no more ducks

Today, I am full, loaded, with sentimentality. Like a heavy wet cloud, I am about to burst. The heat is so sweltering, it made me put on my floral skirt and beaded moccasins. I'm going to walk about my studio putting things in order, getting ready for the new table. I will build it out of plywood and saw-horses, just like the one before, just like the one I made with you before. I called my mother and grandfather and asked them how to do it. You carried the heavy boards on your back and hitched a ride with a stranger on my birthday. We sawed through the 2x4's with a small toothed handsaw from the 99 cent store.

Could it be I dropped myself like one might drop a basket of flowers? And the flowers spill everywhere and are scattered and some are bruised and everyone exclaims, what a shame? But then, it's not that bad, you just gather them up and put them back into the basket. Only some are missing now and must be picked again. So back to the fields, back to the holy ground. Do I start from seed? No, I think my soul is composed mostly of wild flowers. I will only have to find them.

Set photo from my film Wed/Lock 2012 Santa Fe, NM

There are little ribbons now, little strands of twine and petals of my voice that come through on days like these. Could it be that all this is from the 20 minutes? Mother said, don't try to make art, you are just beginning a spiritual practice. If in the end I don't know the name of what I am, I can at least have a sense of the rhythms I make and the places I want to be. The habitat, like Linda says.

I think this place, with it's heat and dust and dried-out arroyos is is the place where my wild flowers grow. Of course it is. These mountains, this sky. My first teacher. It's in the land, my childhood and the first things I knew: you can't seek yourself out. My soul is like a child that hides from me. Peter Pan's shadow. She hides behind trees and mostly, the things my heart desires most. Don't leave her there forgotten.

I spent so much of my life being out of place. I think I will treasure this now, this ability to choose where I am and the kinds of birds I keep company with.

Set photo from my film Wed/Lock 2012 Santa Fe, NM

sun. wood. books. coyotes fences.

I'm going to let go now, of the need to know what's going to happen. I'm going to float, and hope that the river carries me.