Body, Mind, and Spirit as Colonized, Continued

It is my fear that as we continue to evolve our technologies and thus physically move further away from the ground from which we came we also, psychologically, move further away from that which makes us human. It is only plausible that, as we forget our humanity, we come to more and more follow the totalitarian dictatorship of the few who want the most. I also fear that as we continue to allow mainstream media and other forms of patriotic brainwashing to infiltrate our lives, we will continue to purchase false hope and fictional realities. I am afraid that we will blindly follow wherever we are led, even if it is into an uncertain future where commerce is digitized and placed underneath our skin, just as the V-Chip is intended to do.
For years, I emphatically stated that I would never own a television, and now, here I am, the cautious owner of such a large technological device. However, the purchase was a harmless compromise. My partner had paid for extensive mechanical work to be performed on the sputtering engine of my ‘90 Volvo. In exchange, he asked for the mind-numbing, body-loosening contraption. I felt obliged. Gratefully, to this day, he continues to agree to my terms of usage. Which are: we do not subscribe to a television cable network provider, and we only rent and watch independent, arty films (well, most of the time).
Our 36” High Definition television sits, tucked in a corner, just to the left of the north facing living room windows. Across its barren face lay a yellow sarong. Red letters emblazon the fading material, - Hindu characters paying homage to an ancient god. The artifact is a memento from a blissful journey through Switzerland. Running late for a Paris train, I nonchalantly purchased the relic prior to an all-out sprint to board the departing locomotive.
In recent years, another layer has been added to the collection. For my 29th birthday, a dear friend gave me a pale, knit scarf, its edges frayed, as a token of her friendship. Ten years my senior, she feels a certain kinship with me, - that unique parallels connect our life experiences. She was adopted into a Sikh community as a teenager, and she spent her high school career living in India. As a mother of two, she now teaches Kundalini Yoga and feels most at home while donning a turban.
When people visit our current abode, at 3175 Mandan Way, they either do not recognize the television, or they question why it is hidden. My rationale is multi-fold. First and foremost is the fact that a majority of Americans proudly display their TV sets as the most prominent feature in a room that is meant to entertain ‘family.’ A modern day crucifix, it is beholden to all, and prayed to for hours on end, - daily, weekly, and monthly. Transfixing our dynamic bodies into a fictional state of stagnancy, we kneel before it as though its glossy, dual-dimension will somehow transmute the messiness of our many-dimensional lives.
Numerous cultures throughout human history have believed in ideas of objects as both the harbors and the propagators of evil. For example, in Hawaii it is thought that speaking one’s gravest of acts into the face of a rock will encapsulate and hold the sin for eons to come, - unless, of course, an unsuspecting human comes along and plucks the millennia-old stone up from its resting place. At which point, the negative energy is transferred to the new receiver. Hideo Nakata’s horror film, Ringu, draws from an ancient Japanese folk tale based on a similar notion. The American version, directed by Gore Verbinski, blatantly points the eye of the camera in the direction of television set after television set, as though to say that these inanimate objects are the true harbingers of evil.
It is hard not to witness elements of truth in Verbinski’s film. Americans are inundated by images of sex and violence daily, from the hourly news to children’s cartoons. Raised and reared not to question these as anything more than simple forms of entertainment, - like the video games that the early 80s ushered in, - heighten a basic disregard for human life. This has been exemplified by the actions of countless American military personnel who have served numerous deployments in Iraq over the course of the past five years. Tucked within armored vehicles, these military trained soldiers plug their iPods in, fill their ears with the tunes of death metal, and look through the blast-proof windshield as though it were the square perimeters of that black little box and the dark-skinned people on the other side, made of real flesh and blood, were just animated characters within a made-up game of War.
Although the erroneous belief that the earth is a flat plane was disproved thousands of years ago, modern day peoples still buy into this false notion by their support of a two-dimensional reality. Religion, media, politics, education, entertainment, and even medicine, all treat both the earth and the human body as though it were a level surface, easily controlled and manipulated, rather than as the shifting continuum that it is, capable of rejuvenate healing as well as horrendous mutilation.
My neighbor, for example, recently shared with me the difficult time she is experiencing in her personal life right now. She believes that if the reflection in the mirror were a little less round, a smidge less voluptuous and instead longer and straighter, that she will somehow feel a whole lot better. I recommended covering up the mirror altogether, and then putting away the magazines and turning off the television. I also suggested paying attention to the moments when we she was singing, laughing, crying, talking, making art, making love, walking, dancing, moving, writing, and all those other activities that fill us up with a satisfaction that we are hard pressed to find elsewhere. Our inability to view ourselves, and our world, as a complex, multi-dimensional organism, made up of many systems and parts, is to our greatest detriment.
