pegkerr | Entries tagged with 2024 52 card project

I'm posting this a day early because, you know, there is this wedding distracting me this weekend.

I went for an exploratory expedition with

minnehaha last week: we spent a pleasant afternoon meandering through the galleries of the Walker Art Museum. I haven't been there in years.

We spent most of our time looking at an exhibit entitled "Multiple Realities: Experimental Art in the Eastern Bloc, 1960s–1980s." Quite absorbing but also rather sad. It was astounding the extent that artists would go to in an attempt to make art while evading the official censors. Sometimes they resorted to using their own bodies as canvases within a limited time frame, i.e., they would spread the word among their friends 'come to this street at this hour and enter this basement and after you see what I have written on my body, I will take a shower. DON'T TELL ANYONE WHO WILL TELL THE POLICE.'

For much of this ephemeral art there are only photographs and videos to see.

We stopped for a lovely midafternoon too-late-for-lunch-too-early-for-dinner meal at the restaurant in the building. I wanted to incorporate the beautiful cocktail I ordered into the collage, but I thought the photo was pretty enough to stand on its own.

I had a strong artistic sense of this card as I was taking photographs for it. Most of the photos I harvested had definite horizontal energy. Unfortunately, I've put it together in a bit of a hurry because I have a lot to do this weekend, and I'm not feeling patient enough to tinker with it endlessly. I've layered various works of art from the exhibit, and placed over them a semi-transparent shot of the view down a long corridor:

corridor at the walker

Description: layered images of an art exhibit at the Walker Art Museum, with semi-transparent images of various works of art, overlaid by the word 'Walker.' Upper right corner are the words 'Make Sense (of this)' Lower right corner: a black poodle.

Walker

7 Walker

Click here to see the 2024 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2023 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 52 Card Project gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 52 Card Project gallery.

In a way, this is a thematic follow-up to last week's collage, which was a meditation about discerning the kind of life I wish to lead. One thing I have been thinking about for a while is how I want to rebuild my social network. Rob and I didn't socialize much when he was going through his treatment. Then there was grief, and then there was the pandemic.

I have been reading about Blue Zones, the regions of the world that scientists are studying because that's where people thrive the best into extreme old age. One factor that has been identified that helps is social connections. This is something the Surgeon General has also been examining (see the report here) and he has warned of the danger that loneliness poses to people's health.

I ran across an article in the Star Tribune about an experiment a woman by the name of Anna Bonavita has started: she had spent some time in Italy while her husband was dying, and one thing that she found helped her profoundly was the communal table at a nearby restaurant. When Anna came back to the United States, she decided to try it at a venue called Gigi's Cafe. Anyone interested can come to join the conversation on Thursdays from 6 to 8 pm.

So I went to check it out. The number was a bit small because it was a rainy night. Several people in this circle are involved in the Twin Cities tango dance community. Despite the small number, I enjoyed the conversation immensely and have already gone back a second time (last night), which was better attended.

The text over the bottom of the collage is one of the pull quotes from the Star Tribune article.

I enjoyed doing this collage. The picture I took of the couple dancing was taken from inside the cafe looking out, but I think I did a good job of making it look like the couple was being viewed from another angle, from outside the cafe looking in.

Description: A view from outside through a cafe window (Gigi's Cafe). The cafe (the colors are slightly washed out) is empty, except for a couple (vividly colored) dancing in an aisle between the tables, eyes closed totally focused on one another. Lower center text reads: “When you feel hungry, you eat. When you feel a sharp pain in your lower extremity, you move your toe off the tack. But when the unpleasant state is loneliness, the best way to get relief is to form a connection with someone else.”

Gigi's Cafe

6 Gigi's Cafe

I learned recently of the death of a good college friend, which was a shock. As I reflected upon my friend's life, I found myself feeling extremely sad for her. Her relationships with every person in her life had suffered profoundly: she broke with every member of her family, she had three failed marriages, she lost many of her possessions in an apartment building fire, she struggled with alcohol and mental health issues, she was unable to find meaningful work in the last decade of her life, and in the end, she died alone. I'm not saying that she didn't have moments of joy in her life, because she did.

But still...

The week depicted by this collage also included Groundhog Day, which also happens to be the anniversary of Rob's funeral.

Together, along with a Jeep commercial post that floated by me on Facebook, this got me to start thinking about the Bill Murray movie Groundhog Day. I saw a post online years ago about this movie that I have wished many times that I could read again, but alas, I didn't bookmark it.

