Category: Wonder

Feather Star

And other ancient mysteries.

Just the other day, we were discussing how it might be a good idea for us to pay close attention to the most enduring species, given our current trajectory. And then you showed up, looking like an underwater plant. Spineless, with branching appendages, radial arms, each like a feather. Where did you keep your fists, and how did you get this far without the opposable thumbs we so prized? What about your capacity for reason? Did you even have reasons? Name one, we challenged, but you were silent.

What you did was something else, and we couldn’t look away. You went on and on, catching what drifted before you. What you lost––namely, arms––you regrew. There is something here, we think. About the way you present as a walking plant, hiding in plain sight. We were trying to name it when you moved away. We were surprised by your speed. We wondered about your purpose but had to surface for air. 

Then we went inland and sat by the banks of a river, the site of another flood. Being creatures prone to contemplation, we often sat at the edges of water bodies, looking for some way to understand the movement between life and loss. When the waters receded, we would see the crowns of drowned monuments, and these would knock against ancestral bones. And we would think of things to notice. Like how the river must know every stone it touches, and these. They went on, knocking, and we left.

***

Inspired by feather stars.

The Experience

Reflections at play.

We mean to be sophisticated in our tastes. But this is absurd. Really. This whole idea of art we step into. The way you demand we become it. The size and height of these rooms, the excess of mirrors, balloons. You invite us in––for pictures, of course. For the experience. Mirror, mirror, mirror, mirror––on the wall, ceiling, floor. Which is which? Wall, wall, wall, wall. And everywhere we look––even out, there we are. You call it the reflection room. We are delighted. 

***

Inspired by an experience in one of the Infinity Rooms created by artist Yayoi Kusama.

Visitor

Suspensions in time.

Visit: to go and see. How casually we speak of the act, and yet. To see anything as it was before is to replace memory for presence. Some images have a way of offering reminders. For example, here is the edge of a sleeve, slightly frayed. Here a new scar. There, a cracked pot under a drain. I thought I knew this place, but where are these objects in time? I cannot place them, so I hold here, suspended.

Arrivals

In-flight reminders.

Having the kind of travel experience that offers certain reminders. Such as: how likely it is that whatever the itinerary, it will be subverted; whatever the projected arrival time, it is probably just a theory; that a theory will continue to be offered, because we like to have one, even if we know it will probably fall through; that whatever belongings we thought we would have with us may not arrive. 

And yet, here we are, and we have yet to need the emergency exits or the inflatable vests. And we sleep, eventually and somewhere. Our carefully made plans and carefully packed items can be replaced. But not this one, sleeping. Her quiet breath. I used to wake in the middle of the night to check for it. May I remember this. And know that if we are anywhere with nothing but these breaths, the stunning abundance when they continue to arrive in time.

Poem Specimen

Let’s go see the animals!

This is of language, the sound and sight of it, the signature and sign. The undoing of signs. The shattering of symbols, the gong of their echo. Notice this tongue as medium, as manipulated, manipulating music, a polyvalent creature in motion, now still. Oops, there it goes again. Got it. Sort of. To borrow an expression. This is a form of attention. Here, touch it.

Joy of Missing Out

Instead of a poem, this thing.

What are you doing right now? we asked each other and then had to admit it was nothing in particular. With a caveat, of course, that something highly particular would come later––most likely, eventually. Which would have a feel of greatness, or something adjacent.

And so, a suggestion. Let’s go to the roof. That sounded good. We went as we were, thinking Air. Thinking Bird’s Eye View, and its attendant image-phrases: Sky and being Above It All. 

There’s a poem here somewhere, and maybe someday I will find it. Eventually. It doesn’t have to do with the sky, though, or the skyline I imagined, or some transcendent epiphany. 

It’s about the way that there were rooftops in every direction, all of them with people on them, standing in haphazard arrangements, in their ordinary clothes and various states of unkempt undress. How we were all there, missing something or someone––somehow, but we couldn’t say, so we made a vague music instead of stale clichés, commenting on the watercolor sky, how awesome, and wow, and how lame we felt repeating these expressions. And how we were unable to help ourselves, somehow. And how wonderful it was just doing that. Just wonderful.

***

My encounter with the phrase I borrow for the title (which, apparently, is used in various contexts with some frequency although it’s delightfully new to me as of this morning) comes from a Todd Bienvenu exhibit.

Flying Directions

From coffee to eternity.

Take the long view, starting from any horizon where it gathers like rain. Then try a movement in time, leaving reason behind. Go from moment to moment to moment, but no bridges between them. Cellar doors will do, no stairs. This allows for the sudden drop from one to the next.

We move these tiny flames on sticks, and then wait. One sign is the flash of sunrise around the window. Another is a breath of letters flooding the veins, flowering tongues, chiming the ear.

These are useful reminders. Let go, syntax, let’s go. There are more ways to arrange a voice beyond the tired grooves of your worn paths. You can cut the ankles again on low thorns, catch webs in the mouth, know your face by the cheek kissing the cat tail, and forget the mirrors.

Bodies

In solvent.

Across this wide, crenulated landscape, these internal contradictions pulse our continuance. 

Each fold a valley of storms, each groove a supernova. Light into mirror and back again––as it was once, body without organs, and will be. 

Watch how we shine in an absence of light. Would you dissect the sea for its parts? You may try, but none of us, separate from the rest, will retain an original form.

Underwater, our flying forms draped in starlight, we are watched equally by mothers and monsters, and lose our faces to know our substance.

***

Inspired by the work of Warren Neidich as well as Katherine Bradford.

The Long Look

Window, lens, hand, soul.

You appeared on a certain corner every evening with your camera, to enact a ministry of light. Recalling childhood, you arrived in the circle’s fullness each time. Former strangers worked with you. You created each image together. This is how you said, I know you. 

Every moment was a breath of spirit. In this world of surface illusion, you reached your illuminating hand, your goal always, touch me, touching you. 

By devotion to the details of flesh and fracture, shadow and shade, the drape of traffic lights over wet pavement, each frame became a reminder: look at us here, in the same image. 

Those birds are one creature. Those ants are one creature. Gathered on the corner in the glow of wet streetlights, one creature. And you took it all in, and said, we are here to work out our fear of being.

***

Inspired by the work and spirit of Khalik Allah, as generously shared in an interview with J. P. Sniadecki in BOMB.