Progress and the Paradox of Time

By Kristen Frantzen Orr

Is it “one step forward and two steps back” or “two steps forward and one step back?” I can’t seem to remember the idiom. I try stepping it out on the tile floor, each tile is a step. If I take a step forward, that would be progress; but then two steps back and I lose ground. I guess it must be “two steps forward and one step back.” At least then I am not going backwards. “Fall seven times; get up eight.” That is how it feels living in this time of pandemic and sheltering in place.

When my parents were in their late 80s, my mother saved a Frank and Ernest comic strip and hung it on the refrigerator. It said, “Things to do today: Get up. Survive. Go to bed.” That thing disturbed me every time I saw it. At times it made me angry, other times sad. I never did see the humor. Now, somehow this has become my reality.

And so I look for ways to fill the long empty spaces. I try just to be present. I turn to making things for the sake of making. In the “before-COVID” time, I made glass beads and jewelry, and I taught other people what I knew. Early in the pandemic, we began to cancel classes, first a few weeks in advance; now all of 2020’s classes have been canceled, galleries have closed, and conferences have moved online. We learned how to participate in “Zoom” meetings. All of the bead shows where I used to sell my work were being postponed and re-postponed. As time went on, some were permanently canceled. An era has come to an end.

My muse left me. I didn’t feel like doing anything. I couldn’t maintain focus to make my usual work, and I found I couldn’t enjoy the simple pleasure of reading. Eventually as isolation time expanded, the need to be creative returned in a myriad of forms: book spine poetry, weekly baking (the stores were out of bread), revisiting childhood pursuits, discovering online classes, and looking more closely with my camera at small miracles of nature.

Book spine poem. Photos/Kristen Frantzen Orr.

“Close your eyes when praying together in my name. Give us this day nature’s chaos, the sound of water, the springs of joy.”

Near the beginning of this shelter-in-place time, there was a call to participate in 30 days of book spine poetry. It was fun looking at books, remembering when they were acquired and why, and then stacking them so their titles could make a poem.

I looked back to a simpler time, baking bread, mending, slowing down but not stopping. One of the first things I recall making as a child was a potholder made from loops on a metal loom. I was seven or eight years old, some 60 or more years ago. The provided loops were leftover remnants from the sock making industry, and they didn’t always quite fit. No matter, I made potholders by the dozens. I gifted my mother and all her friends, and all my aunts and their friends with the results of my creative endeavors. Random colors woven together made their own patterns. I have rediscovered the old style loom is available once again with 100% cotton loops that are manufactured just for making potholders. Random patterns are still pleasing, but as an adult, I place colors in sequences. I lose track of time in the meditative over, under, over, under.

Online classes became available for free or discounted prices during the pandemic. Making a glass chain, a surprisingly slow process, reawakened my interest in working with glass. A jewelry class involved threading tiny wires through a chain and melting balls on the ends. It lasted for several weeks and required total focus. I made some new friends with common interests.

Six weeks worth of stitches and patches.

The online Zen Stitching class, based on a historic Japanese style of mending called sashiko, became a form of meditation. Growing up, I had no interest in sewing and never really learned how. But my favorite pair of jeans had ripped, and I had been hearing about something called visible mending. Sashiko uses a simple running stitch about ¼ inch long in repeating patterns. I mended the hole and then kept stitching.

During lockdown, there was plenty of time for those things that had long been neglected because I didn’t have time for them, things like tidying up, organizing things, and sorting through old photos. Some of my friends were finding solace in these activities. As it turns out, lack of time was not the issue for me. I brought the boxes up from the basement. So many photos of lives-lived, all jumbled together. I’m glad some of the photos are labeled. There are about five or six generations in the mix – my parents, their parents, my children, their children. Some look so similar I can’t tell who is who. There are lifetimes of pets who taught me of unconditional love, of death and grief. I am overwhelmed. I put the lids back on the boxes. In a way, that is how I deal with the hard things, put them in boxes in my mind and close the lids.

Time is too short.

I have been taking photographs of small, often overlooked things like flowers, insects, seed pods, textures, and patterns in nature. I share these on social media: my small attempt to somehow try to counter all the fear and hatred I read so much about. Facebook and Instagram have provided something of a connection with the world beyond my sheltered space.

The fall sedums are in full bloom and are covered in bees. I see a dozen or more at once. They are oblivious to my intrusive camera, oblivious to my presence, my heartbreak. They don’t care about COVID-19, about the fires consuming our western states, about racism and hatred, about government corruption, about climate change which threatens their very existence.

We moved into sheltering in place and social distancing at the beginning of March. It was still winter. Of course, I didn’t think there would be a time table for all of this, but I surely did not expect to be where we are now at the end of September. Winter is nearly here again. Some days I am safe and happy in my little cocoon. Other days I am climbing the walls of a prison and wondering how long my sentence might be.

Time is too long.

In the words of beloved poet Mary Oliver, “It is a serious thing just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world.”

Progress for me has been learning to be present, trying to stay centered in a world that has become so very lopsided. Here I have shared with you of some of the ways I have come to spend my time, all the wonderful things I have explored. Some I will keep. Some I will say, “I tried that. It was fun.” Some of what I used to do, I suspect I will choose to leave behind when this is all over.

Progress is not always linear, and seldom swift. We went into a lockdown state, and time stopped. It has been over seven months now, and time is just slipping away. Time seems endless – day after day with no place to go, nothing to do. Yet, time seems to be so very fleeting – so many things I wanted to do in a life that’s spinning away all too quickly. Perhaps simply to live in the moment is enough.

Time passes.

Kristen Frantzen Orr was born and raised in Elko, Nevada, where her family has lived for over a hundred years. She is a graduate of the University of Nevada, Reno, and currently lives in Spring Creek, Nevada, at the base of the Ruby Mountains, with her husband, two Pembroke Welsh Corgis, and one Cardigan Welsh Corgi.

Kristen has been melting glass over the flame of an oxygen-propane torch to create glass beads since 1993. The process is called lampworking or flameworking. Depending on complexity, a single bead can take anywhere from several minutes to several hours to make. She was living in Arizona at the time she learned about glass beadmaking and was one of the early artists in the glass beadmaking movement in the United States. As such, she became a sought after workshop instructor. She has taught across the United States and in Japan, Germany, England, Canada, and locally at Great Basin College in Elko. Her work has been published in more than 30 books and magazines and is in public and private collections worldwide.

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Kathleen KuoOctober 5, 2020C1 Comment