The post argued that Groundhog Day is a really remarkably profound movie about life and its search for meaning. Bill Murray's character in this film is a cynical news reporter sent to cover the Puxsawtawney Phil celebration on February 2 who discovers, to his consternation, that he is repeating the same day over and over again. He goes through countless reactions: disbelief, destructive anger, a cynical willingness to take advantage of a life with no consequences, and suicidal despair. He is finally jolted into a new way of thinking by the realization that there is a man he encounters every repeated day who dies during the course of the day, and he cannot save him. Death, he comes to realize, limits us all, so what kind of life is he willing to make for himself within those limits? Even if that limit is just one day?

Why not make it the best of all possible lives?

In my reading of Jane Austen fanfiction, I have come across four different retellings of Pride and Prejudice using this Groundhog Day framing, of a day repeated over and over again. I was initially surprised by this, but then realized that it makes sense, because the central plot in Pride and Prejudice is examining at least some of the same questions that underlie the movie Groundhog Day. In the development of their relationship with one another, Darcy and Lizzy each have to wrestle with the question: what kind of person am I? What kind of life do I want to live? What constitutes a worthwhile life? What kind of relationships do I want to have with the people around me, and do any of them include love?

I spend Groundhog Day reading one of these four variations, Elizabeth Frerichs's The Riches of a Well-Lived Life, which I very much enjoyed. (I had picked it up because I was quite pleased with an earlier book of hers, Through the Lens of a Letter). The other variations that I know of using this same Groundhog Day premise are Jayne Bambour's Madness in Meryton (which, interestingly enough, chooses the exact same day from the novel to repeat, the date that the Bennet sisters walk to Meryton and meet Wickham), Elizabeth Adams' The 26th of November, and Beau North and Brooke West's The Many Lives of Fitzwilliam Darcy.

Mulling this over got me to think about again something I have considered before: what, to me, would be a well-lived life? I remember when I lost my job at the law firm and did a lot of analysis of this question and came up with an answer I rather like: a well-lived life is living in the right place, with strong connections (of friendship and love) to the right people, doing the right work on purpose. I will be thinking more about this (as I mentioned before, this year is going to include a lot of change), as I try to envision the right life for me.

This collage is inspired by the lovely cover of Elizabeth Frerichs' book, taking care, however, not to appropriate the copyrighted art.

Edited to add: After posting this, I went to my friend’s funeral. The eulogy was delivered by her younger brother, the sole remaining member now of their immediate family. After speaking movingly of his sister’s struggles, he closed with some words that dovetailed so exactly with the thoughts of this post that I asked him to send me a copy of his remarks and he obliged. He closed with this:

What I do know is this: setting aside for a moment our hope and faith in the life to come, death gives this temporal life great meaning. Precisely because we will not live forever, how we live each and every day matters. Because we cannot stop time, time is precious… do not let any more time go by before you hug tight those that you love, before you tell them, over and over and over again, the joy they bring to your life, that you make sure they know that nothing they do or say can separate them from the love you bear them.
For you have a history left to write with them. Write it well.

(Image description: Background: Watercolor wash in blues and purples. Center: an old-fashioned pocket watch, with a picture of a waltzing Regency couple in the center. Top: the words 'The Riches of a Life Well-Lived. Bottom left: a handler in a top hat holds Punxsutawney Phil aloft. The words 'Work,' 'Friends,' 'Travel,' 'Family,' and 'Love' are written on the background in the lower part of the collage.

Groundhog Day

5 Groundhog Day

Current Mood: thoughtful

*Sigh*

This is the fourth year I've been doing these digital collages, and every year on the fourth week of the year, the collage has been about the same subject. I am not sure it always will be. But after all, I select the subject for the collage on whatever I've been thinking about that week.

This week included the sixth anniversary of Rob's death.

There is a diffidence, a shyness about grief that you sometimes see in widows in our culture. An embarrassed self-consciousness. As time extends further and further out from our loss, we face a certain amount of judgment, even (and yes, we widows can be oversensitive, but I have felt it) a very faint tinge of...contempt. Yes, of course we know that you loved and miss the person you lost. But life goes on. Shouldn't you as well? There's an unspoken but blunt sense of get over it already.

Well, I assure you I am continuing to live my life. I am not frozen in time. I have cleaned much of Rob's stuff out of the house. I continue to go out and have new experiences. I have even fallen in love again.

But I know Rob will never hear me speak Scottish Gaelic. He will never see his daughters marry. He will never hold his grandchildren. I may dream about him, but I'll never hear his spoken words or feel his touch again.

And it still hurts.

When I was considering seriously the question Am I really going to do another collage about this? I remembered a post I've seen floating around Facebook that hit me with the ring of truth. Here it is:

I'm middle aged. What that means is that I've survived (so far) and a lot of people I've known and loved did not.

I've lost friends, best friends, acquaintances, co-workers, grandparents, father, relatives, teachers, mentors, students, pets, neighbors, and a host of other folks. Gratefully I have not lost a child but I know people who have (too many), and I can't imagine the pain it must be to lose a child. But here's my two cents...

