PONDERINGS
January, 2024
frozen over
I visited the site to document my weaving installed in the bunker. The pale woven body sways with each gust of wind, but its long tendrils are anchored by one railroad spike and semispheres of ice.
I meander to the pond on the back of the site. I discovered it in late summer while foraging to make natural dyes. Sumac promised berries by early fall, and when I returned, their sticky clusters were deep crimson and easily snapped from the woody stems. I harvested sparingly, just as I do on the side of the road, making sure to leave ample nourishment and visual interest for local populations.
It is January now and bitter cold. I've all but forgotten the lush perimeter. Bare branches now permit a clear view of the pond's basin, and I am tempted by the emptiness. I proceed inward, dodging naked dormant stems while brittle,
frost-bitten leaves crunch under my warm boots. I cut to the center. Earthtones and otherwise mundane shades of beige and brown come alive under a thin sheath of frost. Icy blue-white fractals rise up among leaves, sand, and soil. Every surface glistens.
As my eyes and feet wander, my brain is bombarded with dopamine. The pond is littered with evidence of the foundry. I look closer. Overflows of steel stiffened by cool air are coated with a fiery residue; the burnt orange harmonizes with the thin shoots of willow rising up from the banks, breaking through its own curly brown leaves. There are metal grinding discs, canvas sleeves, and fragments of ceramic tubes, some encrusted with a thin layer of slag (a waste / bi-product of the sand-casting process). Slag is everywhere: some is smooth walled and sage green and blue, and other chunks are matte brown. Glassy interior surfaces are interrupted by gaseous pockets (vesicals). Each piece is an artifact of industrial geology frozen in a modern construct of time.
July, 2024
poetry-in-place: improvisational poetry while recording insect songs
Tiny legs creeping up grassy staircases
Who is talking to who?
Your outdoor symphony
is a cacophony of domestic chaos
a glass clanks on the hard countertop
a plate rattles in the sink
a pocket knife drags across the table
that cut through cicada like waves
are you carving your initials
on leaf and stem?
water gurgles and you
scratch scratch scraaaaaatch
as if trying to escape
like an animal trapped in a wall
a deep throated goose moans
while crickets scuttle under my shins
are you swimming closer to me on a long blade of Johnson grass?
Uhhhhhhhhh uh uh uh
Panting panting
with soft breath
Are you making love?
Summer 2024 -
two bodies
The pond's rim is teeming with ivy and oak and continues to fill with rain. With my attention diverted to its perimeter, I consider the systems around this site-within-a-site.1 I know that water rolls down the transite roofs and is carried through a series of drains to the pond. I trace their paths with an old site map and count my paces between cast iron grills.
The loading dock is half-full of water.
Two deeper pools, one on each side of a slanted median host tadpoles in various stages of development. All have since hatched from the slimey and translucent, yet protective strands I remember encountering with fascination as a child. Their narrow tails flit and propel their round, dark bodies among strands of green algae.
On sunny days when the sky is clear and blue, the steel trusses above the loading dock are mirrored in the surface tension on the still water. The color is cool and dark and implies greater depth. The basin is surrounded with earthy red palettes and pallets (local brick), just as the pond is encircled by local color such as sumac, the red-tinged leaves of fading dogwood, and the golden quivers of river birch, and sandbar willow.
Both 'ponds' were constructed; they are containers and vessels that receive and hold material bodies. They are connected by impervious surfaces on which water slips through cracks and nourishes persistent stems en route to and through cast iron grills and gills.
Containers that once pulled into the narrow channels are now adjacent, filled with archives of another kind. The clear space below the long, rusty chassis of another trailer serves as my studio and field station. Beyond the pipeline and fence line are ghostly footprints of tanks disguised by an unruly forest of tall oaks. This was Exxon land, a ruderal carbon sink that hosts a cascading trill of cicadas and the screach of hawks both day and Night.
Systems run between and beneath (hu)man-made infrastructures. Bridges bisect rivers that flow freely, as fences and plot maps draw invisible boundaries. Roads and railways for travel and transport remain impediments that intersect human flows and 'human space'2.
Matter brushes against matter above and below the horizon where traces of industry percolates through ancient soils. Disobedient branches evade chain-link fences. A single woody vine on the slope of the basin escapes the impossible tangle to effortlessly glide through a provisional iron hook — a make-shift attachment that facilitated raising and lowering to now lodged on the steep interior slope.
It, too, will be extracted while a skid-steer and two bodies displace air. 3
December, 2024
on systems / silica / sand
a granular connector
from mountain to land to
ocean and river
back to field and foundry
in the bottom of this pond
which receives and holds
an archive of accumulations
and entangled systems —
architectural, industrial, ecological
you shift and filter
become sediment, make stuck
materials that run amuck
softened edges on steep banks
bring water to willow and common reeds
bent against and fueling their will
microscopic architectures
with tiny glassy bodies
breathe life — O O !!
so delicate and ordered
yet scattered at an imperceptible scale
among flattened sardine cans and glints of blue glass and stone
silicate particulate
in varied states
carried by river, bucket, hand
at the water's edge
where paws and claws lay tracks
to drink, rest, feed
in a circular system of
sentient creatures
of two, four, six and eight legs
some sing through leaf and stem
a symphony of vibrations
that fall on dull ears
December, 2024
on windows
A window is an opening
a pane within a plane
nested in a void
tilted and turned, raised and lowered
a transparent valve
to meter light and air
single-paned vintages
boast undulating waves
and tiny bubbled imperfections
modern sashes trap nobel gasses
argon and krypton hidden between layers
elements shield us from elements
a framing device to hone one’s vista
where do we place the window?
what do we want to see?
Windows of opportunity
A time-based situation
governed by seasonal cycles
other circumstances and climates
require urgency and action
How will we respond?
1. I created the term 'site-within-a-site' to define the unique spatial, material, or ecological conditions that relate to a specific area or unique feature of or created within a larger, parcel, structure, or space. It is often a place for focused (micro) observation, juxtaposition, or activation within the larger (macro) site. It can be a retention pond on a parcel of land, a room within an architectural space, or a corner within a room. The definition is specific, but also flexible.
2. Bollnow, Otto Friedrich (2011). Human space. London: Hyphen. Edited by Christine Shuttleworth & Joseph Kohlmaier.
3. The hook is attached to a solid iron form that weighs nearly 450 lbs. Kyle Lansing volunteered his time and skid-steer services to remove the object from the pond. I lowered the heavy metal chain and secured its hook around the other, then Kyle easily lifted it out and guided it onto a palette.