I want alien systems, I want to understand the love I have for over-winter quince, I want swimming every day of my life, I want to find a way to talk to you telepathically, I want to tan a hide to buttery perfection, I want to recognize the musky smell of deer in the air, I want universal language, I want to be a receiver for chemical transmissions between Oak and Birch, I want to never have to argue again, I want to argue with you every day of my life, I want to shit in an outhouse in the morning, I want funny pictures made entirely of gold luster, I want assured understanding, I want to float over landmines and break fingers with Zofia and Chris and Mandie and the tarantulas again, I want medicine lining the studs of my house, I want sitting on the radiator and looking out over the East River with you at night, I want opera, I want arcs of blood between nose and white T-shirt, I want fresh catch on the fish market air, I want you to want fresh catch on the fish market air, I want juniper leaf, I want bloodroot, I want lotus, I want gingko, I want rose hip, I want This is a Girl, I want goldenrod wasp galls, I want soft soft stone fruit pressing in on my body, I want to tease out the pieces of of these things that make them stick in my mind, I want mycelium glowing under the ground, I want my ear pressed to the earth, I want to understand this alphabet, I want to employ it.
List of Alphabet as I Understand It, In No Particular Order:
The approximation of a mature piece of juniper foliage:
signaling the need for defensive protection via clarity, self-assertion, and an astringent piercing through of others’ interferences with one’s life. Moving through life unclouded and without uncertainty.
Idea of a rose-hip (visual approximation; drawing of a rose-hip):
the image of a rose hip is a specific kind of overwhelming, heart-achey love…the kind of love that, when you think of its recipient, makes you want to perform tedious, unasked-for tasks to prove your devotion. When I am so deeply in love, I want to gather 1,000 rose hips for you, I want to spend all day caught in a thicket of barbs to show you how much you mean to me. Or is this tedium to show me how much you mean to me?
Approximation of a bloodroot:
this is a teetering idea, tipping between medicine and poison, or perhaps, perfectly poised in its balance and conveying both. It is protective love, it is purification and healing, it is strength, it is growth. It is caustic, it is a weapon, it is a hex-breaker, it is the potency of blood and sex, it is singularity, it is the anticancer in any meaning of illness.
“This is a Girl”:
clearly, a girl. The meaning lays in the obtuseness of its physical form, speaking to the potential for illegibility/inaccessibility/un-bridge-ability of language or modes of communication. In ways, “This is a Girl” stands in for a symbol of ‘language’ as an entire concept, especially ‘foreign/alien’ language. An analogy for the eternal secrecy of an internal life.
In certain contexts, the Girl can begin to point to the experience of anyone in a (romantic) relationship as they struggle with the knowledge that their partner may see them simply as an abstracted and skewed version of what they ‘Are.’
After much fixation, “This is a Girl” has also become a compositional placeholder for a more specific central figure, value, or driving concept. It is a Girl, it is my Mama, it is my daughter, it is the leader of a brigade, it is the same thing I am searching for when I go and sleep in the woods.
But “This is a Girl,” really is just a girl.
Transmutation of a rose-hip:
these rose hips, which tumble visually away from the original ‘rose hip’ image, talk about the perversion of a concept. They can be interpreted as an exploration of the constantly evolving nature of language/vocabulary/symbolism, which connects to the questions of communicative illegibility brought up by the shape of “This is a Girl.”
This signifier can also be interpreted as talking about the perversion of interpersonal relationships, as its status as a visual degradation or mutation of the original rose hip signifies the degradation or mutation of the meaning (doting in-love-ness) carried with the rose hips.
It is worth noting that ‘transmutation’ not only involves decay, but conversion, implying a progression from one state into another. There is the possibility of a new stability/state of being.
(Lotus) pod:
this is still partially unknown, or at least unable to be articulated to the level that other visual signifiers can be. There is a wholeness in a pod, a feeling of home and inexplicable magnetism. This feeling of home is the most concrete and definitive way I can explain my use of the lotus pod.