I wish I could say you get used to people dying. But I never have and I don't want to. It tears a hole through me whenever somebody I love dies, no matter the circumstances. But I don't want it to "not matter". I don't want it to be something that just passes. My scars are a testament to the love and the relationship that I had for and with that person. And if the scar is deep, so was the love. So be it.

Scars are a testament to life. Scars are a testament that I can love deeply and live deeply and be cut, or even gouged, and that I can heal and continue to live and continue to love. And the scar tissue is stronger than the original flesh ever was. Scars are a testament to life. Scars are only ugly to people who can't see. As for grief, you’ll find it comes in waves.

When the ship is first wrecked, you’re drowning, with wreckage all around you. Everything floating around you reminds you of the beauty and the magnificence of the ship that was, and is no more. And all you can do is float. You find some piece of the wreckage and you hang on for a while. Maybe it’s some physical thing. Maybe it’s a happy memory or a photograph. Maybe it’s a person who is also floating. For a while, all you can do is float. Stay alive. In the beginning, the waves are 100 feet tall and crash over you without mercy. They come 10 seconds apart and don’t even give you time to catch your breath. All you can do is hang on and float. After a while, maybe weeks, maybe months, you’ll find the waves are still 100 feet tall, but they come further apart. When they come, they still crash all over you and wipe you out. But in between, you can breathe, you can function. You never know what’s going to trigger the grief. It might be a song, a picture, a street intersection, the smell of a cup of coffee. It can be just about anything…and the wave comes crashing. But in between waves, there is life.

Somewhere down the line, and it’s different for everybody, you find that the waves are only 80 feet tall. Or 50 feet tall. And while they still come, they come further apart. You can see them coming. An anniversary, a birthday, or Christmas, or landing at O’Hare. You can see it coming, for the most part, and prepare yourself. And when it washes over you, you know that somehow you will, again, come out the other side. Soaking wet, sputtering, still hanging on to some tiny piece of the wreckage, but you’ll come out.

Take it from an old guy. The waves never stop coming, and somehow you don’t really want them to. But you learn that you’ll survive them. And other waves will come. And you’ll survive them too. If you’re lucky, you’ll have lots of scars from lots of loves. And lots of shipwrecks.”

That is what the grief has been like this week, perhaps. The anniversary of his death have brought back memories that are like fifty-foot waves, instead of one hundred-foot ones.

There is much in my life that has gone on without him that makes me happy.

Yet I love him. I still miss him.

And this week, I grieved him.

Image description: Background is a stormy sea (a portion of Thomas Moran's painting "Moonlight Shipwreck at Sea.") A remnant of a wrecked ship is tossed by the sea in lower center. A semi-transparent of a woman dressed in white floats in the center of the painting. One extended hand hovers over the wrecked ship. The other stretches toward a white lily flower (a symbol of grief in the language of the flowers) in the upper right.

Shipwreck

4 Shipwreck

Current Mood: sad
Current Music: Tony Anderson: The Way Home

Two things happened this week that struck me as particularly significant, signs of life passage for me as a parent.

I gave the instructions to the Minnesota 529 College Savings plan to send the last payment to Delia's university and then to close the account. We started making these payments in, what, 2011, when Fiona started college. And it has taken eight years for Delia to get through, but she will be graduating this May.

Secondly, I ordered my mother-of-the-bride dress for Fiona's wedding, which will be taking place next month (it's pictured in the collage below).

I wish that Rob was here to celebrate with me, but nevertheless, I am so, so happy to have arrived at this point.

I like this card, and I think that I have really improved in making these collages over the past three years. I have used some layering techniques in this one (like the one that gives the interior of the room a glow) that I think elevate this card above the ordinary.

An open door shows a room interior with another open door showing beyond. Inside the room, just inside the door, stands a woman's figure wearing a navy blue long gown with a beaded yoke. Superimposed over the woman's head are a pair of hands holding a heart shape from which a bright light emerges that illuminates the room. Toward the top of the doorway are the words "MN Saves Minnesota 529 College Savings Plan.” Superimposed over the woman's feet are the words "University of Wisconsin Eau Claire." 2024 52 Card Project: Week 3: Passages

Passages

3 Passages

I wrote in my holiday letter at the end of last year that I know that 2024 will include a lot of changes.

Fiona will be starting her plumber's apprenticeship program and getting married.

Delia will be graduating from college and moving from Wisconsin to find a job in Minnesota.

As for me, I know that my job will be changing. I work in the office of the Bishop of the Minneapolis Area Synod for the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America. Her second and final term will end this year and a new bishop will be elected the first weekend of May.

The bishop's staff serves at the pleasure of the bishop, and so we all have to tender our resignations and then wait to find out whether the new bishop (and at this point, we have no idea who it will be) will hire us back.

