day 6 | i am unequipped to befriend only the here, the now, in aseemingly nakedless contextless masked present

artist residency, hermitage, June 2013, VSC

kathy wash 2012

15 Jun 2013

i stand to move to the studio. YOU ISOLATE the voice says. well i do live in the woods, my microforest, my hermitage. ok. instead, i stand, move with the gentle meal herd whom appeal. meander to the thrift. watch them mull over worn once loved things. it reminds me of a previous life with less than gentle female mulling overs, always new, yet unloved. now 50 cents, then 150 bucks. it is still a mulling, a harvesting. frankly, it is still shopping, still compulsive acquiring. its more a pattern than problem. a harvesting of having, innately human. i relax into it, picking up a ball of creamy string. i don’t bother with the white or blue. the intended drive, an hour in course, to retrieve its twin, discarded now as unnecessary as i slide a solitary bill from my pocket. ooh nice, three quarters in return. oddly the creamy string was there almost as gift. no. gift. not even gently used. nothing rewound, just pristine cream. a kindly gentle weirdness washes over me as a thing finds me instead of me, it. gift. there is a shift, a reminder, to return to listening to this moment instead of memory unwound. attend to the gifts. they do come. they have always come. it is refreshing.

dormant lay the histories that did the current shapings. Yet bam, the creamy thread laden gift dissipates from mind with abruptness, disrupted by dead histories emergent audible leakings. they move. i edit, cull down, delete. pulled out of a sense of presence within a conversational context, this moment now falls backwards splintering on the edge of yesterday’s horizon. just a short hyperdigested excerpt not soo negative but still a dredging. Muck, mucking the morning. a few more words, then a push to set aside. it doesn’t stir emotion, just creates a muckiness to the here. the gentle meal herd now down to two, part back to each studio, not from push or muck, but simple geolocational natural divide. i am left with my own whys. Why did i muck the moment? i understand that there are two lived histories that muck into my mouth. these muckings, tribal and residue of faulty cohort reflections, cause harm no matter how abbreviated. the gift dissipates.

i am unequipped to befriend only the here, the now, in a seemingly nakedless contextless masked present. how do I unlearn nakedness?

i do/don’t understand this unequippedness. i stand aside from myself; i watch. the facilitated studio — i laugh, connect, coordinate, collaborate, bond, inspire, love, am home. the colleagues — well…undisclosed mixed thoughts. the neighbors — I live in the woods. the alone — i laugh, play and pout. i meander.

i am not even dirty yet.