Diffraction and Bricolage

I let myself be swept away this semester - my two jobs, my schoolwork, it all kept me busy busy busy. No time to stop and ...

The semester ended a week ago. I 'handed' my final paper via email. I stopped. I looked around at my self, my apartment, my life. It was all a mess. That's okay. Things fall apart - the center does not hold ... I'm discovering there may not be a center.

As I wrote my last paper I gulped down large bites of different works by Donna Haraway, Bruno Latour, Jacques Derrida, Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, and others. Honestly, I didn't digest most of what I read, but grasped at half-understood concepts that resonated with ... me?

Earlier in the semester we talked a bit about bricolage in one of my classes. I like the word - it rolls gently off the tongue. I also like the concept - I've talked about it before - my life as a mosaic. Each person, each experience, each thought, each heartache, each aha!, each joy - another tile in the mosaic of who I am. Peer too closely at just one or two - and you lose the pattern.

I learned most about this understanding of life as a mosaic from the man I've been involved with ... on and off ... over the past two years. There is much about him that I delight in - and much that confuses and frustrates me. Like anyone else. I wrote him once that he is as beautiful in his darkness as he is in his light. It's true - to me. And coming to peace with the rich diversity of this man, learning to appreciate ALL the tiles, not just the ones that I prefer, is how I came to understand the concept of bricolage. I'm grateful for that.

In my readings of Donna Harway I came across the concept of diffraction. We all know diffraction - the light shines through a prism and it diffracts into the colors of the rainbow. I haven't explored her writings about it yet -it's on the list for the break - but I'm thinking about what I think she might mean, and I'm making my own meaning as well.

Like the mosaic, diffraction takes into consideration all the colors... voices ... beliefs ... hopes ... of any given topic. Say... wolves. We shine the light through the prism of Wolf and it breaks into many pieces. None of them are more "true" than the others ... none of them are less. They create the whole of this moment in time/space/culture/nature looking through the Wolf prism. I'm looking at the pieces. I'm shuffling them around to create ... not truth ... not a unified whole ... but maybe a new picture.

Meanwhile, I'm taking my days slowly. Waking late, moving quietly, reading, writing, walking, spending time with people who are dear to me, and missing others who are not nearby. I'm listening to music, to the wind, to cars passing by, to the small still voice within. I'm grateful for all I have and hoping for more. I'm looking at all the pieces and shuffling them 'round looking for a new pattern.