02. A note on the origin story

And what comes after...

The words in this post originate here.

Just like many of us originate somewhere.

But it’s not like these words did not exist before - that no ideas, website pages, or electronic glares ever crossed paths with what this post comes out to be. As an artist and as a person who was displaced and re-placed multiple times, I am fascinated with the terms “origin” and “origin story”. It’s all too personal… I know… to define these things, and I too, like many folks who travelled across oceans, am hungry to know where origin lives in me.

However,

There is something that comes before and after origin. It’s important. It’s what can make origin a method that extends beyond a place or person or thing.

While we all try and hold on to our origin stories, however unclear they may be, I’d like to tell you this: Being a diasporic person - or simply one that navigates change, does not mean that we are subjects of endings.

Every time we move or make, drag along our ancestral threads, or invent new ones, means that a whole new origin story is being created.

By embracing nuance, by following the soft contours of memory, by enticing meaning with my hands, I came to believe:

• That the origin story is an evolving entity - telling it is clumsy but it must be attempted. Stories about where we come from change over time - some things are forgotten, and new pieces acquired. They evolve alongside us.

• It never finishes and never begins - the incompleteness of origin is what gives us the hope to innovate and grow.

• The conversations that result out of our searching will become someone else’s piece of knowledge- something they can tenderly carry and cultivate into the world.

  We will always originate as long as we make.

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What I’m making -

This week I completed an embroidery trial meant to be part of a series. I was thinking about the carcass, the life of the soul, and the way a shape can recede into space with the use of colour, much like words can with the shades of memory.

This week was very green. So were my hands. I guess that was my little ode to the aproaching spring.

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What I’m sitting with -

I bittersweetly finished reading “Grey Bees” by Andrei Kurkov.

“Sergeyich diluted his bitter thoughts with honey and felt better.”
― Andrey Kurkov, Grey Bees

I felt the need to steel myself as I anticipated the plot of this novel, which explores the reality of current Ukrainian life. But this book is not what I expected. The nuance and violence of the grey zones along Ukraine’s eastern front are sweetened (like honey) with the mundane humaness and humorous apathy of a steadfast beekeeper. The writing warmly embraces the complexity of lives caught up in war.

It is a gentle, sometimes ambivalent book that guides you through metaphor and reminiscence. We all have something to learn from bees.

Thank you for checking in this week. Here’s to Sister Spring and watching buds grow! I’m still waiting, but I know she’s there…just held up at airport customs :)

-Sasha