Ambiguous Tour With Sequins by Laverne Zabielski
When I say, the title of my next book will be “Everything I Need
to Know in Life I Can Learn In Art Class,” I am not kidding.
Marilyn said, Don’t waste paint. Don’t waste anything.
A make-do life becomes a make-art life as I paste sequins in my
altered artist journal and begin to define what I am thinking.
Do I define what I’m thinking before the fact or after the fact?
This begins my ambiguous tour through the maze of not
what is there to learn, but what I want to learn. Take what you can
and apply it to what you want. Joyce said, don’t let them lead you
astray. I can see that I will have to make the list of teachers in the
front of my book longer since my friend Joyce becomes my teacher
by suggesting the use of metal leaf on my sequins. Before making
art my life art, I would not have taken her suggestion seriously.
Now it’s yes, yes, yes, teach me, teach me, teach me. Arturo said,
bring what you are already doing to class. Jim said, keep it
personal. How can so many people say the same thing and it be
so difficult to understand? Do you really want to know why
I put sequins in my book? It is survival. It is tedious. I want it tedious.
What do you worry about, Mom? Johnny’s only 13. Of course
he has no idea. I am old. When I was a young mother, I didn’t worry.
Now, I know too much. Seen too much. Done too much.
I paste sequins in my journal. Tedious. The mind cannot worry
when choosing a color combination for sequins. The mind cannot worry
on the ambiguous tour through art, ambiguous art, where excitement
and adventure live. Life is predictable. Art is ambiguous. We know
where life goes. All over the place. And sometimes the colors smear.
I slow down. I don’t turn the page so fast. I said, if you were to smoke
pot and I’m not saying it’s OK, but, if you were, I’d like to think
you were responsible, like not smoking before school.
“I have written this in so many forms until it was finally forgotten since it always felt unfinished, and I’m concerned I tried to cover too many events and form in the same poem. But I like it.”
Laverne Zabielski, a writer and artist, received her MFA in Writing at Spalding University in Louisville in 2004. Her poems have been published in The American Voice, The Thinker Review, The Sun and Southern Exposure. Her memoir, The Garden Girls Letters and Journal was published in 2006 by Wind Publications. she/her Kentucky/Shawnee Land/USA