A Few Thoughts on Stories
More than being in Iceland, I feel we are at the Kvennaskolin beside the river’s mouth, we walk the same halls that women have for a hundred years, and my time has been absorbed by cooking, going to the pool, taking walks, and touching wool. It feels small, really, under this broad expanse of sky. We sit under this red-roofed building and find the staple length of wool, pulling Tog from Þel, finding the difference in centimetres. And within these centimetres exists a world I will probably never know. The farmers and their stories, the story of the sheep whose wool I am touching. The story of a barn door that is loose on its hinges. And I can’t lie and say I don’t ache to know them. I sit here so close to this material, and yet I don’t know the stories of what has brought her to exist. We are meeting each other as strangers, and I worry that I am doing something to offend her. It’s a delicate conversation, the use of material. We have been talking about it a lot, to come to a new place, and use materials whose stories you don’t know. I have been finding myself feeling cautious about using rocks or seaweed, but then again, where does it end? I have been using the wind, and I don’t know her story either. And do I feel like I can work with wool because I bought her? Another person gave this to me for use, but I have yet to learn her story. To begin to know a material is a delicate dance. I suppose we will hurt the feelings of those we love; there is an inevitability there. I hope I can hear her when she tells me so.
Grocery Shopping in the dark
Perhaps it’s like a trip to the store. You go with your list
On your list, you have a number of items
Items you intend to buy
You enter the store and begin your shopping
But all of a sudden, the place goes dark
And you can’t be too sure what you need anymore
It’s all dark
And the things that seemed attainable, a list items to be checked off is gone
Your surroundings have changed, and there is a rather large obstacle,
because of course you can’t see in the dark, and you left your night vision goggles at home because it’s always light here
But then you wander around in the dark, bumping into things, feeling around for potatoes and pears. And now you need to feel a little more, inspect their edges, the tips and stems, skins and lenticels.
It might be harder, but perhaps it’s more interesting anyhow
And perhaps you will leave with a surprise!
Two Step
Dancing in the wind
Entangled in one another
I am trying to match the rhythm she is finding in the wind
As we spin, I wonder if synchronicity is really the same as harmony
I think perhaps not
I wonder where I got that
Edges
A woman who turns into the landscape around her
Shifting into rock
Or something less solid
Wind?
I’m trying to figure out where I end and begin in this new place. Understandings that seem to be floating just above me in the endless light.
Sometimes, often actually, I think I would like to be a young windy love, one that dissolves itself in others, giving itself over fully to the cause, to lose my edges and feel that they will be absorbed fully and gladly.
The expanse here leaves no limit to where my edges might go, and I can feel fear, trying to pin them down to keep them in my sights.
I’ll be here until the wind changes