Shapeshifting into the shape of a story

Seasons spent germinating and finding new form

Winter

My fingers are slowly tracing the slender curved branch of a red maple, helping my eyes see where other branches cross over. As my hand touches the tree, I'm listening for the tree to tell me where cuts may need to be made. I work my way towards the dead branches that I’m removing in preparation for spring. Now, seeing the shape, I make my cuts on the live branches that will help the tree pour their energy into new growth. I’ve been noticing the blush and bloom of color on various tree branches around the neighborhood and surrounding area, and I’m worried I’ve already run out of time. We had temperatures near the teens though, just a week ago, and I won’t prune trees in weather that cold. I knew it would be a race once the mercury rose past 50, as it suddenly did these past two days. 60 degree days are coming though—by midweek it seems. So today is the day. I've asked the tree to tell me where to make the cuts. A feeling guided my hand alongside the advice of my partner, formerly an arborist, who encouraged me to trust what I see. When we’re done, our collective efforts and collaboration have yielded a beautiful umbrella shape for both trees. A week later, the buds are swelling. We completed our work just in time. We're growing into new shapes, together.

You'll hear me say this again, but I've been thinking so much about how tired I am of telling, and how tired I feel people are of being told to. The fatigue of being told to is palpable, it feels like lead weights pinning down the parts of us that yearn to be freer, the parts of us that long to revel in the lush expanse of animate story.

I'm just tired of telling as if there is authority to claim. What authority do I have, I who knows nothing, what does it matter, what I know? How does the song go? I've forgotten more than you'll ever know. I have multiple specializations across several lives, and with that has come some measure of knowledge or expertise. Still, I'm feeling a need to punctuate with questions, rather than periods; to end the sentence with an ellipsis rather than a resolution. I yearn to wander, whisper and sing. What can knowledge do if it isn't relational? What difference does it make if the knowledge we gain doesn't make sense when we find ourselves among trees?

I know I have stories in me that are worth telling, but for the life of me I can't imagine what they might be. This is me trying to recall them. This is me reaching towards something about sharing a story that feels important. This is me, just trying to be here.

Spring

Hello. Hi. It’s been a while, I know.

In true existential writerly fashion, I’ve been feeling the changing shape of words taking shape, but it's taken me the better part of a year to try forming them; to learn new ways of speaking that will close the distance between me and what I write, between me and the land, between me and you. I've sent invitations to the deep, generative, poetic inspiration required to step out of the shadows of the objective and therefore “reliable narrator”, to embrace my presence in the words and the stories I share with you. When I last wrote, I referred to the problems of valuing information over storytelling; and in that time, the collision of information across social media with the catastrophic impact of generative AI has only made this fracture, the spectacle, its overwhelm, and its severance of us from each other more apparent to me. There's too much information. There's too much telling to, and not enough sharing with.

I thought maybe this attempt at sharing with, poetics, and reconnection should begin with some kind of reintroduction.

I tried the usual route; writing and rewriting my reintroduction to faithfully record ancestral histories beyond my lifespan and my lived experiences within it; to build something poetic and relational in my self-explanation that makes sense. It’s been giving me trouble because I’ve been trying to build it on the bones of something recognizable and formal. You know the formula: this is who I am, these are the people I come from, these are the lands I was raised on, these are our histories and this is what I love and here are the things that I do and here’s what I care passionately about…its hollowness is related to my fatigue from information, from telling. Everything is exhaustingly expository. Who I am is important, but not really that important. I don’t need to spill the blood of my story to become closer to you in it. I just need to be here.

So this isn’t a biography. There are many, many pieces missing. These are mine to keep. Or maybe they’re not relevant to the purpose of the stories I hope to tell. Or maybe missing pieces are part of my particular journey as a liminal being of many wandering trails. You wouldn’t know me by just following the tracks I’m leaving, is what I’m saying. This isn’t about mystery, it’s something else; and that something else is something else I’ll keep to myself. But as whatever shape these coming stories take unfold, I think you’ll get to know me in deeper ways than any introduction can offer.

