I am perfectly broken
We are in pieces. Are we all not just a little bit (beautifully) shit?
I am a mend piece. I learned this term from Mother Yoko, she of the wail and wonder and doing her own thang, 100% of the Right On, Sister time. Mend Piece is not about people—it’s about pottery—but it’s about people now. It’s about me. But isn’t everything about me these days? I’m using that me in the Royal We sense. The Royal Me is all of us.
When I wrote the word pottery in the previous paragraph, I accidentally typed poetry instead of pottery. It was not the first time I wrote poetry instead of pottery when trying to write this piece. This mend piece. About the broken poetry pottery of me. Poetry is the unforced error my brain is making.
I am a mend piece. I am made from several multi-syllabic pieces of broken poetry.
A verse dropped from high
Shattered haiku broken thought
Mend piece of mend peace
The mind peace of the mend piece haiku remains unbroken, but the instinct is to smash it. Now. And grab. And hide it away from your sight. To get out my dustpan and broom and sweep it into the garbage and away from the light. You get the drift. But where are my galoshes? Brain wants to jump in puddles and think more on it. Puddles are soft but don’t worry—my reflection breaks easily.
I am a mend piece. This makes me also kintsugi. I learned this term from the same story about Mother Yoko’s Mend Piece. I fall, I fall, I smash and scatter. From heights both great and sub-par to the floor I go. Fall-fall-fall. Fall more says the invisible force. Land awkwardly and twisted with boo-boos and bingles and crumbled core and exploded enamel. And then? Then reach for the gold and silver to Mend Piece again. Join my broken seams so that I may hold water. I am kintsugi, but only if I do the mending. Only if I do the work. And only if I allow my imperfect lacquer to be seen in the aftermath.
My defects made viewable. My cracks celebrated for their ugly cry ways.
“Are we not,” she says, and by she, I mean me, and by we, I mean Royal, “Are we not in a constant state of falling apart? All our lives? Smashing and dashing on the kitchen floor of lost love. Chipping off our ego and sense of confident self with the hammers of hurt. Mismatching our patterns as we reconstruct with the glue of learning. And other twee phrasings.”
She supposes yes. We nod our heads as we touch our scars with soft fingers. She and we and they and them and he and you. All of us mend ourselves for the rugged road. We break out. We break down. We break.
But who collects our chinaware now? How do we remember the shape of us if it is constantly on the mend? Where is my cabinet of curiosities with the fine bone and handed down Great Aunt tea sets? It’s all me-sets these days, and we-sets has too much baggage.
The point?
Kintsugi celebrates imperfections. Calls them to the floor as the main feature of adulation. I am a mend piece and I have made so many missteps leading to cracked facades and shattered everythings that my failed-audition instinct is to sit down and stop walking altogether. But I don’t, and neither should you. Mend piece is a scar show and there are lessons in the lines. Or to put it another way, in this violent crumble of life, it really is the way it shatters that matters1. The violence of our failures, the messy teachings of our failed art, the wrecked relationships, heart horrors, financial fuckedupery, and more—this is the point. Glue, tape, gold. Whatever you’ve got, get to the mend.
I am an imperfect being. I am difficult. I am sweet. I am sullen. I am open. I have jealousy. I have love. I rage. I meditate. Self-sabotage cracks and inaction fissures. I am broken in many interesting and horrendously mundane ways. I start too many sentences with I but am aware of this. I am a work in progress. A human. A being. An I on the way J.
“Mend carefully.” instructs Mother Yoko’s exhibit. “/ Think of mending the world at the same time.”
It starts with us. You. Me. Royal We. Ourselves is our salvation, and through that, I don’t know? Perhaps that’s where the world comes in? She said to think, I thought, therefore I am.
Our shards, the mismatched pattern of us being constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed again in ceramic uncertainty. Our made wholes and together agains. Don’t hide that gold of life. Don’t shroud your joins with cleaner cloths. Don’t cold cream your wrinkles or dull your ragged seams with shame. Fear is a concrete floor begging to the bone. Throw yourself down. Object not to the imperfect object, because while your freckles may come back misaligned, or the patterns of your print left slightly askew, know there is magic in the misprint.
This is your fine, your bone, your porcelain perfection. You were thrown, Little Pot, to break a thousand times in your lifetime and still retain the essence held in your mud. You were thrown to break.
Look to the mend piece, the mend peace, the mend. This is you. This is me. And aren’t we all just a little bit beautifully shit?
Yours in tiny thought,
Janeen
This week’s amends…
I wish this interview with Michael Keaton had been longer!
A couple of quotes from it:
I have wide interests, or catholic interests, as they say, and when you’re like that, you reach a point where you go, “OK, I still have to make a living so I have to take certain acting jobs,” and you try to do your best. Then you start to literally get tired of hearing your own voice, and also metaphorically get tired. You kinda go, “Am I a bullshitter right now?”
I’ve passed up so much work over the years because I was curious about other things. I wanted to live life. Maybe it’s that nothing was coming around that made me interested. But I think work’s real important.
What’s the trick?Here’s the deal: Everything comes down to the question of what do you want? You keep going back to what you want and you go, “Well, I have this,” but, yeah, what do you want? Then you have to drill down and have the balls to say, “If that’s what you really want, then you have to do X.” You know what the rest of it is? Good fortune. A couple of things go your way.
I’m blessed-slash-cursed with a bit of a chip on my shoulder. I keep it there because it’s motivational.
- Michael Keaton, NYT interview2, July 2021
On Rotation: Talking Heads “Stop Making Sense”
Remember the first time you ever saw this movie?
Remember the episode of Documentary Now that paid homage to it?3
If you are a bit fascinated with this fantastic spectacle, you might enjoy this Strong Songs podcast about why it’s so great.
While the whole album (with a bunch of extra tracks not on the vinyl) is on Spotify, I am linking to just one. I will confess I had difficulty choosing between this and Slippery People.
You know how you can go your whole life and just have holes in your knowledge about certain things? I never knew Fame! was based on an actual school. That nugget never permeated my teenage brain in Australia at the time.
Via Doobybrain
These optical illusion things always make me so mad.
Via Kottke
Did any of this spark a tiny thought of your own?
If you have exceeded your free NYT articles and do not subscribe, I believe 12ft Ladder works on it. It’s certainly let me read a lot of paywalled stuff, though doesn’t work on everything.