Things it took me until 30 to learn: Monica Elkinton

Two memories stick out when I think of Monica Elkinton; one during college and one from after we graduated. The first was on “Pi Day,” (3.14) 2003. In addition to being a political activist, Monica was a mathematics major at Bard and invited me to the Math Club’s Pi(e) Party that day. I delightfully ate as many pizza slices and fruit pie as my body could process. I maintained a friendly conversation with Monica as her peers looked at me with scorn as a party crasher. Then the following year, Monica and I both found ourselves in Madison, Wisconsin. I had moved there to immerse myself in the city’s legacy of post-capitalist counter-institutions, while she arrived later to intern at the state’s supreme court for law school. The day after Bush was re-elected Monica invited me to see a Beasties Boys concert, to dance away the inevitable sorrows of the ensuing four years. This is all to say, thank you. She is now a public defender in Alaska, continuing to change the world.

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1. Every day is a blessing.

2. How to buy a house. And what the heck mortgage insurance is.

3. Turns out staying up all night debating philosophy is not a good quality in a romantic partner after all. Doing the dishes and supporting me in my decisions is way better.

4. A taste for very dry wine.

5. That I could be dropped in any city in the world by myself, and make a good adventure out of it.

6. That everyone else is just as scared as I am.

7. The best way to be a friend is to listen.

8. The second best way to be a friend is to have been there.

9. How to invest, and what I will need to retire. (Whoa. Yes.)

10. That if you like your job, then overtime and weekends mean nothing.

11. There is more to you than your job or career.

12. Email, twitter, and facebook can never make up for phone calls and visiting people in person.

13. One-night stands don't make you feel very good.

14. Healthy food actually does.

15. And sleep.

16. Greasy food and beer make your stomach hurt. Maybe that's because it's bad for you.

17. That my parents were making it up as they went along.

18. To buy a slightly used car: not a new one, and not a clunker.

19. That you can try to alter your attitude with whatever chemicals you want, but the people that love you, love the sober you.

20. Being around family is important.

21. That joining the Board means you'll be expected to give a large donation.

22. That I am not an athlete, and that I never will be. Some of us just can't move that way. The closest I will get is to dance. Mostly to folk music.

23. Little kids are awesome. And that we have so much to learn from those younger than us.

24. If making art or music is what you need to stay sane, then for God's sake, do it, even if you're not someone else's idea of “good” at it. If you have fun, and it colors your world, then you're good enough.

25. That I love living in a racially diverse community.

26. With the right time commitment, you are capable of learning any skill you want to learn.

27. How to live on your own time frame. Your urgent doesn't have to be someone else's urgent.

28. Sharing a meal with loved ones is simply the best thing to do.

29. We are all human.

30. All humans respond to a smile from another human. 

Otherness in a Borderless Land: Jessie Clark

Jessie Clark is one of those people in Philadelphia that I wish I saw more often. We do run into each other on a fairly regular basis at the Wooden Shoe, but usually just in passing. Jessie exudes that rare combination of creativity, friendliness, and intellect and after one conversation you feel like you’ve known her since high school. Check out Jessie’s amazing artwork and writing online at: http://thejessicaclarkshow.com/

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30 is an odd (though even) age, indeed. It is here that youthful, hope-doused exuberance meets bruise-y dark circled exhaustion, with small, well-meaning hand extended. I imagine the door to 30 stands upon a great precipice overseeing the deep & inevitable abyss that is aging, an aging of the italic, bold, underline variety. Suddenly full-fledged adolescents have sprung forth in that span of time between the not-so-long-ago & us. How could this have come to pass?

One day a few weeks ago whilst standing with thumb extended in artistic concentration (because that’s how it works, really…) to the drab, drudging drones of National Public Radio, the speakers spat forth one shining & gold-tinged thought-nugget effectively absolving the dull pretentiousness preceding it. Kurt Anderson, host of Studio 360, was in the process of interviewing Jennifer Egan on the topic of her then-upcoming novel A Visit From the Goon Squad. Author and interviewer had just broached the subject of aging. According to Egan, …Goon Squad addresses issues of age and nostalgia by way of the pop-culturally acceptable medium of music. As I have not read Egan’s novel, I can neither confirm nor deny the veracity (or success) of her claim. It is a statement Egan made while referring to this particular aspect of her novel that this long-winded set-up seeks to focus upon. In youth, “old” is seen as “Other,” Egan says. This feeling of otherness is held well into adulthood until, one day, it realized that it might just be the case that “old” is “Other” no longer.

This sort of “otherness” is especially intriguing when taken in conjunction with that “Other” of fiction, fairy-tales, and fables alike. The literary “Other” often appears to its counterpart (the subject) as a metaphysical monstrosity. It is perceived to have dastardly designs on the unlucky & seemingly innocent twin, and so it comes to pass that the subject becomes obsessed with the elimination of this sickening and familiar wraith. Should the subject succeed in striking a mortal blow, s/he dies in turn (an unforeseen consequence). This Other effectively acts as an externalization of the Subject’s poorer qualities. Once made visible (corporeal), the Subject is sickened, wanting nothing more than to smash these personal failings made physical. However, since Subject and Other are one and the same, death for one means death for both.