Memories

“Who the fuck is Sharon Arnold”

A number of years ago, a former student of mine had these shirts printed up for their first solo show. They were told by a respectable someone to stop wearing or sharing them, which gave me the sense that the joke was probably a little barbed, for reasons that remain mysterious to me (maybe I could figure it out if I thought about it, but I don’t think about it that much). Honestly I'm just bummed I didn't get a shirt for myself before they were gone because I didn’t care about the barb then, and I don’t care about it now—I put no value in the caché of a name, I only put value into the weight of the work. Maybe what people don’t realize about me is that I appreciate irreverence and the sort of jibe that disallows any self-inflation. We’re all human, and I appreciate reminders of this, to maintain a sense of humility; a kind of memento mori. No really, who the fuck is Sharon Arnold? It turns out I’m just a human among billions of other humans, doing silly little human things in the hopes that it means something to someone other than just me. I think it's the someone that matters most. I crave that connectivity. I have a yearning to exchange ideas and dreams. It can't just be about me.

I wonder if we can ever really know who we are without community around us to help pave our way. I’ve been thinking about this since I was a kid, but especially lately as it feels some of my community is changing. This has happened before—I spent my life in restaurant communities long before I became a part of art communities. All my deepest lessons were forged in the crucible of the stoves. It began with my great-grandmother's kitchen, a place that would feed over 30 people several times a year, filling a table around which both laughter and gravity would flow. It continued into the underbellies of restaurants in Seattle, Sonoma, and New York City where my values and my skills were put to the ultimate test. The work I used to do—manning stoves, stoking grills, cultivating fires—was inspired by leaders who prioritized the community around a restaurant. That’s about the crew, but it’s also about the patrons; and it’s about the neighborhood; and it’s the city and the region of chefs, butchers, farmers, ranchers, foragers, and fishermen. It takes a community of people to feed the people. And everything I ever learned about building bridges and building space came from the chefs in my life who taught me what that really means. I poured that into every gallery space I built an exhibition in. I may not have the gallery anymore, but I am still all about the bridges. I’m just looking at bridges, space, and sustenance differently these days. I continue to pour it into every piece of writing I pound out of the forge of my laptop; out of every collaborative class I build with my students; out of every conversation I ever have with anyone. This remains true: it takes a community of people to feed the people.

And what feeds the people? What feeds me? Certainly not only meat, grain, water, or words. No, this hunger for sustenance is demanding something else, something deeper in the soil, something that can only nourish the spirit. It's a wisdom that can only come from paying close attention to things in ways that allow us to grow quiet, make space, and listen. My spirit yearns for it. Maybe yours does, too.

Summer

Everything is changing so fast. I am changing so fast. I’m different every day, a step closer to something, a few steps further away from something else. Nothing fits that used to.

Shapeshifting.

Shapeshifting is uncontainable and unruly; untamable. People don’t trust those who shift forms of any kind. Shapeshifters are queer; actors outside of definition, and thus unreliable narrators. They are the ones who may not always show up as who you want them to be, but as the one needed—either for themselves, or for the gods. Maybe for you. Maybe for a need that will never be known. Shapeshifters have obligations beyond others’ reasoning. Like tricksters, they can be unsettling, which is frustrating for people who want things to be more solid, grounded, or reasonable in the midst of great uncertainty. But the less certain things are, the less stable they become, and perhaps the less reason we should use. We're going to need our hearts to be full. We're going to need our spirits to be nourished. We're going to need to change shape.

I no longer need to be the reliable narrator. That is not my obligation. I will question the narrative itself, disturb the soil, revel in the slippery slope, and traverse unsettled ground. This is the world I walk through. I'm not a guide. All I can do is show you how you might learn how to divine messages and meaning from transformative forms, traverse the unsettled ground, and begin to embrace its unpredictable nature.

I just need to be here.

Here with the skyscrapers and the concrete; the powerlines and the moss; the roots and the soil; the Steller’s jays and the owls; the coyote and the rabbit; the forest and the field; the lake and the river; the mountains and the sea; the orca and the salmon; the fog and and rain; the sun and the heat of the day; the moon and the stars; the blood and the bones; the pain and the pleasure; the ancestors and the spirits; here with the land, sea, and sky.

I want to be here with the story, and with you.

Let us unreliable narrators and uncertain listeners gather together in the field and find new forms, reveling in our collective and continual transformation.