All of history is storytelling. I’ve recently been taken by the new book on history as storytelling by Richard Cohen. This past weekend, even as the tragic story in Ukraine continues to unfold has been awash in the religious narratives that have been so pervasive and powerful in our world for so long. This is a good time to remember how devastating or inspirational a story can be as a means to organize data, determined by who gets to tell what story with what outcome.

I feel reduced to being another witness to another holocaust.

I hated leaving New York City. It was wrenching but perhaps necessary for now. My personal "explanation," to friends, that it was all about the numbers, didn’t Hailing from Australia, Glenn Albrecht recently wrote on his FB page, “From Earth Emotions” (2019):

"I am fully supportive of experiences such as "forest bathing" (Shinrin-yoku) that give back to the body the elements it needs for physical health, for example, enhanced oxygen levels. I do this at my property at Duns Creek. The subtle combination of trees, running water, wind and birdsong, all combine to give my body what it needs to rest and recuperate its energy."

This week I will see spring twice. Spring is hope, like snow is joy. I always crave both. There was scant, only wet, evanescent snow in New York City (NYC) this year and I missed snow on Vinalhaven Island, Maine. At least in Maine, I know snow is a likely certainty to return. Snow is no longer a certainty in NYC. Despite climate change, the joy of snow is still a promise in Maine, at least for now and spring is still a certainty everywhere, bringing promises of joy along with hope.

Please join me Wednesday night for a fragment of The Blued Trees Opera, embedded in my talk for Philadelphia Contemporary: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/museums-of-the-21st-century-aviva-rahmani-and-li-sumpter-registration-297330863617?keep_tld=1

On the first day of spring, the sentient world is holding its breath as the devastation in Ukraine grinds on. In this essay by Thomas Freidman, he outlines why Putin’s plan D may be on Europe’s doorstep, “If Putin’s plans A, B and C all fail, though, I fear that he would be a cornered animal and he could opt for plan D — launching either chemical weapons or the first nuclear bomb since Nagasaki.”

I took a week off blogging last week as I watched the siege of Ukraine. Even as I attended to how the horror unfolded, I was also preparing to move out of New York City (NYC). My goal in leaving is to return to the Ghost Nets site where I restored habitat (1990-2000) in Maine by April 8. In Maine the view I have of the greater world is softer. There are different lessons to learn from that site than what I can learn in NYC. Both trajectories feel driven by familiar narratives about dominance and helplessness but really point us to different and unfamiliar outcomes. The former, siege and the latter, leaving, are narrational styles.

Even as Putin pursues an asymmetric WW III to all our peril, I feel heartened by the global response to the horror In the Ukraine. As Putin threatens nuclear reprisals, it's hard to keep creating, thinking and sharing in the depths of this terrorism. But I think that's part of our resistance. It is resistance to toxic patriarchy and the ecocide which mirrors that toxicity.

All visuals, all art is an exercise in mnemonics, from Monet’s “Water Lilies” to photographs from the fronts of wars, even the bland framed art as wallpaper in a hotel is intended to have an effect on our mind, that is, a non-effect. Tibetan scrolls, in contrast, are intended to take the mind down many corridors of association to spiritual enlightenment.

Please join me this summer and reserve your spot before March 15, 2022 for a two-day catered master class in ecoart in my seaside studio on Vinalhaven.

I had my first dramatic performance at age 11 with the Beechwood Players in Scarborough, New York. It was a one-line roller skate walk-on in which I declaimed, “it’s Midnight!” I got the bug and immersed myself in what I could learn of The Method, practicing Stanislavsky’s exercises in my bedroom. Three years later I got a huge audience response after delivering a soliloquy in my school, at the imagined bedside of my dying boyfriend. A year later, I wrote my first play, “To Love,” about a teenage interracial romance that drives a young girl to consider suicide. A few more years later, I immersed myself in Antonin Artaud’s thinking about the theatre. To this day, I am comfortable with total immersion in whatever I create.