In the wake of the breakup of an eight-year relationship with the person I had come to view as my life partner—which coincided with the completion of Please Don’t Perceive Me—I had a conversation with a mentor about the importance of completing emotional cycles; of allowing each emotion to flow through our bodies, unhindered and unanalyzed, until the fear of feeling is gone and the feeling itself has dissipated into a manageable nugget. I am still learning to allow myself to mourn the loss of the fictive third person formed by the union of two people, an imagined future, a misspent year, and the death of a baby opossum I found drowned in my parent’s swimming pool on the day I decided it hurt too much to be friends. I’m not sure I can claim to have ever properly honored any of my emotions, but I’m trying to perceive them. Some of them are as clear as day. Others are like squinting through the mottled condensation on a dirty bathroom mirror. Others I bury in my yard with a dull shovel and cover in yellow flowers.
Please Don’t Perceive Me
Please Don’t Perceive Me (AKA Bob the Blob) is a depiction of my emotional and social state after 14 months of sheltering in place, preparing to re-enter a life and world that look very different from how they did a year ago. An amorphous, though not-unfriendly blob of purple goo sits timidly in its protective shell, unable to distinguish whether it is trapped or merely too afraid to leave. The occasional glimpses it gets of the world beyond the barrier no longer pacify it; it feels silly to waste energy considering a future that may never come. Every friendly conversation with passing strangers leaves it horrified and impressed by its own capacity for social ineptitude, so it goes back to staring at its reflection as odd protrusions emerge from its flesh. “Oh god,” it thinks, “what has become of me?”
2021
Shoulder brooch
Nickel silver, titanium, stainless steel, sterling silver, resin, silicone, glass beads, assorted rubber tubes, polarizing film, leather
7 x 5 x 7 cm