As a dancer, with my body as image, and movement as my primary mode of expression, I discovered all too quickly the pitfalls of the American mainstream. As a young, developing woman, attention and immediate gratification were an easy accrual when I solely relied upon the objective nature of my being. As I grew into young adulthood, however, I rebelled against what I felt was a stifling and oppressive visual aesthetic. This rebellion was the motivating impetus for the artistic choices I made, such as shaving my head, and creating site-specific dance.
To this day, I still intentionally avoid the proscenium arch of a traditional stage because its parameters so obviously mimic those found within the larger macrocosm. Theatre patrons are relegated to a similarly passive role, - that of a stationary consumer encouraged to sit in the dark in rapt attention. Rarely are audience members challenged to move beyond the invisible fourth wall and into the realm of performer. As a human being, I quickly grow bored of watching the same body types take to these stages and move their typically trained forms in the same patterns of repetition and style. This kind of dancing only serves to perpetuate the lack of breadth measured by today’s standards of civilization.
As an American, I intentionally avoid watching copious amounts of television, - while being especially careful to avoid most of what the news media reports upon. For America is no longer being served by a host of outlets, each ranging in various ideology and doctrine. Instead, the News Corporation Media, an empire ran by Rupert Murdoch, has accumulated what was once a vast network of independent voices and viewpoints. With Karl Rove monitoring the information that is being disseminated to the general public via Fox Television, the New York Post, myspace.com, et al, I do not trust what is being sold to us, the American people. For I intuitively understand that we are no longer citizens of a republic but, rather, we are now consumers of a global market.
As professor Tom Wessels said in his address to the Antioch graduating class of 2008: “If we objectively step back and look at all that is coming to us from the media, advertising, the entertainment industry, even our political leaders, we will see a cultural story – constantly reinforced – that is focused on the importance of the individual and the need to consume. Have it your way. Verizon will give you the world.
This story has clearly invaded the political arena as well. In the past our political leaders addressed us as citizens. This legislation will be good for the citizens of this country. Today it is rare to hear the word citizen in political discourse. We more frequently hear that legislation is good for the consumer. One might say that individual consumption has become the icon of our culture. Just as Good Friday ushers in the high holy days of the Christian faith, we now have the day after Thanksgiving, Black Friday, ushering in the high holy days of consumption.”
Wessels implores the soon-to-be graduates that America does not necessarily need a new story, as Daniel Quinn and his books Ishmael and The Story of B propagate, as much as it needs to remember the first three words of the United States Constitution, We The People. “Americans need to focus less on individual freedom and more on the freedom for the people, the greater good, - an ideal in which one should sacrifice life, “he says.
Wessels also reminds us of the importance that frugality used to play in our lexicon and in our family, civic, and religious lives. “How could the cultural story of America shift so sharply from a focus on the importance of people and frugality to one that currently focuses on the importance of the individual and consumption?”
America’s insatiable consumer appetite with “more time spent making money, developing wealth, acquiring possessions, and maintaining image with less and less time spent in meaningful contact with others” is resulting in a people that have become more isolated from their communities, from their families, and even from themselves. Other costs and consequences of this neoliberal era are skyrocketing rates of depression and anxiety. Mistakenly, too many patriots confuse a choice of twenty different detergent brands found down a neon-lit grocery store aisle with democracy and freedom.
Personally, the psychosomatic connection between my mind and body was made evidently clear two years ago. During that time, I suffered through an emotional breakdown of which I had never experienced before. The why of it all was relatively simple, - I had finally allowed my hardened fortress to be penetrated by the raw vulnerability that love exercises. This act alone unleashed a torrent of repressed emotion. Feelings that I had been running from and eluding my entire life hit me like a tsunami. I was so depressed that I could not enjoy the taste of the small amount of food that I was able to lift into my mouth. Excess weight, layers of fat that I had padded around myself as a defense mechanism, began dripping away.
Once the depression passed, I was overcome with a full-blown case of anxiety. I was crawling out of my own skin. I could not bear to be in an enclosed environment for a number of hours at a time. My only recourse was to run laps, forwards, backwards, and around in circles, on a grass straightaway down near the bay. One afternoon I visited a gynecologist for a regular check-up, and the pap smear returned abnormal.
Typically, an abnormal pap is an indication of HPV, a virus that can lead to cervical cancer. In my case, I understood that my psychological state was wreaking havoc on my body and that it was my sole responsibility to tend to my emotional wellbeing. After months spent working on a renewed, fresh perspective, I returned to the doctor’s office. The scheduled polposcopy was not needed, as the doctor could not detect any abnormalities in a preliminary search. To this day, I recognize that if I do not nurture and tend to the daily needs of my own internal garden, that I will unintentionally grow something dark, cavernous, and potentially cancerous, - just like that same neighbor who has a malignant tumor, the size of a baseball, in her uterus.

