wheatfield site

done

wheatfield site video/ virtual environments

Got a new camera for my birthday which takes fantastic photos and video while fitting into the palm of my hand so efficiently, I feel flawed next to it. Bought a video upgrade from wordpress for this blog because they’ve changed it and you can’t upload video without paying for it now (although Youtube is still an option) I can read, write, think and create, but all is useless without some technological interface. And my little wheatfield looks so lovely and fragile with the wind animating it. I want to do right by it, like the mother I am. As an immigrant to virtual culture I have to learn the language, to provide access for my “children”.

Flesh is a messy interface next to my glossy camera.

Pierre Gassendi & herman de vries: I walk therefore I am/ambulo ergo sum

Pierre Gassendi was a french philosopher and contemporary of  Rene Decartes, who clashed with him on the possibility of certain knowledge.

According to herman de vries, an eco-artist and scientist who works with randomness and chance, “descarte’s line cogito ergo sum (i think therefore i am) was opposed by his contemporary gassendi (1592-1655) who lived in digne, a town close to roche rousse [the mountain], with the comment ambulo ergo sum (i walk therfore i am).  people walking up the footpath to the sanctuaire de la nature de la roche rousse will find beside the path this gassendi quote cut into the surface of a rock that once fell from a ridge”. (from John K. Grande, 2004, Art Nature Dialogues, p.232) Note; de vries uses no capitals.

my july visit Able 2

Hi Barb this is able gardener 2, I was at the site this morning (Friday) and was both dismayed and joyful. I was sad to see that the wheat around the tree didn’t make it — all that remains are colored wood chips. Too bad. However on the bright side, despite all the noise, dust and destruction at the entrance to the Faculty the beauty of nature survives. The 2 boxes with zucchini, beans, corn are doing very well. I love the look of the corn; it is tall and green and looks like it should produce. the bean are climbing on the sticks you provided — though I didn’t see any blooms yet but it is still early days. I also detected some weeds (I think). Am I allowed to pick them? It is an automatic reaction as I am constantly weeding my gardens and walkway and lawn.

The most touching thing I noticed was a small sign, like a talisman, in each box notifying any onlookers that this is a children’s garden and providing a url link. As I crossed the street I saw two happy girls with their dad (who was on the phone) on their way to day school-day care?? I wanted to drag them over to the garden plots and see what they thought — they were so excited to get on with their day. And of course I paid on last look at the petunia boxes just in case there were any remnants of wheat. No luck there. Bye for now. Hope to see you on the 28th.

Apron/process/re-call

July 16

I was sewing the April 1 pocket onto my apron early this morning- always kind of wondering why I’m doing it. “It’s an act of faith”, is what flits through my mind. Like the thesis, I trust that someday it will get done too. And I realize that I have to trim the corner of the plastic pocket so that it becomes an irregular shape, no longer as squarish as the others. No longer formulaic. And all of a sudden there’ve become overlaps of pocket corner bubbles and embroidered dates overlayed, and it’s getting jumbled up– assuming its OWN shape and telling me what to do. I’m having a relationship with it. I have to leave an opening in the pocket I am finishing sewing in order to insert whatever it is I found at the time which is Mar. 27- and I wonder what it was? that I picked up back then? I think to myself, because I started sewing this plastic bubble a few weeks ago but got tired and only half finished it because I sewed several at that one time, so I’ve forgotten why I made it that size. It’s quite large in comparison to others, and I discover that what I collected was a lovely lichen stained piece of bark.

“Oh it’s so lovely”, I say to it, as I draw it out of the envelope and sew it into the pocket, and still glad I picked it up, still seeing it’s beauty, what drew me to it, and it’s claim on me. It’s   its’?   its…    Its—-   possessive form—- Its claim on me,  it possesses me,   and I remember, as it calls to my mind, our introduction; how I now receive it again, and our shared memory. It re-calls me, as I sew it into the apron.

Also, I notice how, because I have to turn and turn the apron around in order to sew around the plastic pockets, that these bits of flotsam that I’ve picked up, or that have picked me up, the natural substances at least- have started to fall into bits and deteriorate. The transitoriness of what I am doing is evident, that is except for the computer keys and other “man-made” [human-made] plastic substances, which will last forever.

And, getting to the point here- I think of David Jardine (“Unable to Return to the Gods that Made Them” in Under The Tough Old Stars, 2000) yet again, and how he tells it, that the so-called modern man-made materials and particularly “disposables”, are made specifically NOT to be cared about or loved. Neither can they return to the earth when their lifespan is over. I love my apron now, even as it sucks my time and energy, and I have the notion to get some pretty beads and sew them on all over the place. To make it beautiful and complex and “frivolous”. And I think we oughtn’t make things to last, but to be loved.