Berryblue

At my writing group today I described an incident at the St. Vinnie's. I was buying a couple of cute little party dresses to cut up and update my costumes, and asked for my senior discount. Another woman my age was tickled by that juxtaposition, my really plain outfit, my grey hair and lined face, and these little glittery things I was buying, and said so. I told her they were for my Jell-O Art costumes and said a few more things about the show, when it was, and so on, slowly realizing she had gotten that look and shut down her delight.

Yes, she gave me that look that says "You crazy." I have seen it so many times it doesn't even hurt anymore. I just think about how much those people are missing because they don't have what I have with the Jell-O Art Show.

My writer friends, to my surprise, agreed that Jell-O Art is wacky. I was a little shocked, as I have passed completely through the idea that it is wacky. I didn't even notice when this happened. Maybe it was when Maude Kerns Art Center named the Radar Angels Community Partners. Maybe it was when I got the interview by Sean Cuellar of KEZI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8U2osa-ssU Probably it was when I made that book in 2012 with my foot propped up, or possibly it was many years before that.

I can explain this, at length, the serious nature of Jell-O Art. I can go on about the creative process, connecting with the heart and soul, the techniques of the medium, the expertise gained over almost three decades. I don't even get why people don't get that, so I have to admit I was disappointed that I got the wacky label from my friends, but of course I immediately forgave them and felt that it was their problem, certainly not mine.

But my friend then sent me this, completely redeeming herself. I knew she got it, she just forgot. She found this on a website called Brain Pickings. The links are from there.

Margaret Mead recounts a particularly pause-giving dream. More than a mere record on the unconscious, it unfolds into a powerful metaphor for the meaning of life — for the beauty of not-knowing, for the soul-nourishment of wonder, and for the question of “enough” that Vonnegut once contemplated.

Last night I had the strangest dream. I was in a laboratory with Dr. Boas and he was talking to me and a group of other people about religion, insisting that life must have a meaning, that man couldn’t live without that. Then he made a mass of jelly-like stuff of the most beautiful blue I had ever seen — and he seemed to be asking us all what to do with it. I remember thinking it was very beautiful but wondering helplessly what it was for. People came and went making absurd suggestions. Somehow Dr. Boas tried to carry them out — but always the people went away angry, or disappointed — and finally after we’d been up all night they had all disappeared and there were just the two of us. He looked at me and said, appealingly “Touch it.” I took some of the astonishingly blue beauty in my hand, and felt with a great thrill that it was living matter. I said “Why it’s life — and that’s enough” — and he looked so pleased that I had found the answer — and said yes “It’s life and that is wonder enough.”