Life Through A Lens, Continued

In the early twentieth century, the American photographer Alfred Steiglitz developed the idea of the Equivalent, - “the photographic image as metaphor, as an objective correlative for a particular feeling or state of being associated with something other than the ostensible object.” During my first year at Goddard, my digital camera was my sole walking partner. Together, we would document our forays.
As time marched on, and I retroactively reflected upon the snapshots that the camera captured, I observed how the lens was like a third eye peering into the psychological makeup of this artist. The grainy hues and the disjointed appearance of my own internal landscape had become sharper.
During this same time period, I also allowed a carefree friendship to bloom into an expansive courtship. Together, my partner and I discovered the terrain of our budding new relationship as we explored Cuyamaca State Park, topography that only years before had been nearly decimated by wildfire.
Together, we climbed up and into charcoal laden Pine trees. We danced with our shadows. We soared with the crow. With each visit, we bore witness to the testament of life, - from ravaged to rejuvenated. As a girl, I had spent a week in these same mountains, running barefooted and splashing in natural waterfalls. Twenty years later, I had returned to discover that I, as in that soulful world of spirit, was now much like this beloved forest, - nearly vanquished. Yet, even in the midst of the all-encompassing sorrow that followed, hitting me like a two by four to the head, I glimpsed hope. After all, a forest needs fire to germinate.
When does a forest officially become decimated? When the carcasses of wild animals, - Mule deer, Jackrabbit, grey squirrel, den fox, coyote, and mountain lion, have been left behind on high desert mountain hillsides? When a sixteen-year old girl’s life has been lost, her sister’s flesh seared, and a firefighter has fallen, in the name of duty, while erecting a human ring around a historic, western outpost’s main street? When the charred remains of hollowed oak, pine, and eucalyptus, are all that remain? When thick, black clouds of smoke and ash fill a southern California eastern horizon? When soot falls like languishing dust bunnies on deserted, city streets?
When a fire-ravaged countryside begins to grown again what constitutes its rebirth? The first seed planted; the strongest root that takes hold; a singular bulb that pushes its way up through the forest floor; or the initial blossom of a sweet spring’s arrival?

