5/12/2007

seeds of doubt


This is a little packet of seeds from one of my favorite pieces by Molly. Not long ago, when I was visiting her in her studio she handed me a handful of these seeds.
"What do I do with them?"
"Keep them in your pocket and give them to people."
"But why would I want to give little seeds of doubt to people? That's not really nice."
"Give them to people you don't like, cocky people who think they're the shit, walk up to them shake your head and say 'I don't think so' and hand them over a seed."

I could never do that, but I loved the thought of having all these little seeds with the word doubt written on them in my pocket. Well, I loved the idea of having them there, but once I started walking around with them in my pocket I hated them in there. I'd be walking to work, wondering about how something in my life might turn out and then I'd slip my hand in my pocket and feel all these little seeds full of doubt. I felt like it was a bad omen. So I started getting rid of them. I didn't feel like I could dump them all at once in one place and I guess I unconsciously made a rule for myself that I had to rid myself of them naturally, one at a time, slowly. Like if I released them each very intentionally they would never come back to me. I left one the sidewalk near my job next to a discarded piece of cardboard on which someone had written, I have a loaded gun, I'm not kidding. I left one on an empty seat on the bus one afternoon. I left one on the ledge of a building that I didn't like. Sometimes I dropped one or two out while I was walking somewhere. I handed some to a couple of people, saying, "Here, do something with this." After not too long they were all gone and I felt safe slipping my hand in my pockets again. The piece that Molly created these seeds for is all about getting rid of those negative voices in our heads -- squashing that little voice that says you're not good enough, you should be sorry for that, you should feel bad about this. I'm trying not to apologize anymore for things that don't need apologizing- trying to get rid of those little voices that tell me I should feel bad about any of my actions. Sometimes that's easy and sometimes it's not. I hated having those seeds in my pocket for weeks, but I loved the process of riding myself of them.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

oooch. it doesn't make me sound very nice, does it? yipes. you could crush them as your own seeds of doubt, or, i guess, hand them over to someone who is just a bit too.....ooch, there i go again!

Christina said...

in theory it's actually a great idea. and doesn't make you sound awful at all. some people walk around with too much doubt and some not enough. maybe that sounds mean?