As you may have heard I am in the midst of a transition. Uprooting from the sagebrush and tumbleweeds of Bend, OR to be amongst the moss clad branches and blackberry brambles on Bainbridge Island, WA. I have come to know just how much this dusty high desert soil can nourish. Perhaps it's not the land as much as its people that have helped me grow.
One of those lovely people has gifted me an arm from her prosperous Angel Wing Begonia. Her Angel Wing has quadrupled in size and split off into mason jars scattered across town. I will hold this one dear. A reminder of its OG Angel, the only girl who brings the fixings for deviled eggs to the park (paprika and all) and makes them right before you on her picnic blanket. The woman who rips down the ski slop in a prom dress, and demands you get the hot pink rubber clogs at your favorite thrift store.
This Angel Wing is also a reminder, like many propagated plants, that not only will I be okay without earth beneath me, I can grow roots wading in water.
It is always an honor to create a ceremony installation. The task is not just to please the eye, but to mark a threshold that is the entrance into matrimony.
I am a big believer that the greatest art is always signed by nature itself. Whether it's a turtle's shell, a hummingbird's nest, or a knot in a tree, my being is left brimming in revere. I am currently putting off real life with a month in Costa Rica. Here, it is easy to applaud the greenery, the shadows cast by palm fronds, the roots of an orchid embracing a tree. It is easy to forget to see the beauty of death in all the fruitful life. These three leaves, collected walking back from the beach, struck me with their grace. They seemed to be preforming a fluid dance to decay. And once again I bowed down to the nature of things. I absorbed their lesson that sculpture is movement at a glimpse.
When you tread lightly off the path, as a dainty footed deer, but when you know you are all donkey. And the wild flowers you bowed down to just moments before --the Lupin you cupped in your hands-- now bow for you. You know you are not worthy. Nobody is, but maybe the dear. Yet you ache to be that kid again. The one that swings his legs before him, rather than lifting his knees. You don't remember the last time you stubbed your toe and think you might miss it. You want to rattle down this hillside like the toboggan you should have bailed from you want to fall in love with gravity again, but your notch in the door way is too far from the floor. A painful romance however deep. You don't want to have to worry your weight and the weight of the world. But you know now... that you do not tread lightly.
The petal in the kiddy pool is nothing more than a petal in a kiddy pool. And it doesn't have to be more, to take pause, to take comfort in the knowing that you are its witness and thus, time is not passing you by, or rather dragging you along its rapid course of waiting and racing. It doesn’t have to be more, to hold close the knowing that there are moments and moments to come. It doesn't have to be more, to praise your eyes that see the light pass through the petal, to praise the skin that feels the summer cross over your shoulders and the hose water cool your toes, to praise your ears that hear the baby’s squeals of delight as he shreds apart the poppy and puts the petals in the pool. It doesn't have to be more to understand all his destruction is a part of his making. It doesn't have to be more to realize he has yet to be told how to take on the world so all he knows is how to take it in. The petal in the kiddy pool is nothing more than a reminder of how to take in the world.
Was it my mother who taught me about winged-things? There was the dead gold finch on a plate in the freezer waiting to be painted, a still life. There were the faux Matisse Cut-Outs she made with our cereal boxes to hang on the Christmas tree. There was the half inch origami crane she wept over. And then the stuffed dove she made out of a pair of my grandmother’s elbow-high, white, leather gloves. Yes, my mother made it true, there is no greater state to be in than that of a winged-thing.
It's a mad kind of love. One that robs your body. I bury three birds without their wings. It does not get easier. Each a thundering silence louder than before. Who am I to try and preserve your flight. But I can't stop. I cover the birds with dry desert soil. Are they even birds anymore?