This creates a rather potent metaphor once applied to the process of aging. On one hand Old-Age stands like a camp, flaps open to all new/old-comers, a place with borders. Youth is surrendered to this blue-veined & wrinkled shelter. On the other, Youth and Age exist with simultaneity as with the Subject and its Other. Past self and Present self coalesce with little distinction and no means for escape except at one’s own peril. Perhaps a Future self is likewise in the mix, in the form of glittering possibility and/or gloomy, liver-spotted doom. In my estimation, it is this borderless land that speaks best to the age of 30.

About two/three months after my thirtieth birthday, my sister had her first child (my first niece). As I hold her now (a 7 month old bundle of slobbery giggles), I become starkly aware of those childhood photos wherein my aunts held me in much the same posture. 31 years and far-less corduroy later, a Clark-family motion is repeated. Rather than simply accentuating my new-found-feelings of age, these photos reveal the youth of my relatives—then and now.

Permission Granted: Mary Tasillo

I met Mary Tasillo through our amazing mutual friend Johanna Marshall. After both growing up on Cape Cod, Johanna and I surprisingly discovered that we had become neighbors in West Philadelphia a couple years ago. I don't know Mary well, but from the various dinner parties we've shared in Johanna's kitchen I can attest that she is a genuinely good person. Mary seems to always have a really cool project going on too. I'm excited about checking out Soapbox, her new independent publishing center.

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I was a pretty early starter on figuring out a direction in life – not that I ever could have pictured present day Mary as 8-year-old Mary, or even 15-year-old Mary. Of course, 15-year-old Mary did not actually think she would make it past 20. She could not envision it at all. Perhaps this has freed me to feel right on target with everything I have been doing surrounding 30, since I had no notions of 30 at such a formative age.

But the pieces of me that encompass creativity, text, image-making, hand crafting, and a life surrounded by books were present early on, and coalesced after a fashion in college (by which point I’d figured out that life got better year after year and that I was definitely going to see life well past twenty). This sent me to graduate school at 24 to get an MFA in Book Arts and Printmaking. In a way this early clarity only delayed the floundering, because to pursue an arts degree is never to pursue any kind of clear career path. Which is how I found myself in and out of various jobs, interspersed with taking time off from working, throughout the latter part of my twenties, while continuing to make art, land the occasional residency, and present at arts conferences. At twenty-eight I landed a day job doing administrative work for an architect. Architects are workaholics. They don’t take any time off, and they don’t like it when you do (even though, as creative types, they like that you are an artist). By twenty-nine, I was plotting my escape from the day job for the architect. Of course, this was right after the economy tanked, and while I was very lucky to still have a job working for an architect, I was going to be hard pressed to get, for example, a job at an arts non-profit.

I’ve never been one to set practical goals. If I were, where would I be? You have to think about where you’d like to be and point yourself towards it. Thus, while working forty hours a week at a desk, and juggling occasional teaching gigs besides, I set a goal that at 30 I would make a transition into teaching and freelancing. Also, sitting at my desk one August day, I decided to start a community print space and zine library. I’d been talking around the idea with various folks for several years now, but had lost the conviction I’d had straight out of graduate school that I could be involved in making this a reality. I’m not sure what shifted that day in the late afternoon sun, but I decided that goddammit, I was going to make it happen, however that might look.

Low and behold, a few months later I met someone else who shared the vision of the community space. “Well,” we each thought, “I’m about to turn thirty so it seems like I can do something like this.” Permission granted. Permission granted to do big things and be taken seriously about it.

So at thirty, we bought a house together and started creating the groundwork for a community space on the first floor.

That same summer, at thirty, I landed enough teaching work to launch me out of the office job into the world of adjuncting and freelance. Maybe this is backwards, in certain circles, to be leaving stability and health insurance for something more piecemeal and unfinished, a choice of process over product. But in my view, the ability to keep the support under one’s feet while walking this path is a thing of beauty (if awkward at moments). Permission granted.

Thus, still early in Year 31, I find myself winding down after the inaugural event, a zine library opening and reading, for The Soapbox: Philadelphia’s Independent Publishing Center. Not even two years after that decision one August afternoon, the community print space is a reality – even if we are not yet 100% set up for community printing. My jobs consist of a combination of editorial work, teaching, book conservation, and art cataloging. And it is not the wisdom, but the permission of 30, that allowed all this to happen. (Sure, plus some leg work I put in through my twenties. The work, experimentation, and exploration I did created momentum.) Rather than serving as a benchmark, 30 has allowed me to let go of any notions of being finished, in terms of life planning and choosing a path. What a miracle to find life still getting better year after year, when 15-year-old Mary, who was finding life as an adolescent to be more difficult each year, could not envision life past 20.