Time I
TIME?
Time is meeting your own gaze in a real photo. Not the confetti of self portraits but to be seen by a photographer, the beloved, by time itself, the gaze now meeting my own asking.
How far from memory are you? We are made by memories, made up by them, but we are also made of all the things we forget.
SPACE?
As I write this, I’m creating space in a web of images and words, a fleeting moment beside others, a vague nostalgia beside your own nostalgia.
To be human is to try to make some space for yourself, but they will make you struggle for it. To be human is to have had space inside another human being. Amazing as that.
Then you will have to create space on your own. We were born into a system, a form. It is also a web of sorts. It’s called capitalism and patriarchy and to escape, look at all the things you are told by society that simply is not true.
Motherhood for instance. They say you can’t be an artist and a mother. But what if that’s what you are and to be a mother means to still be yourself only the child turned the world raw again.
To create space might be to say that life is a form of art, and you can resist the system simply by not believing the story. I’m creating space with my own vulnerability and it is uncomfortable, but we don’t grow without.
We are among trees. The trees don’t make us feel ashamed. We are in the gaps between birches and light.
I’m a single mother, and I have been working five different jobs (I’m actually not exaggerating) to put food on the table, but also to maintain writing poetry and do some of my art, trying to be so many different things only to realize I have to be ONE thing, in everything I do: my own authentic self, the poet. The artist. I will not divide myself. Everything is whole. Maintenance art. The spiritual art. For humans who need to twist their soul a bit.