Life happens
Art carries on
“Red Squirrel at the Bird Feeder,” Photo by Aviva Rahmani 2026
Sometimes life happens. In case you missed my weekly essay, life is the explanation. May 9, I fell asleep at my post at MAC Book Pro and spilled coffee over my entire system. It died a sputtering death. I had been writing another essay for this series so it might be considered a form of murder suicide. Many people have told me for a long time that I work too hard. I once asked the late great artist Carolee Schneemann whether she thought it was possible to be a serious artist but not a workaholic. She replied immediately, “no.”
Since my tech debacle I have been making do with ancillary systems: the PC in my office mostly used by my assistant, Daisy Morton, and therefore utterly alien to my normal routines; my iPad, which I bought years ago, sure it would change my life and had not touched since and whose prompts are also utterly alien to me; and my cell phone. This is not adequate means to complete the two new books I’m working on, complete a large grant due yesterday, and a host of other tasks. But I did put in my Spring garden.
And I have also developed a close relationship with a local red squirrel, who spends all day gobbling up the bird seed in my feeder on the other side of the window that I face as I work. Nonetheless. I am continuing to develop my thinking about Tidal Flushing and have been practicing my singing for a concert in the local Union Church Memorial Day.
Tidal Flushing is all about how we will adapt to climate change. I think about that a lot and have to wonder what the future landscape will be for art after sea level rise has taken out all the coastlines and climate refugees have flooded arable land. Maybe this is a precursor to a time when the confines of my own mind will be my studio.
Carolee’s answer was so typical of that generation, but your forced pause reminds us that sometimes nature (and a spilled coffee) steps in to demand a different rhythm. There is something deeply feminist and grounded about pivoting from the digital grind to planting a Spring garden, watching a red squirrel, and practicing music for your community. It’s a radical act of slowing down.