5.09.2009

Art meets Time

Time is a sensory thing. I can't feel it passing like other people. I only know it by the sensory activity in which I'm engaged. Making art gives me complete suspension of any temporal movement. When I was on a sailboat, I only felt time by experiencing the moon. If we neared the shore this was marked by tides. This image, Time or Tide: What Moves You, is what time felt like at sea. Since living aboard a sailboat and returning to land, I was diagnosed with Meniere's Disease, impairing my balance and hearing. It amounts to being seasick on land. Or the feeling of falling out of a helicopter though your feet are still on the ground. Perplexing, and nauseating. Though after surgeries I can now walk again, the hearing impairment it caused is progressive. Episodes happen off and on, leaving me lying at a horizontal incline of between 16-45 degrees for several hours or up to a couple of days. When you cannot move, time is altered. It is how I began bead crochet for my reUse jewelry (artimentary.etsy.com). I was seeking a way to make art when I couldn't see because of nystagmus. I couldn't change the tilt of my head because of vertigo. Fighting with gravity for no reason is irrational, so surrender was a necessity. Like seasickness, your reasoning may tell you that you are safe in a bobbing vessel, but your body can still object all it wants to, behaving as if you are nothing but a cork about to be swept into oblivion. It's all about perception. Back to the time thing: when bedridden for a year, time becomes either a preoccupation or a nonsequetor. When my world was too full of discomfort, art gave beauty back through the texture of beads, which let me experience tiny passing moments, that turned to ropes, which pulled me eventually back upright. Once upright, this image of nighttime at sea emerged. It is my metaphor for when time was only measured in swells, and darkness was the deep indigo of a wet world. I share it with you in hopes that your time of depth will be as fruitful for you as mine was, and is, for me. Nothing is wasted. Time, however we experience it, moves like the tide.

1 comment:

  1. I have Meniere's disease and your description of it was wonderful.
    very nice post!

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