Could You, Would You . . . Do Your Work?

Kirsten commented on the difference between 'could' and 'would', and I thought of another book that was big for me when I was little:
Dr. Seuss's Green Eggs and Ham.
It's one of the first books I remember owning--a present on my fifth birthday from neighbors. My parents were not into Dr. Seuss, but I loved it! It's shiny orange cover.
I still love it.
"Could you, would you with a goat?" Ha!

I suppose the message of GEAH influenced me:
that if you try something you might like it;
but maybe more––what I remember loving––that words, sounds can play, and you can play with them.
__________________

Yesterday for the first time, someone donated a book by diarist Frances Partridge: Everything to Lose: Diaries 1945–1960.
I'd discovered FP through my good friend and library coworker Barrett (d. 2011), who was deeply into Bloomsbury.
Partridge was part of that tangled social group [< info at the Tate Gallery], by marriage:
She married Ralph Partridge, who had been married to Carrington, who was in love with Lytton Strachey, who was in love with Ralph.

Barrett thought this was all deeply romantic.
I see people who live in houses with rising damp, wearing corduroys with egg stains.
Still, they're always reading (what else would they be doing?), and that makes for nice photos:

BELOW: Dora Carrington; [in back] Saxon Sydney-Turner; Ralph Partridge; Lytton Strachey--snapshot by Frances Partridge, 1926-1927 (NPG)

Frances Partridge was not emotionally damp anyway. She's quite a dry observer, in fact, and I love that.  Insightful, but restrained.

An entry shortly after WWII in Europe had concluded reminded me of now:

May 27th [1945]

"I sat brooding over the horrors of the world––feeling too hot with the electric fire burning my outer crust, yet a chill numbness within...
Without actually believing in progress, I used unconsciously to assume that there was some degree of stability in the stream of human existence that would prevent any great loss of civilization already won.
Now it seems as though that very thing has happened, and an almost prehistoric barbarity had spread over the earth.
And the violence of the present world!"

I feel all that––especially losing the illusion that "civilization already won" couldn't be lost––but I wouldn't add, as she does:

"Oh how one longs for tolerance, humanity, kindness, and for thought and discussion to come into their own again and drive out black, blind feelings."

Well, yes, "tolerance, humanity, kindness"; but I can't help scoffing at this privileged puffery, as if everyone before WWII were sitting on the lawn having tea. Thought and discussion "again" for whom? 
Someone else is doing your dishes!
(A Mrs Chant is their "daily help from the village".)

Still, I like FP. Or I used to... I'm not very far into rereading this book. Will it be another area I cannot reenter with pleasure or equanimity after George Floyd's murder?

I hope I can reenter––and with enjoyment.
I want to get over this rage at hypocrisy that, while justifiable, is mostly an impediment.
I think my heightened annoyance is a kind of what we now call PTSD.
Understandable, but it's an impediment to love and, crucially, to WORK.

That's what I keep coming to, over and over:
 DO YOUR OWN WORK.

I meet people who are so immersed in their work (like Douglas E), I'm sure they note self-delusion and social stupidity, but it doesn't derail them. Or they incorporate it in their work (like Douglas Ewart's George Floyd Bunt Pan Staff).

One of my favorite such people came into the store yesterday, as he does frequently. I love this guy! I knew him slightly years ago when I worked at the library of the art college where he was a student.

He's become a successful artist, working with found objects and junk.  Everything is art material--he's always showing me something cool he found at the store. Some of his sculptures are HUGE outside pieces and some are quite simple.
I love the simple horse as much as the intricate elephant:

^ Via NY Studio Gallery

Yesterday I showed him the bottom of an old mini–oil can, like the Tin Man uses, but wee. It's orange, and it makes such a wonderful pupping sound when you press the bottom.
I told him it was going to be part of a spaceship for my dolls.

"Oh, you have dolls?" he said. "Can I see?"

Of course I adore people who show interest in the girlettes. I showed him their most recent creative endeavor--the funeral for the sphinx moth (the one with the inner pink wings).
And he said, "I've worked with the same dead moth!"
Wow! How wonderful and odd is that?

He showed me a photo of a construction he'd made--a crow skull with marble eyes and the moth as a sort of diadem. It wasn't permanent, he told me, it was a thank-you gift he left, like a bouquet, for a friend he'd visited.

I want to be such a friend, to myself.