Life, Through a Lens

“The creative artist is fundamentally a religious person.” --Minor White

I was ten years old when I was first given a camera to use at my sole discretion. It was fifth grade camp and, although I had spent the summer flying the 3,000 miles across the country from San Diego to New Jersey on my own solo adventure, it was my first time away from home with my peers. My mother had packed my duffle bag, including in it her point and shoot device.
Today, as I look back through not just my own photographs but those taken of me upon our elementary school campus I recognize that, like physical movement which afforded me an opportunity to connect to my classmates in a non-verbal way, the camera was yet another tool for providing me with access into other people’s worlds, - an entrance within which I did not have to rely upon the bumbling messiness of the spoken word.
The following are photographs that encapsulate my story, herstory, as told in the aforementioned pages. These photographs were taken throughout my Goddard career, which has spanned three years, two separate locations, and many sojourns in between. In them, you will notice the pleasure I took in experimenting with layers. This play led to the realization that I was like an onion, - that with each reflection, I was peeling back a layer and exposing more of my own vulnerable heart.

The Beginning of A Movement

As a college sophomore, my dance professor was consistently calling upon me to “drop my chin.” “Drop your chin, Cara.” “Cara, drop your chin!” I had accrued this unbecoming habit during four years of performing for audiences on football fields and on basketball courts. We were taught to look up and at the judges, people who sat in the announcer’s booths red-penning our every move, drop, and formation.
As a modern dance major, it took me an entire year to embody the understanding that the crown of my head was not above my eyebrows and forehead, as I had so erroneously believed. Rather, it was found towards the back of my head, where the tallest peak sits (above, and just behind the ears).
By taking a finger and placing it on this point, I imagine that I am growing upwards and extending beyond this apex, my finger, and even the ceiling. With simple imagery, I continue this infinite, imaginary line as it moves through the earth’s atmosphere, and out into space.
Even now, as I sit here on a plush leather seat, tucked in front of a wooden desk where the computer I am typing upon is perched, I mentally image this simple exercise, and my chin drops, closer to my chest. My uppermost spine becomes fully extended, with greater length found in between the first seven cervical vertebrae. I nod my head, from right to left and back again, sending silent signals to a fantasy audience. I shake my head, up and down, down and up. Without using words, I have conveyed meaning. I have accepted proposals, and denied accusations. I have agreed to term limits, while vigorously upholding prior mandates. I have laid the foundation for the free world. And I have yet to move from my chair.

Passion

Do you remember your absolute first love? The racing heart, the sweaty palms, and the peculiar enjoyment you derived from it? Do you recall the day when it swept you up in its web of tentacles, tossing you around from side to side as though you had been a message in a bottle out at sea? Can you still feel the searing pain of this love, now lost and gone, as it nostalgically clings to your breast?
My first,
true
love
was
gymnastics.
My love was all encompassing. It traveled around the Brengle Terrace gymnasium with me. I seemingly grew inches from the raw power it bestowed as I dug each of my pounding feet into the spring mats during the floor exercises, upon which I would gracefully leap,
jump, twist,
turn,
and flip. (This was a favored pastime outside of the gym as well, as the grass strait-away in my parent’s backyard turned me into Nadia Comenechi every weekend.)
This love also had me trembling in fearful anticipation as I swung my brown legs from the dizzying heights of the top, uneven bar, landing upon the blue, crash pad with a soft thud and a huge grin. It whispered the tiniest of insecurities into my small ears as I glanced down at the slender width of the high beam upon which jumping backwards into space and landing with both of my girl hands upon the wooden platform seemed an unbearable task. And
it screamed
“Don’t!”
and
“Stop!”
just as soon as my coaches stepped away from the vault that I was hurtling down a speedway towards, ready to fly my fragile form through mid air just beyond.
These most basic and elementary of days were spent either bringing milk and ice in a plastic bottle to those gymnastics practices or out on my school’s expansive playground where my peers would encourage me, at recess, to do another tumbling move. “Again, Cara. Again!” I never refused their pleas.

