In my other life, I make dioramas. I’ve been making them for years. I exhibited them for the first time the year I lived at the corner of Jackson and Lyon Streets in San Francisco. I wasn’t yet 30. I put them all over the giant apartment I lived in with three roommates and invited everyone I knew to come over. I set out little arrangements of snacks. My boss brought her husband, and they spent $95 that day on my creations. The person I was dating brought flowers. I still have a picture of myself that day, all smiles but with really sweaty armpits.
It is can be scary to tell people the things you care about. It can be terrifying to actually show them.
My early dioramas (I call them my “blue period”) were full of punny captions. I took great effort in coming up with an exhibit full of wordplay. I was in love with my own cleverness.
If I’m being completely honest with you—and why shouldn’t I be?—I still am. It’s an engine inside of me that could run at a pretty loud hum, if I let it. What keeps me from doing that, I wonder? Why would I muffle anything about me that I love?
The world tells me so, in one way or another. Or maybe it’s closer than that, some part of me that inherited the phrase “big britches” and why I shouldn’t go wearing them. My inside voice could luxuriate in an endless bath of puns, crossword puzzles, unscramble challenges, and other wordfests, but my outside voice cracks the whip on these amusements. But then, something happens every few years and the old fire lights up again. And I let it rage as much as it wants.
And so, this latest go-around had me at the dining room table for a few days, assembling close to 50 dioramas to sell at a pop-up holiday market at my local arts center last weekend.
Here’s my favorite part about the whole thing: Watching a young girl of about 4 years old go up to the boxes, hold her pointer finger out, and erupt into a smile.
Which became my smile, and her mother’s smile behind her. The room filled like a giant balloon with this trio of smiles.
For a few minutes, I forgot about the war in the Middle East, which has been keeping me awake at odd hours, sobbing spontaneously, feeling such a depth of sadness and grief I wonder if there’s any possible way back to the surface.
I realize it’s not so much my own cleverness I love, but whatever’s inside of me that manages to see the surface, and swim to it.
I love this so much. Every single word. I say let those britches rip. Grateful for all the kinds of clever you share, Maya!
Yes! Thank you Maya, once again.