Mutability and the Everyday
by Rebecca Bernard
I have lately taken to modeling small animals out of clay. They form a menagerie on my windowsill. I dream children’s stories. A family of ink who live in a pool in a printing press and one day the youngest son becomes a letter ‘e’ on the 30th page of a copy of The Great Gatsby. A family of dust mites who live in the pantry only to be swept away—their life a series of peregrinations, closet to closet to bureau. Sometimes I model things other than animals. Haley’s comet. A flower. A traffic light. I take requests. There is a settling agent in making something out of nothing. We all see many things each day, form many thoughts, arrange colors and shapes into sense and idea. Perhaps it is the concrete that allows for breathing room. An emptying out of sensation into form. I look at the same walls everyday, but each time I see them they have the opportunity to appear as new. So it goes.
-Rebecca Bernard, Curb Creative Writing Fellow