It Took Time

This is a poem about

how you never get the kiss you want

when you want it;

how time twines around your neck, its thorns

digging into your skin so you can never forget

how clinging to a string of hope, threading it

between your spine, and having it unravel before you

in the span of an hour

is worse than any metaphor about nakedness

that you poets will ever write.

This is my reflection in the mirror. This stanza

is the small gap where my fingers try to touch against

the glass.

You can’t even possess yourself; let alone

the person you see standing before you.

The moon

hasn’t come back from the cleaners yet

and I have nothing to slip into tonight that makes my reflection feel

beautiful.

Time is falling through the hole in my pocket. January

is coming soon, and I have a feeling that he’s never going to fall

out of love with this December.

He’ll still write her love letters. He’ll

send her white orchids on every lonely holiday and pretend

that love is a place you can cross state lines to get back to,

but it’s that time of the year again, and

calendar sales keep reminding us all that we can never get back

to where we once wanted so bad to lose ourselves in

for good.

-Shinji Moon

(The Anatomy of Being, 2012)

What a summer. It’s not quite over yet. I still have a few festivals booked and which don’t officially end until mid-october or so. But I can’t believe that this time went so fast. I feel completely mind blown that suddenly it’s September.

I got home after not being in my house almost at all since May. It felt foreign, uncomfortable. After the intensity of being at a festival every weekend the house was so quiet, isolated. I came back to do a contract of one of my own stain glass sculptures for a couple about their birthing process. The whole experiences has been intense. An extreme shift, and a remarkably emotional project. More on that to come later.

When I feel this restless while going through a shift, there a things I do to come back to myself.

I change my space. Painted a wall teal when I woke up in a discontented spasm at 6am. Changed the art on my walls to things I felt more connected to. Moved around furniture. Purged a bunch of stuff I didn’t love anymore.

I change my body. Cut my hair. Change my clothing style. Gave myself more tattoos.

I take pictures of myself. Pictures have always been a point of anchoring for me. Part of my practice for years has been

self portraiture

. It has been a way of sketching my emotions that I’ve used for years. There is something that happens for me when I become the object that is seen through the lens. I feel like I can understand my emotional space a little clearer.

I’m not quite sure if all of these things cured my restlessness, but getting those things out of my system seems to have calmed me down enough to sink fully into making this artwork. Although it still seems strange to be in the studio after being in the sun for months.

I haven’t been keeping up this blog all summer, since I've been posting all of my adventures on the

Archimedes blog

. If you’re interested in some of the events I didn't post here, it’s all written out in detail there. Maybe I’ll back blog with more personal details later, but I already feel like those experiences are so far away. The fall has arrived, and it’s on to new things.

Feel free to follow the links for more in depth story on the Archimedes Blog.