The making and selling of chenille bedspreads was once common in north Georgia. I remember seeing these colorful samples of Americana on display beside the road on the way to my grandmother's home outside Rome. My mother hated them. To her modernist sensibilities, they were "tacky." That is probably why I like them. These 1950s era objects seemed like the perfect stand-ins for my body (and others of similar age). I work to organize the remains, to mend (visibly), and to make new connections that replace former patterns. In other words, to maintain and move forward with what you have left.

Crumbling is not an instant's Act

A fundamental pause

Dilapidation's processes

Are organized Decays --

'Tis first a Cobweb on the Soul

A Cuticle of Dust

A Borer in the Axis

And Elemental Rust --

Ruin is formal -- Devil's work

Consecutive and slow --

Fail in an instant, no man did

Slipping -- is Crashe's law

*Dickenson invented Crashe's law to explain that the crash is only the climax of a slow process of ruin.

Emily Dickenson (1830-1886)