I love the Netflix adaptation of Shadow and Bone and I'm still mad that Netflix decided to cancel it. (The cast is comprised of some of the prettiest people ever.) Anyway, in Episode 3 of Season 1, we are introduced to Genya, the beautiful Grisha who is assigned to dress and attend to the main character of the story, Alina. As Genya smooths and heals some of Alina's wounds, Alina notes in astonishment: "You're a Healer."

"I'm a Tailor. I can fix, but I can also modify," says Genya.

A month ago I attended an artist talk by artist Sa'dia Rehman. Beginning with a broken lamp their mother asked them to fix, they discovered that art is, in essence, a way of mending. Be it a physical object of utility or the social fabric of America, an artist has the ability to renew, revitalize, reimagine.

Art is often believed to be an act of creation but as I've indicated in an earlier blog post, there's a difference between making and creating, and most definitely a difference between making and mending. Being an artist means that, because I can assemble, I know the glue that does the assembling, which means that I can intrinsically fix. Fixing doesn't seem quite as exciting as creating, because the act of fixing means succumbing to a lack of originality with a pre-created source material. Yet perhaps the fixing can come to define the material itself, as is seen with Kintsugi in Japanese pottery. The mending makes the piece more beautiful. The piece is more beautiful because it was broken.

Today I found an old music box, a miniature ferris wheel that would spin with the wind-up contraption, placed on the counter outside my mom's room. One of the sides had detached from the original piece; it was still somewhat functional, but it needed mending. I took it downstairs, where I first applied silicone glue and realized how it was broken, then noting that silicone glue wasn't enough. I applied generous amounts of tacky glue instead. That did the trick. The music box is fixed, at least for now. A little win for today; fixing does bring me some sense of satisfaction.