Perhaps this magnetism comes from the pull between extreme natural beauty and repulsion that many people feel when looking at a lotus pod— a lotus pod may be the epitome of perfect design, yet it is so alien in its form that one may feel repelled, as it evokes touches of trypophobia (phobia of small, clustered holes). There is something in this dichotomy that resonates with me as mirroring the inarticulate personal specificity and belonging that is found in people’s homes; the comfort and love of physical surroundings that may be alien or discomforting to others. It is like a pregnant belly, skin stretched tight across a bulging abdomen, radiating love and terror.
The Lotus Pod is also very location-specific to me, recalling an apple orchard of my childhood; upstate New York; home. To me the feeling of ‘Home’ has a primal or feral core. It smells like smoke, and pond water, and garlic and onions, and feet soaked in PBR and tequila mud, and burnt sage, and melting butter, and maybe sometimes like the inside of a rabbit’s skin. This is what makes me feel grounded and like I am filling my lungs to their full capacity, and the prehistoric shape of the lotus pod fills me up in the same way.
This letter/symbol may be almost synonymous (despite its lack of a concrete meaning) with visual signifiers that connect with pods other than solely a lotus pod— similar meaning is conveyed through the use of representations of poppy pods, seeds themselves, to some degree rose hips (as they formally mimic the feeling of a Pod), etc.
Wasp gall:
this is simply floating around in my head, yet to be utilized. It’s a letter I don’t know yet, and I am still trying to figure out how to write it. Appears to be a variation on some of the extreme perversions of a rose hip or pod. I am thinking about what happens to a body when it is invaded by something else—what happens to the straight strength of goldenrod when wasp larvae burrows into its core, instigating the bulbous growth of a tumor.
Flower/Ginko/ Tear:
signals emotional openness, the willingness and ability to express oneself without fear of consequences, and a reminder of the importance of unobstructed emotionality for one’s health. Tied in with this is, of course, the importance of vulnerability and the wish/assurance to be safe despite embracing vulnerability. Seen through the lens of our Western society, this visual signifier then brings up the inevitable association of ‘femininity,’ adding that as a facet of the signifier’s definition.
Stonefruit, esp. apricot:
the stone fruit speaks to the unbelievably softness of the human form, and to the possibility for overwhelming vulnerability. I’m thinking a lot about the feeling of an apricot brushed against a cheek, thinking a lot about what happens to stone fruit carried too roughly in your canvas bag, or dropped on the ground. I’m thinking a lot about plum-hush necklaces, bodies laying on hot asphalt. I’m thinking about the debilitating fear entangled with the act of being vulnerable, thinking of how delicious it would be to bite through the skin of your arm when I’m in a good mood and liking you.
The sight of blood creeping from a nose, mouth, eye:
a reminder to love. Luciano and Tom. I’m still too scared to figure this one out.
Shoreside Galls:
these echo the forms of many things; they are seaweed nodules, honey-locust seed pods, the roundness of a womb, the feeling of carrying a baby in your arms.
Debris/Leaf litter:
the use of debris in installation speaks to the unexpectedly linear way in which driftwood, polished shale, glass shards, zebra mussels, shotgun shells, and swells of mud and oil arrange themselves on Cayuga’s south shore. The haptic attentiveness in both the construction and arrangement of this debris points to the fact that both the debris and viewer exist in the same physical world—the debris signifies that the viewer is now immersed in an atmosphere, landscape, situation, mode of communication, etc.
Bells:
Magic. A Miracle, á la Princess Bride. Playfulness of the unexpected.
The unknown/ unwritten:
The incredible perfection of a sedge, unspeakably balanced in its triangular culm. Cradles of broken blood vessels hung below eyes, product of an inter-cranial pressure borne of love and the need to press two bodies together. Wild onions burnt over coals. The neck as an orchard. The smell of spring loam and dripping ice. The blunt truncation of an iron bar disappearing into a shoreside cement brick. Red clover as pine trees. A TV sitting fallow and blaring light across a face.