Commusings: All the Forgetting by VyVy Wonder

Hello Commune Community,

A beautiful new twist this week for the newsletter: a graphic novella. As I absorbed it, I was taken with this idea that the acknowledgement of forgetting is, by definition, a moment of remembering. 

There is a concept in the Kabbalah, a form of Jewish mysticism, called the emanations. In attempting to understand love, we reassemble the “shattered mind of God.” It’s as if Platonic capital “L” love is a pristine crystalline vase hovering somewhere high above the clouds. As it tumbles down through the atmosphere, it refracts and reflects love’s light and finally it smacks into earth’s hard clay and splinters into a million shards. We earth creatures are left to pick up the pieces. As part of the examined life, in our inexorable search for meaning we reconstitute God’s shattered mind. 

This project is echoed by the Japanese artform known as kintsugi. Shattered ceramics are reconstituted with the use of molten gold to produce the most marvelous creations. You can pick up a bowl or tea caddy and trace your finger delicately across the gilded veins that pull the object back together. In kintsugi, these golden contours are known as precious scars. 

The musicians know this song. Consider that the “symphony” is the ideal perfect cosmic form. When the orchestra receives the cue sheets, the song is fragmented. There are parts for the strings, the wind instruments, the horns, the percussion and on. It’s all chopped up. It’s dismembered. And, with epiphanous co-expression, the musicians re-member the song. They put it back together. This is why moments of great satori, nirvana and unity consciousness are so often referred to as the “memory of God.” 

Indeed, our own battered lives are chopped up and lined with scars and things we want to forget. In becoming whole, we re-member ourselves from our dismembered parts.

Here at [email protected] and waxing and waning on IG @jeffkrasno.
 
In love, include me,
Jeff

P.S. To view this Commusings as a PDF, click here.

 VyVy Wonder is a California-based cartoonist, writer, physician, and educator. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Rumpus, Popula, Ruminate, The Intima, and more. She serves on the board of Refugee Youth Solidarity through Education (RYSE), a Providence, RI-based organization she has been deeply involved with for over a decade. Her work can be found at www.vyvywonder.com or on Instagram @vyvywondercomics.

This piece was originally published in The Rumpus.