longtime favorite Pole of mine is the film director Andrzej Wajda. His films are masterful and poignant and I am fully aware that's the least substantive sentence, I essentially have told you nothing about him. Let me put it this way: his films, from the first viewing, have reached themselves deep into the folds of my mind. I regularly reflect on them, tracing the outline of their images. Ashes and Diamonds (1958) and Katyn (2007) both deal with war from which I've pieced together histories we don't hear often. I never knew Poland was invaded both by the Nazis and the Soviets during WWII and suffered under each, the Soviet control lasting for decades.

Perhaps you're crazy and history and movies about the terror and tenderness that occurs during war isn't your thing. I still think you should watch them. Particularly look for a reference to Antigone in Katyn. In fact, brush up on your familiarity with Sophocles' and Anouilh's versions of the play, then watch Katyn. With a box of tissues. And some candy canes, for 'tis the season.

xoxo,
Marge 

JOURNAL: MY OLD PERSON MUSIC TASTES + BUBBLES

Me and Bubbles the yeti whom we've been making at work when we get the chance. He's so hug-able.

Aside from the usual favorite songs like Lou Reed's "Perfect Day," Velvet Underground's "Found a Reason," and The Smiths "There is a Light that Never Goes Out," I've found a lot of new musical obsessions lately. In playing DJ in my office, I instituted cultural music mornings which my coworker heartily embraced and which have taken over the whole day. Some of our forays are more adventurous than others, like that time we tried didgeridoo music.

On stressful days we may put on the Chet Baker radio station; when we're peppy it's the Regional Mexicano station. Our lists of internet radio stations are ever expanding. My coworker is regularly calling out requests, we're both always looking for new things. Tonight I found a Russian songstress who sings in Russian I'm excited to delve into, and I believe I've figured out how we can listen to more of Benoit Quersin and Esole Eka Likota's Anthologie de la musique Congolaise. I bring all these up to spread the delight I find them to be, I think you should all be listening to them. Also, to point out that I am largely out of touch with whatever may be on a contemporary radio station. Don't worry, I'm really 87 not 27.

Accordingly, I've got two treats for you tonight you must immediately listen to.

One is the Accordion Tribe's "Waltz for Sandy."

Accordion Tribe - Waltz for Sandy (Klucevsek) from Boléro on Vimeo.

The other star is Nino Ferrer's "Les Cornichons." That translates to a song entitled "Pickles." The entire song is about food. It's largely comprised of lists of foods and condiments like mayonnaise, mustard, mushrooms, chicken, chocolate, etc.



That is all, now go about your ways with love and fascination.
xoxo

PHOTO: CLOUD DAY