Dead Reckoning

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   Dead Reckoning

   
   

   dead reck·on·ing

   noun

   noun: dead reckoning
2. the process of calculating one's position, especially at sea, by estimating the direction and distance traveled rather than by using landmarks, astronomical observations, or electronic navigation methods.
   
   
   The title of this piece, Dead Reckoning, came to me from some deep interior, as an echo, as if calling it out its own name. I wasn't sure of the precise definition of the term and so have looked it up in the online dictionary. Since then, I have been pondering the meaning, as I make sense of it as a title for this drawing and as a metaphor for life's journey. 
   
   
   Dead reckoning...I think it is what we do....I think it's the way we navigate our life at sea, each of us charting unknown waters in our tiny vessels. Somehow. Our internal ways of knowing allow us to look back to see where we've been, estimate the course of our recent passage to figure out where we are. And there are days and times, when we are lost at sea, as common experience for me, when our sense of dead reckoning feels less reliable and we wish for sure landmarks or other sound methods of navigation, to find our way forward. 
   
   
   And yet, I remain certain, that each of us knows more, we carry more intelligence inside us, than we credit. And even as I often wish for more accurate navigation, I find myself wondering if those outside pointers, mileage markers and other voices from our culture are interfering more than we realize. The sky goes on forever, but we are each crossing our own ocean and we must listen for our own dead reckoning.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   

Crossing the River

I've been thinking a lot about another book I recently read, one that I will cherish for a long time to come. Nine Ways To Cross A River by Akiko Busch is a beautifully written tale of swimming across rivers (nine of them to be exact) both literally and metaphorically. While her ventures in seeking out and navigating particular rivers to swim across is fascinating, what most resonates for me is the metaphor of the river, the notion of the crossing and negotiating the current. 

We are each engaged in navigating the river throughout our lives. Maybe because I live on the Missouri (seen below), the river is always present in my life and in my work as a metaphor for the journey we each undertake. Lately, I've come to think of the importance of any particular moment in our lives as an intersection of time and place. And, if we imagine that our life, from birth to death, is the crossing of the river from one side to the other, then our location in that journey is met with the waters that are flowing downstream, from the past to the future. This is where we find ourselves at any moment, navigating the current. Sometimes the current is so strong it threatens to take us under, in others we find ourselves swept downstream during our crossing. And yet, we long for those moments when we can cross without struggle, able to relax and enjoy the view, completely in the flow. Our crossing encompasses all these experiences and more, all of which are difficult to articulate.

I've begun what might become a series of drawings about this idea of the intersection, finding ourselves a particular point in time and in place. Below is a tiny snippet of one of the drawings....really just a layering of marks, lines that come to resemble flow...possibly the flow of a river, even without trying to draw the flow of a river...if that makes sense. This is just the beginning of this layered mark making....I will see where it takes me as lines build, one on top of the other.

I think the inspiration for this notion came to me from glancing over at one of the daily drawings I'd made the day before, as seen below. This reminds me of the importance of the daily drawings and the fact that they are made without thinking, without trying....the only effort is in keeping the hand moving until I feel the moment of making is over. Because it is completely internal and comes from a place without language, I sometimes see patterns and other things that trigger new thoughts and ways of seeing. We all operate from this place throughout our lives in ways we don't realize...but more on that another time!

Now, it is time for me to get back to work, juggling the school work with the studio work. I will say that the studio is definitely gaining the upper hand! I hope you are finding yourself in the flow of your particular river, not struggling against a strong current. 

I will leave you with this quote from W. H. Auden, referenced in Nine Ways to Cross a River. 

"Great art is clear thinking about mixed feelings." 

Thanks for reading...it gives me cheer to know you are out there!