Threshold

Most Ordinary by Susan Piver

Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my constitution, the only wrong what is against it. –

Ralph Waldo Emerson

We are our most potent at our most ordinary. And yet most of us discount our “ordinary” because it is, well, ordinary. Or so we believe. But my ordinary is not yours. Three things block us from putting down our clever and picking up our ordinary: false comparisons with others (I’m not as good a writer as __), false expectations of ourselves (I should be on the NYTimes best seller list or not write at all), and false investments in a story (it’s all been written before, I shouldn’t bother). What are your false comparisons? What are your false expectations? What are your false investments in a story?   Each keeps you from that internal knowing about which Emerson writes. Each keeps you from making your strong offer to the world. Put down your clever, and pick up your ordinary. ~Susan Piver

I wrote this last entry to this first chapter of Project BUD once already....it disappeared suddenly into cyberspace...sigh.   I started that one with a different quote from Emerson, but apparently this is the one I was meant to use.

I am humbled and intrigued by ordinary, the textures of everyday life, the rhythms and routines that become that suddenly become visible and valuable. The above image/work is by Laura Mangan, a BFA student at Cork College of Art and Design.  Raw metal attracts me and texture speaks to me and her text relates back to the above quote. 

We all fight the temptation to attend too much to 'no longer' and 'not yet'.  We are intimidated by the 'near elsewhere' i.e. false comparisons, unrealistic expectations.  I am grateful to have had the time [ordinary time] to be with this project outside my own country/context/comfort zone.  I was allowed to be and do and think and influence in an intuitive way that was scary and stimulating at the same time.  I was humbled by the attention and energy of my hosts and colleagues. I had to rely on/trust in the value of what I know in order to do my work. I had time to be thoughtful about how we are the same, how we are different, how we see ourselves and see each other.  In writing this blog narrative, I discovered a way of 'making an offer to the world'.  That offer is:

              Let's see how many ways there are to answer this question:

And, what is a map?

Remembering Hermann's door

[the one that he thought was not a map]

   helps me segue to the last remark   ...

Laura Mangan

            Here we stand, [work behind, work ahead] on the threshold.