Making and Making Do

I just had to explain to Zazie why she could not really smear strawberry scented lip gloss ("itch cream for dolls") all over Cup-cup (a soft doll), no matter how urgent the surgical procedure. She nods solemnly and says, Because if we mess Cup-cup up, we can't get another one. Right, I think. (But luckily, we can always do more surgery.) But then I pause. Why can't she smear lip gloss all over her? I mean, poor Cup-cup spent the whole morning in Poison Ivy; she needs this stuff.

We've spent a lot of time try to escape commercialism, brazen consumerism, and all the trappings of letting marketing execs have all the fun, while we sit around and watch. It is almost working. She is just about convinced that we can make anything she needs and about once a day, she says coyly to herself while playing: Wow, did you buy that beautiful toy? No, I MADE it. Wow.

Then she promptly destroys/crashes/demolishes whatever it was and starts over (well not all over, there is always a little bit of starter she can re-use for the next operation). "Instruction" is her favorite game. That is her parapraxis for "construction." (Avital, I'm calling, but Vik thinks it is just a spoonerism...). Still, I do learn something each time she constructs her imaginary world. Am I naive to think that the more she "makes", the less she will "want"?

Anyway, for some time, I have thought we have been doing a pretty good job. But then we moved to India and frugality, recycling and deconstruction have each taken on heightened meaning.

In a different way, we have a garbage can half the size of the one in the US and it takes twice as long to fill it up. And if I weren't so afraid of the rats, we would be composting and then it would take even longer to fill up the can. Why should anyone care about the size of our garbage can? Because it is the space between our garbage--the space between the rotten food and the cereal boxes, literally, the compost and the paper lanterns--between the size of our garbage and our daily use, that our world is being made.

I am a (somewhat) reformed hoarder and squirreling things up for a rainy day project is second nature, but the scale of this is important. While we have less than ever before in our lives, we are using everything we have. E v e r y t h i n g is being used. And re-used. And operated on and repaired. So it isn't only the making, but the using that is so important.

I guess it isn't deconstruction that I mean, but rather phenomenology. The perception of the scale of our waste is what I want Zazie to understand. So when I say no, we can't replace Cup-cup, I mean that while we can't replace her, we can suture her wounds and remake her and reuse her and let her be. And even if she has other dolls--er, other patients-in-waiting--that she must take care of this one and care for it and to have a soulful relationship to her things that connects her to this wide, expansive world and hopefully, help her move towards wholeness, towards responsibility, and towards experience.