Heart

I was sweating through the demanding postures of a Bikram’s Yoga class when an inspiring teacher lent a proffering to the class, “Sometimes, we forget we have hearts,” she said. (“The human heart is considered as the source and center of emotional life, where the deepest and sincerest feelings are located and where an individual is most vulnerable to pain.” )
As I attempted to contort my body into the Camel’s Pose, the simplistic reality of the statement immediately brought tears to my eyes.
“Of course, that is exactly it,” I thought to myself, distracted from the moment at hand.
On a very personal level, I can all too frequently deny my body the physical motion it requires. I can neglect to dance. Dancing, a passion, a flame, which sets my heart afire and fills my soul with immense light every time I partake, is a must in maintaining a healthy balance in my life. It is a love, as in that butterfly swarming, knees shaking first kind of love, that fuels my being, and yet, I deny myself this craving as though it simply did not exist. I negate this nourishment as though it were not a need, the most basic and simplest of the form.
By physically moving my human form through time and space, I not only reawaken my spiritual life force, but I also biologically, at the anatomical level, elongate my muscles, get my blood pumping, sweat toxins out through my skin’s pores, propagate the flow of fresh air through my lungs and bile and waste through my small and large intestines, and circulate oxygen in the large, four chambers of my heart (encouraging me to reconnect), around my pulsing sexual organs (demanding that I feel), down my weighted legs (reminding me of my own strength), out my pointing toes and fingers (revisiting with all else found on the earth’s surface), through the soles of my feet (where it commingles with the globe’s liquid core), and back up and out through the crown of my head (reuniting me to the great cosmos). After all, life is a dance, - an enduring choreography of atomic and sub-atomic particles, of quarks and anti-quarks, of centripetal and centrifugal forces, of shifting from inertia to mobility and back again, and of shape and form found here on this planet to an amorphous coagulation of space dust floating millions of light years away.
The wizened yogi’s statement also had me ruminating on the way I can bottle up my feelings, either while I am at work or when the discomfort of revealing my weakness, my vulnerability, and my soft underbelly, to another is at stake. Yet one more prime indicator that I have forgotten I have a moral fiber. When I do not share what I am thinking, when I do not reveal what I am feeling on some deeply innate part of my psyche, I completely remove myself from a situation. I draw a blank. I go cold. The monitor registers a flat line. Eeeeeeeeeeeeee…

Stuck

I hear the short wail. I sense the slight movement, - as oxygen, nitrogen, and other gaseous molecules accumulate, and pass, through my nostrils, down the back of my throat, and into my lungs.Abruptly,,thesoundfallsshort. My ribcage does not expand, nor does my belly. The air recedes, back out the same way it came, and I am left feeling…
anxious,
fretful,
labored,
worried,
absent.
Stuck.


More and more, I experience days passing by when the realization,
“It is 5pm and I have yet to smile” dawns upon me. I walk up to a mirror, lean my face in close, and look into the brown eyes staring back. There, there is no vigor, no spark. There, there is nothing radiating back. I am, simply, a body standing in front of a reflective surface. I am, simply, a living organism taking up space.
These days, I also like to a play a game with the camera. I hold poses, like I once was able to do with youthful ease, - straight, white teeth on display; a masquerading wide, forced grin.Immediately Iquicklygrab at the LCD. Had I fooled the inanimate object? Was my pretense indistinguishable? Can I successfully carry off such a sham?
No.
The camera doesn’t lie, nor does it play games, and I couldn’t act my way out of a bag. Yet, again, it is there, - nothing. And I am gone, - poof.
Obliterated. Escaped. Missing in action.
Obsolete. Deleted_____
Where have I gone? Where did I disappear? Most importantly, will I ever find my way back, - to the candyland of childhood where sleep was deep, and the dark rings of tension, stress, and anxiety, did not run circles around the cavities of my inner recesses?
For when I will my cheeks up towards my eyes, the sensation is odd. It is no longer normal. It doesn’t even taste good. I feel fake, inauthentic, and artificial. When I really look in to my own self, I catch the glimmer of a deep well of sadness and I sniff at a gnawing pit of anger. I hear the Oedipal call of fate, - it is my destiny to stagnate here in this numbing existence.

