Maria wrote a piece on her blog this morning about her realization that her art and her politics are personal, and in many ways,  the same thing.

“This is new for me,” she wrote. “I have the confidence and belief in myself to speak my mind, to make myself heard.”

Every morning, I watch her work so faithfully on her new fiber chair, taking off her fingers in the cold, weaving our baling twine into art. What could be more political than this, the resurrection of an old and forgotten chair, rotting up in the barn rafters.

This was a true and wise thing for her to write, I think. When I met Maria, she seemed voiceless at first. I quickly realize she had many things to say, many strong passions and feelings, but she did not feel entitled to give voice to them. She has lots of voice now.

Politics and art are both personal, perhaps inseparable. None of us are free from politics, whether we engage or not. Maria’s politics immediately began showing up in her work. Her populist and feisty potholders, her women on quilts finding their voices, rejecting the boundaries of stereotypes, her goddesses spewing lightning and power, her love of Mother Earth and animals.

All of these are political, and I think her art came out before she did in so many ways. Maria and I both told each other many times that we are not political people, and in a way, neither of us quite noticed that this wasn’t really true.

I do not accept the very suffocating idea of the political world being confined to a “left” and a “right”, I think rationale people can see what that is doing to our civic system. We need more choices than this. For me, our two parties have failed to provide us with a unifying vision for the country or the future.

It is fine with me if people disagree with me, it is not fine with me if they only wish to argue with me.

They say that conservatives are liberals who got mugged the day before, and I wonder if creative people who say they are not political are just lacking in self-awareness of themselves and their work, waiting to get knocked in the head by ugly political realities.

To be creative in the Corporate Nation is in itself a political act. So is the philosophy of encouragement. So is the idea of life having meaning beyon making money for retirement. My photos are inherently political, so, I have come to see is my blog, although not through the narrow prism of the left and the right.

Lots of people tell me they admire my life and would like to have it, but there is often something hypocritical about that, because very few people actually try to do it. Living a meaningful life in our time is an act of rebellion and defiance. I do not have a million dollars in IRA’s to carry me through the last years of my life, and I hope I never do. That would be the end of me.

My life and my art are also personal, like Maria’s. I reject the conventional idea of life – the only idea of life – drummed into our heads before we can think. Get a good job doing work you hate for people who care nothing for you, abandon the natural world, exploit animals for our personal needs, not their well-being, submit to a substitute life so you can end your life dying slowly and painfully in places you don’t want to be. Embrace the corporate notions of life, death, health care and money.

My whole life, everything I write, every photo I take is political in that way, in a Thoreau kind of way, I am strong in my own life and getting strong in my own truth. I don’t need to argue it, I need to live it.

There are many wonderful ways to live and love, and they do not all require vast amounts of money that will go to someone other than me, whatever happens.

Donald Trump has challenged me to be more overtly political than I am comfortable being. My life is not an argument, I will simply life it as i see fit and do good when and where I can. There are all kinds of ways to make ourselves heard, as Maria is discovering. When our values are discarded so contemptuously, and without explanation, politics and art make love to one another.

There are times where I too must simply muster confidence in myself, nourish the belief that allows me to speak my mind, and hope that I will be heard. How lucky I am that I have someone so strong and gifted to share this experience with me, someone who can take my hand when it trembles and say, “yes, yes, this is the right thing.”  I hear that voice quite loudly.

I hope I can always do the same for her, or even better, that she will always be able to do it for herself.