A Shift

A Shift, a personal essay

Note: This is a follow-up to my April 28, 2025, essay about letting go of my paintings.

Alonna in the living room surrounded by her paintings, 2025.

A Transposition of Where and How

So much depends

upon

        a shift.

Dragonflies are fascinating. They originate in the water, linger terrestrially during the emergence state, then release themselves into the air. In this moment, what my life has been and continues to be feels like repeating cycles, akin to what the dragonfly goes through to become itself.

I’ve always connected with Sandburg’s definition of poetry, “Poetry is the journal of a sea animal living on land, wanting to fly in the air.” I paraphrased it in my own way, as a self-description, to connect my favorite feeling of being within water with the security of land, yet longing for the freedom and perspective flight provides.

It’s time for wings.

The Rule I Learned

My guiding principle since I was a child: be useful. That was how love was expressed. We weren’t an expressive family. Talk of the weather was always a good starting point. What could be done around the property mattered.

Sometimes my mom would go out and build us something. One day, we had a new picnic set that looked like giant Alice-in-Wonderland empty thread spools. She had transformed abandoned wooden wheels once used to hold power line cables. Another time, an immense teepee sprouted up in the clearing next to the woods. Mom had been busy again, a little something to go with the moccasins I had practically worn out from exploring animal trails.

Letting Go of Proof

So much has happened in the past ten months since I decided to let go of my paintings. This mental and emotional adjustment shifted my life and decision-making into fast-forward. Letting go of my paintings is not an act of minimalism. That kind of reduction is not at the heart of what I’m doing. I’m de-instrumentalizing my life. This means questioning need from another angle. Is needing to be useful just another tool of showing proof that I matter? I’m letting go of the evidence that I exist, have existed. It’s time to let go of those tools of the self-worth trade.

For reference, I wrote a 2025 essay about vision changes and letting go of my paintings, which triggered a cascade of what to keep and what to let go.

Where does that leave me now? A carry-on rolly and a tote bag contain my possessions. The exhaustion from it all, the waves of unexpected obstacles, losses, and letting go, road trips and international travel. Only to depart and return to the self who is an explorer, requiring wings.

Learning to Listen to the Body

So much in life seems connected to childhood. Back when I was a kid roaming the forests of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, not even ten yet, my first remembered example of translation brings to mind my pony’s ears. One ear shift at a time, acting as radar, indicating the quiet wooded trail we traversed was populated with information. She taught me to connect with place through primal sensory information. We stepped forward unhindered by modern sensory overload and overthinking. She modeled being in the moment. My DNA knew what it was to be just another living being on the planet, part of it, not in charge of it.

Alonna stands before her painting Red Rider, 2025.

Being present and engaged are my keys to shifting quickly. In my first two occupations, I never knew when a work opportunity would spirit me away to a new place. I shifted with ease and acceptance, as a foundational skill. The flow of change felt so natural to me because this was the goal of the groundwork of my dedicated daily routine. Those days began early, small actions piling up, creating pathways for opportunities to connect.

Recognition Without Reinvention

Last year’s shift to letting go of my paintings, surprisingly, placed me where I had ended up after another spontaneous shift back in 1986: Tokyo. While attending college in Michigan and working as a model in Chicago, I had just settled into a routine that let me live and work in both places. It meant weekly commuting by plane.

A combination of an industrial film in Detroit and a bank commercial in Chicago qualified me to join SAG, the Screen Actors Guild. I was working on my liberal arts degree in Michigan and was engaged. Life was busy and full.

One day, I walked into my Chicago modeling agency for a routine check-in with the acting division. The place was packed with models. I wasn’t there for whatever they were, but the head of the agency included me unexpectedly. Two of us from the Chicago branch were selected to go to Japan. Departure came as soon as the work visa did. Things happened fast back then.

Within ten months of letting go of my paintings, I was back in a place where I had been part of another kind of creativity, working in front of the camera. On New Year’s Day 2026, I found myself standing outside of my 1986 workplace, the Showa Era building where my Tokyo agency had been. We enjoyed lunch at the restaurant on the ground floor while I looked up and reminisced. I used to work right above our heads. This return was not about ambition.

Photo blur on faces other than Alonna's. She sits among models and her booking agent in the Tokyo agency's reception room, 1986.

Taking to Wing

The thing everyone says about aging does settle in at some point. You become more of who you are. For me, it’s finally beginning. Aging is a gift of diminishing by understanding. I can’t compete with my younger self, yet the younger self still bubbles and brews inside me.

I’ve exchanged my California beach walks for subway stairs, up and down to and from Japan’s busy streets. A smile I haven’t felt for decades percolates my facial muscles, trying to get them to remember how. Despite exhaustion, even in mundane or uncomfortable moments, I hear myself say “ureshii.” Happy.

I exist without having to explain myself. I am allowed to take up space. I find security in wondering what will happen next. By taking to wing and transporting myself, I expose a new raw layer of the curious explorer at my core. Begin again. A new chapter, not a new place, but a self I don’t know yet and need to meet. Landing long enough to see you.

I’m really excited about what comes next. When each day is spent and finished, the idea of searching for a greater meaning in life seems misguided, like an old-fashioned tool. What we chose to focus on each day feels substantial to me, even if it seems like nothing.

Thanks for sharing your time to be here with me.

Alonna outside of the Showa Era building, where her agency had been, on New Year’s Day 2026.

About Me

My work is shaped by embodied noticing and by what is carried imperfectly when language can’t hold everything, moving between the concrete and the elusive across poetry, visual art, and film.