Lungs

“Breathe, woman. Breathe,” she exclaims. More and more, these three words drip from her mouth. Each time they are accompanied by a deep embrace, with which we are each engaged. She can feel the lack of expansion in my ribcage, in my gut, at my diaphragm, and in my mid-torso. The discipline of her Kundalini yoga practice makes me feel as though I am riding a giant air balloon. With my arms gently placed around her shoulders, back, neck or waist, I ride her warm air currents of deep affection and maternal attention. Up, up, up…
Devi’s words ring in my ears.
A chime of soft bells,
A ding of forks on plates,
A caress of the follicles in my eardrums.
Tonight, I entered into our communal dance space with all of this
re v e r b erating, -
the sound of sage advice and the feel of a gentle nudge,
a friendly reminder.

“Just breathe,” I encouraged myself.
In through the nose, - a deep inhalation,
out through the nose, - stale air.
In through the nose, - new energy,
out through the nose, - the stagnant repose of control and reason.
In.
Out.
In, out.
In, in, in, in.
Out out ouuuuttttttttttt.
Innnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn……….
With each person I greeted, I breathed deeply while opening my arms. First it was Kirk, a Tango dancer who applies what he learns from us, and our shared contact dances, to his performance troupe. Next, I embraced Mel, who had just returned stateside after having spent six glorious weeks in Thailand.
For years, Mel had held this communal, healing space on his own. We taught him to believe that a community of people can sustain this weekly event. With some reluctance, he took a long-overdue vacation. Now, he looked, and felt, rested. The dark lines of tension and stress that usually surround his eyes were gone, and his hair was cut back to an easy-to-manage, no-maintenance-required length. He had removed years from his short, broad frame.
Charlene, a Bu’toh dancer and performer, was the fourth member of our circle on this particular evening. Just over one month ago, Charlene was bitten by a rattlesnake. It took eight vials of anti-venom to reverse the effects of the reptile’s poison. Her lower leg ballooned up. She was swollen and sick for weeks, yet here she was, - ready to once again engage.
While we were waiting, Kirk shared with me that he went into his rehearsal, the weekend before, as he never has before. “Usually,” he said, “my energy is just-got-out-of-bed dragging and my teacher always reprimands me for my lack of vigor.” Last week, however, he said that he was still so high from the experience of the night before that his teacher was moved to tears. He described the dances from that evening, and the fleeting sensation encased in those moments of time, as being “bliss.” I contracted at the comment. “Bliss,” – my mind drums up a hippie-dippy, esoteric image when it hears this overly used term that attempts to describe something that is, perhaps, beyond definition. “Language is where the difficulty lies,” I responded after giving voice to my discomfort over the word choice.
At five past eight, we moved into a circle in order to share a group warm-up. In my mind’s eye, I vividly saw the way that I wanted to begin the class. I was moments from speaking my desire when I breathed in, and looked around.
Sitting on the floor,
facing each other,
Charlene and Mel’s legs were already spread
wide,
and in a V. Their toes were reaching for one another’s. The momentum had already begun. My job
now
was to follow it.
I breathed in.
“How about we spend the next forty-five minutes together,
without language?” I asked.
Silent, furtive glances and eager nods gave way. We stretched our limbs, while looking to one another for a cue as to what would come next. From sitting to standing, we evolved. Together, we swayed. The rustling branches of one growing tree reached out. We came together, and then we separated, - first into two groups of two, and then, as individual entities. Stepping out to look in. Looking out, to step back in. We paused in our moments of reflection, sparks of time when our minds once again clicked in and we wondered, “what am I doing” and “where do I go from here?” The constriction of breath was just as palpable as the release of it.
We fumbled around one another’s bodies. Grasping at legs, rolling onto bellies, and tucking over an extended thigh, back, or shoulder. The airy room, at times, alternated, between rolling with us, and then also providing hard planes with which to push off of and leap from. Hands clapping and feet padding created a soft, muddled soundscape. Together, our collaborative breath grew to include hissing, shushing, laughing, and other imperceptible noises. All of which communicated effectively the moment at hand, yet refrained from narrowly placing it within a stifling box of labels and descriptions. 2/3 of the way through our time, our moments of deep engagement and reverence, our seconds of disengagement and personal autonomy, we arrived at the place where I had initially wanted to begin. Sitting back to back to back to back, and
shoulder to shoulder to shoulder to shoulder to shoulder to shoulder to shoulder,
I laughed, quick and brief,
deep and guttural,
mimicked and sought after,
at her words which I knew were soon to come.
“If you follow the breath, you’ll end up where you want to go.
This is prana, Cara. This is the life force.”

Outtttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt.

A Place to Move From: On Locational Identity

“The sense of place, as the phrase suggests, does indeed emerge from the senses. The land, and even the spirit of the place, can be experienced kinetically, or kinesthetically, as well as visually.”

Lucy Lippard

Below towering pines, on a high bluff overlooking Puget Sound, and within the echoing chambers of Fort Worden, a historic outpost built by the American military, the time immemorial debate of “What is art?” raged on. Present within the debate were the voices of two-dozen visual and performance artists, each clamoring to be both heard and seen. Susan, a muralist and social activist, led the conversation during which a multitude of viewpoints were expressed. Deb, a photographer, felt that skill, which is derived only from years spent honing one’s craft, defined art. The painter, Ale, asserted that art is a form of documentation that moves along to a flowing soundscape. While I suggested that art is when others within the greater macrocosm are affected and moved to inquire, “What is this?” and “How can I take part?”
Notions of what art is not were also illuminated. “It is not the objectification of the body,” I opined. “It isn’t just social activism. Or is it?” Sequoia queried. “And, surely, it isn’t taking a dump.” Deb stated emphatically. Apparently, we could more readily agree upon what art is not while we were left searching for words that would qualitatively define as well as definitively detail exactly what art is.
We knew when we experienced art, yet each of our own unique experiences had been tainted by the construction of language and culture, as well as by the privilege of access and exposure. There simply was no easy answer. Yet, at the conversation’s conclusion, it was not the lack of a clear solution that was most poignant but, rather, it was the rigorous questioning that served as both a focal point and a platform from which to launch oneself into another semester of graduate school study.
However, my head was spinning, - and not simply because of the free flowing, fermented grapes. Along with Laiwan, an interdisciplinary artist who explores ‘machine-being,’ and her advising group, I had spent two hours on that dreary Thursday morning deconstructing Derridian thought and, although a litany of intellectual nouns and verbs ran through my hyperactive, busy mind, I was at a loss for coherently strumming up any concrete ideas.
Thank god for Friday, - it appeared magnificently bright and crystal clear, lighting up an ambling coastline that begged to be strolled upon. I eagerly took up the task as I did so often that week, and as I had done with all those weeks that had come before. Repeatedly finding my thoughts being led away from the present moment, I was brought back into my bodily being as the vibrations of my feet on the sand sent grunions running for cover, as the exoskeletons of vanquished crabs lay strewn about, and as withered trunks of beached trees beckoned to be climbed and swung upon. Across the still sound, Mt. Baker sat stoic and serene. Snow and ice sat perched upon the 10,778-foot volcano. I breathed in the millennia with which this ancient art form had been built.
I meandered into Port Townsend, where I crossed paths with a housemate from the previous semester. Whitney and I had intended on strolling back to the fort in time for a program-wide event, but we were sidetracked by a simple offer from a community member. “Hey ladies,” he said. “My friends and I are heading out to dinner and we haven’t finished our bottle of wine. Would you like to?”
By the time we made it up artillery hill and above the cistern where the sound of John Cage’s “Atlas Eclipticalis” was being amplified, our hearts were beating, our blood was warm, and dusk had fallen. David was like a beacon at the back of the grassy lawn. Immediately, I wandered up to him and he led us through the hundreds of bodies that lay strewn about absorbing the sight of a cloudy cauldron overhead, the feel of the cool ground below, and the sound of reverberating strings and shrill chords. We took our place amongst the gathered crowd, snuggling up against the chill of a damp earth. The clouds dispersed and a night sky, pockmarked by brilliant stars and a myriad of constellations, appeared. Again, I breathed in, willing warmth to permeate. As the moments flowed from one note into silence, a vibrating heat radiated in the space between: the cistern, the earth, and the body; the instruments, the speakers, and the ears; and Whitney, myself, and David, as we lay together like sardines in a cool, tin can. Again, I breathed in the millennia with which this ancient art form had been built.
In the end, our tardiness allowed for us to remain in a stationary repose until the very last reverberation of Cage’s electrifyingly curious score. In the end, we three made our way past the established concert grounds where we stumbled around century old batteries. On the top of a twenty-foot high bunker, we waxed poetically over the millennia old stories that accompany those great nightlights in the sky. I shared the Native American myth of Revolving Man, Revolving Woman, and the never-ending dance they perform around that eternal fire in the sky.
We then returned to that same building where the debate had raged on only a day before and where we found our cohorts tumbling around one another in fitful games of play. Cynthia suggested a friendly round of ‘Charades,’ in which she began by miming out a Shakespearean quote that even had Bonnie stumped. Corey pumped up the bass on the boom box, as Jess’ musical selections serenaded our ears. It was not long before we were sashaying, grinding, perspiring, and twisting, to the lyrics of Manu Chao, Macy Gray, and Madonna.
In the end, what it came down to wasn’t about critical theory, rational thought, or academic scholarship. In the end, what it came down to wasn’t about a humanist philosophy, a dialogic lexicon, or a rebellious constitution. In the end, what it all came down to was a mystery, - the mystery of why we are here, and for what our purpose is; the mystery of why we hurt , and for why we choose to love; the mystery of life as we know it, and the art that we create in attempting to understand, shape, and define it.
For the mystery is beyond the subcutaneous. The mystery cannot be thought, let alone defined. It can only be felt, sensed, deeply experienced, and embodied. Sometimes, some of us tune in to this pulsating beat and pen, photograph, paint, and even dance that which cannot be rationally understood. Other times, most of us simply attempt to understand it through the processes of our own messy, creative practices. Most times, however, it is a mystery what any one of us, in any given moment, is attempting to relay. Nonetheless, the mystery remains. And this, my beloved community, is the nature of art and life at its finest.






