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L a  H o j a r a s c a

648"x21", recycled paper, sumac and cabbage ink, rust, 2024

We seep into the mulch around us, are sheltered by it, and feed from it. We let each leaf, each chip, each scrap of material imbue its richness upon every other. We wallow in the mire and are enlivened by it. This soil is the world now. To me, the days are endless and the seasons drift. Advancing not according to a plan, but the outline of shade from unfamiliar leaf shapes. It is not to be hurried, but dwelt upon, this texture smoothing out as it passes under me. There is comfort in finding a new way around an old path. In tracing a tree’s shape back into seed. In blowing out a candle again and again and watching the smoke curl into new and familiar shapes every time. I’ve been repeating myself for years, and I’m not sure if anyone has noticed. Or if they have, I’m not sure if anyone minds. I don’t think I do. I’ve been filling up on microplastics. Cramming the saddlebag with flotsam and packing it uphill. These scraps to be repurposed elsewhere, as a means of cleaning up, or making amends, or finding a shred of meaning in the motes of remembrance that mark a journey. Maybe it’s more about support than anything else. Maybe just an object held is itself an act of creation. Collecting and recollecting and arranging and rearranging. An original designed from the mire. A wheeling meditation to bend deep at the hip for the sake of feeling upside down. Arbutus bark peeling to reveal its skin. A body bending backwards for the thrill of it all. A recollection of a feeling from far away, drawn in closer. An unfamiliar shape pressed between finger pads becomes an entirely new ecosystem. A novel verdancy in the mess of a pile. To be enraptured by a new chaos that surrounds me. Walking in circuit. In these steps, an old idea is pieced apart into a new geometry. Each movement, any block, every moment is a step out of the brain and into the body. The mold, the pour, the weld, the weave, the stack, the tumble. The white noise of memories reforming until it has become the feeling I’ve been working towards. An image I’ve been holding onto is whatever I won’t think of next. Maybe I’ll be in a place overlooking the ocean. Maybe those trees will bend into a shape I’ve never seen before. I’ve been walking around with a candle and trying to keep it from flicking out. A tempt to the wind. A single weed pulled over and over again. To be spiralling upward. A white noise turned green and brown when I turned away. A new comfort forms in a cold room. The heat of a body lingers and welcomes the next. Collecting and recollecting. A leaf litter that blankets the cement floors. A thought turns into a memory only through decay. From the imperfect present immediately into a tarnished past. Is that branch anything like the shape of the seed it once was? Weren’t the weeds just pulled? La hojarasca. The leaf litter that blankets the hot earth. I am the empty lot growing over. We are a body bending over backwards to feel that feeling again.

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