Since we work for a church-based organization, if we DON'T get hired back, we get no unemployment. I guess that the custom is that we would get three months of severance. But that's it.

What's more, the synod is struggling financially--we get the money for our budget from what people put into their offering plates in our congregations on Sunday mornings, and between the pandemic and inflation, that number has dropped substantially. I have a hunch that while the staff is being shaken up anyway, it might look like it would make the most financial sense to combine my position with one of the Assistant to the Bishop positions. So my job is looking increasingly precarious.

I have been trying to gear myself up for the changes to come. Even if I get to stay in my job, I fully expect that I will be losing my boss (the bishop) and my supervisor, someone with whom I work very well.

At the Epiphany service at my church, we followed the custom we've been doing the past couple of years: everyone was offered a sticker with a word on it, something to contemplate in the coming year.

My word was "Acceptance."

I have often joked that I am a Gryffindor but with high-security needs. Brave, when I need to be (and I have needed to be, especially since losing Rob), but change is still hard.

In fact, I did a Hard Thing in the week that this collage covers to try to get ready for that change. It didn't work out (Peg says vaguely) but I will keep trying.

Change is a-coming. And I will have to accept it when it does.

I do rather like the way this collage turned out. When thinking about 'change' and acceptance,' I was thinking about some of the principles of Zen Buddhism, about balancing stones. Stones may seem changeless and immovable, but the sea will polish them away and tumble them over, and as they grow smaller, you can pick them up and carry them around. I think the curves in the outline of the phoenix are mimicked by the shape of the stone heart, and the slant of the fiery bird is echoed in the slant of the words.

The bird, of course, is a phoenix, the mythical creature that dies and is reborn in fire.

I can feel the sparks starting to stir under my own breastbone.
I know they will get hotter.

Image description: background: semi-transparent picture of a rocks that have been smoothed by the ocean. Lower right corner: three rocks piled one atop the other, with an open bloom tucked in at the side. An old-fashioned key rests on the top one. Lower center: the word 'Acceptance' is written. Center/left: a bird made of fire (a phoenix) with wings outspread. Upper right corner: a heart shaped from smooth pebbles. The word 'Change' is overlaid over the heart.

Change and Acceptance

2 Change and Acceptance

This card pinpoints a moment when I noticed that I was experiencing what almost seemed to be something like flashes of lightning in my peripheral vision on one side. What's more, I realized, there were suddenly a bunch of floaters in that eye, too. I remembered a warning an eye doctor had given me many years ago: 'If you suddenly see a lot of floaters, and especially if you're seeing a lot of flashing lights, get into an eye doctor right away. You may be experiencing a retinal tear.'

Somewhat alarmed, I called the night line for my ophthalmologist and fortunately, they were able to schedule me for the following morning. I went in, and the news was reassuring. This was something, the doctor explained, that happens to everyone as they age. The viscous goo inside the eye pulls away from the retina, causing floaters to appear. The examination was interesting: he put drops in my eye and then carefully applied pressure along my eye socket...and suddenly I could see a ghostly image of my own retina.

To my great relief, I didn't have any retinal tears. He wants me to come in for a re-check in another four weeks. The floaters, he told me, would be visible for a while, but eventually (if I'm fortunate) the brain will learn to simply ignore them and they won't be as noticeable.

Just another consequence of aging.

(I created the 'floaters' in the picture by reversing the images of snowflakes in a snowstorm to a negative image).

Image description: Two views of the head of a woman (Peg), looking in two different directions, looking puzzled in one and squinting in the other. Background: the retina of a human eye, overlaid with flashes of lightning. Overlaid over everything are floating black specks.

Flashes and Floaters

1 Flashes and Floaters

New year, new 52 Card Project. As I did last year, I'm doing it as an entirely digital series, since I'm using transparency effects in so many cards.

I will post the cards as I do them each week in a table here. Clicking on the link in the title for each card will take you to the post about the individual card.

( This is what the 2024 52 Card Project looks like so far )

Click here to see the 2025 gallery.

Click here to see the 2023 gallery.

Click here to see the 2022 gallery.

Click here to see the 2021 gallery.

Click here to see the 2016 gallery.

Peg Kerr's Journal

The Holy Tree Grows Within the Heart

2024 52 Card Project: Week 7: Walker

2024 52 Card Project: Week 6: Gigi's Cafe

2024 52 Card Project: Week 5: Groundhog Day

52 Card Project 2024: Week 4: Shipwreck

2024 52 Card Project: Week 3: Passages

2024 52 Card Project: Week 2: Change and Acceptance

2024 52 Card Project: Week 1: Flashes and Floaters

2024 52 Card Project

Profile

June 2025

Peg Kerr, Author

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Active Entries

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags