April 2019's Post-it note art from Instagram

Over on our Instagram page, we’re posting a weekly installation from Clare Johnson’s Post-it Note Project, a long running daily project. Here’s her wrap-up and statement from December's posts.

April's Theme: Why Am I Moving Backward

Ok fine YES, the first post-it is the one and only time I’ve ever been on a zip-line and yes that is me, the single special zip-liner who got stuck in the middle. Of the longest line on the course. We all nervously joked about this far-fetched ridiculous mishap that was apparently SO UNLIKELY TO EVER HAPPEN and then at the last minute there I am inexplicably sliding backward— why am I moving backward?? — slipping at increasing speed away from the platform I’m supposed to be landing on— arms left childishly reaching for the professionals who were supposed to catch me there— but didn’t, quite. And now I’m a pendulum, swinging....should we say zipping?....backward....then forward....then backward....forward....until finally stopping in the very middle....of a stunningly vast gap. And just....you know, hanging out. For a very long time. My. Quite. Prominent. Hips. Hanging. In. That. Harness. Full. Bruising. Bodyweight. My tiny distant sisters and father, so far away on that platform, so delighted at my not-arrival there. The guide had to rescue me EVER SO SLOWLY apparently, it’s a SERIOUSLY SLOW PROCESS. The inching along moments make you really aware of your body as bulk. I don’t feel that the guide felt this way about his own body, but I do think we all felt this way about mine. Minutes before this incident I’d been verbally bemoaning the quickness of the zip-line experience, wishing I had more time to enjoy the view. My family reminded me of this fact gleefully after witnessing my impressive feat of backward motion. All told, I think it was quite generous of me to selflessly bestow such joyful memories upon my loved ones. When I asked him why he chose the post-it for publication this month, my still-downtrodden dad paused a long time, then said simply, “It’s a good memory.” I invited him to be this month’s post-it chooser in honor of his birthday, but the second drawing is the only one specifically relating to himself. It’s of my multicolored Turkish lamps, painstakingly acquired over multiple visits to my friend’s home city, all thankfully designated mine in my ex-wife’s division of our stuff and safely arrived in Seattle, now hanging from my ceiling and FINALLY, in the realization of a DECADE-SPANNING DREAM HELD FOR PRACTICALLY THE ENTIRE TIMESPAN OF THIS POST-IT NOTE PROJECT, wired with lightbulbs I can turn on from a switch! Thanks to the kind, patient help of my dad. There’s not really anything else to say regarding the broccoli situation; we don’t need to wallow in it. In case the last image is not as obvious as the clichés that inspired it, with a little help I believe viewers can clearly see I am communicating getting back in the saddle / dipping my toe in. Don’t we all love well-intentioned dating platitudes. In the long run, time has proven I was doing neither of these things.