Tag: measurement

Questions of Measurement

The reach of an image.

How do you find a painting?

There is a process. Look. Cut. Collect. Look. Repeat.

Does it always work?

Nothing does.

Whose dream is this world, and how did we get here?

How do you handle accumulation with care?

How does an image become a backbone, 

and how much will it hold?

Consider some rites of passage.

What are the rites of the soul?

When the oracle shares a meal with the nurturer, 

what do they discuss?

And who cleans after it’s done?

An architect and a protector meet at a well. 

Who is the first to offer?

How do you paint with the materials of a given day?

If the soul is a translucent heart, beating, what is

the reach of its vessels?

***

Inspired by the mixed media art of Amber Robles-Gordon

Scaling the Hours

Experiments in measurement.

An experiment in time, the idea for breaking it at the hours. You can, if you are willing, do what most children won’t. You can carve them as one would with an animal at the harvest, follow the joints––or lumber, into pieces to be assembled again, one segment at a time, the collected tasks the bearings for the dizzy hand, some terms that a body less willing to invite the dizzy spins can hold. Only by these cuts can we arrive at the conclusion, so often remarked by the aging, about how short it is. A child knows that a while a moment may be short, a glide, a song––Again, again!     

    ––it may also be made of so much forever that it becomes impossible to tell a body’s beginning from its end.

Bodies of Evidence

What lives beyond measure.

Our forms in flight evaded all process of proof, and when they came to measure us, we laughed ourselves into vapor, evading capture. We were solid only when we wanted to be. Yes, we danced freely among clouds, but were neither formless or endless, those ideals that only vanity presumes, and we had none when we were running, streams of selves flowing; would you put a river in a jar?