On Limits | Perspect Midcentury Modern Art Mobile by Mark Leary
On limits
“Yes, dust *does* settle,” explained bear. “But you don’t have to.”
Thoughts while making
I see cobwebs. It’s a curse, I think. I walk into someone’s house and I see cobwebs. And I wonder if they see them, too. And if they do, why don’t they get rid of them.
Today, as I was taking photos for my daily Home Art Walkabout in my IG stories, I picked up my Haniwa Boar. I commissioned it years ago from a superb Oregon artist, Wataru Sugiyama. I love it. And it brings me joy every single day.
You can imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered it was covered in cobwebs.
I immediately got out a brush and went to work cleaning it. I was amazed at how much dust and gunk came off it. However, as I thought about it, there was no reason why I should’ve been surprised.
See, although I admire it every day, I’ve never thoroughly cleaned it.
From a distance, it looks the very same as it did on the day it arrived 15+ years ago. Even when I sit at my table – which is just a couple feet away from it – it still looks fine.
But when I got up close. Really inspected it. Put my hands on it. Got out the brush and got into it, that’s when the illusion disappeared. Cobwebs and dust in the ears. The eyes. Across the mouth. Tied up in the tail. Everywhere.
And so it with our thoughts, our beliefs, and our relationships, isn’t it?
If you don’t get up close to what you take for granted, a lot of gunk can build up without you ever realizing it. Dust in the eyes that blinds. Cobwebs in the ears to deafen.
At a time when we’re asking the tough and necessary questions of society, I’d invite you to ask them of the people and things you take for granted in your life. Especially the ones you know are a little dusty, but you ignore because you “don’t want to have to get into it.”
I recently did this and discovered I have a racist in my own family. While the discovery is uncomfortable to say the least, the ability to see it for what it is – hiding under all that dust – offers me great perspective and clarity on the path forward.
What’s one thing or relation you could “pick up” today to inspect a little more closely?