Puzzled

Facing a complex jigsaw puzzle, Susannah Pratt felt defeated using her usual piece-sorting process, one geared to solving jigsaws efficiently, without time wasted in random pairing attempts. When the puzzle defied her, she began to question her reasons and motivations for doing puzzles in the first place. Are jigsaw puzzles a leisure activity or leisure cloaked in a time-honored evil: productivity.

Despite my best intentions, an internalized late-stage capitalism was driving me relentlessly past rest and pleasure and straight toward product completion. Thankfully, the Tree of Life resisted. I could not for the life of me find a section to get going on. Progress came only in admitting the inability to see. Or, more accurately, in slowing down and learning to see differently. The direction of the printed fabric grain. Small variances in color or thickness of line. These were my only tiny clues to where a piece might belong. To work on the puzzle was to give myself over to utter disorientation.