“I could go crazy on a night like tonight
When summer’s beginning to give up her fight
When every thought is a possibility
Voices are heard but nothing is seen
Why do you spend this time with me?
Maybe an equal mystery.”

The Indigo Girls

Entrances

In Sanskrit, there is a word, lîla, “richer than our word, it means divine play, the play of creation, destruction, and re-creation, the folding and unfolding of the cosmos. Lîla, free and deep, is both the delight and enjoyment of this moment, and the play of god.” The photograph above is of the side door on my grandmother’s house in Middlesex, New Jersey. As a child, what lay on the other side of this part of my grandparent’s home was a place of deep fascination and imagination. For, just through this now defunct door, lay a small, dark hallway that separated the front of the house from the back, and that held another green door which led up to a shadowy, musty attic. As girls, my sister and I would spend hours playing within this labyrinth of possibility.
Today, as an adult woman, I find myself visiting a recurring dream that I have had since childhood. In the dream is a house, and within it are darkened hallways, secret doors, and winding staircases. I know the contours of the house as comfortably as I know my own and, after waking, the totality of my being is bathed in delicious warmth from simply having visited. Early on, I always visited the house alone and with trepidation, as there is a ghost that resides down a hidden passageway. Even though I feared it, I would simultaneously seek it out. These days, however, it seems that I am eager to introduce newcomers to not just the house but also to this entity, as I rarely enter the house alone anymore. These days, I play tour guide.
While in residency at Fort Worden, I presented a workshop in which I offered selections from my process for my peers to view, hold, and question. Someone noticed that doors, halls, and houses, play a considerable role within my photographic documentation and inquired about their significance. In her book The Lure of the Local: Senses of Place in a Multicentered Society, Lucy Lippard writes, “Abandoned houses are especially poignant. Their shattered, gaping, or boarded windows offer opaque apertures onto an unknown past that is not, but might be, our own. They are receptacles for shared fantasies. The natural response is to ask, “What happened here?” The answer is a story...The place is the heart of storytelling. The imaginative act of bringing together self and earth, culture and nature, as if these were remembering one another as members of one family, binding life to life.”