Night after night, construction equipment accumulates in your dreams.

I.
When does playing 'together' start
not just alongside,
or taking-toys-from
or giving-toys-to
the seeds of being in a community?

What needs to be there
for activity-next-to
to become
activity-with
or activity-together?


II.
Difference between
giving and taking
(capitalism
judicial system
eye-for-an-eye)
vs
sharing
(mutual penetration?
familial?
extra-sensory?
unguarded?)

what is it
sharing
an acknowledgement
that my expression
is somehow
tied to yours?


III.
first we learn
how my left hand
and right hand
can work together

and later learn
how your hands
and my hands
can work together

how seemingly disparate parts
can belong to the same body -
and in the same way
'I care that YOU are hurting'

is born from an expansion
in how I perceive the landscape
by including YOU
in my sense of selfness somehow


IV.
Knowing who I am
what I want
value
believe

is somehow different

than knowing what I have
to offer
prowess
skills
strength

what is it
that bridges the two
That calls them out of me
in a way that asks them
to support each other

whether I am drawing my sword
or reaching out for connection

V.
'No' as a kind of container
Rules/Laws as a kind of container
Roles/Expectations
Choices we make
Circumstance
Time

The stories we tell as a kind of container

Containers as a way of being held
Edges to brush up against
ways to know what I am shaped like
sculpting an absent mother's embrace
out of accumulated edges


VI.
Can we work on a project together
or a game
even while playing
by different internal rules?

maybe it allows an evolution
becomes something that unfolds
like it is alive
rather than just repeating itself


VII.

communion and community
have the same roots

Tasting the body and blood of another
A bonding ritual
the sharing or exchanging of intimate thoughts and feelings,
especially when the exchange is on a mental or spiritual level
common participation in a mental or emotional experience
a group of people living in the same place or having a particular characteristic in common
especially in the context of social values and responsibilities; society
a similarity or identity
a group of interdependent organisms of different species
growing or living together
affecting each other's abundance, distribution, and evolutionary adaptation
a group with diverse characteristics linked by social ties, common perspectives, engage in joint action in geographical locations or settings

*participants differ in the emphasis placed on particular elements
defined similarly but experienced differently by diverse backgrounds

what is the nature of
the texture and flavor of
those shared roots

how do we change the landscape
rules
institutions
language
and maintain a connection?

what lives underneath those things
for us to hold on to
breathe into
remember
feel
partake in
in the first place?

you’re not asking about a property of space, but rather a property of yourself

VII.
Ideas as Artifacts
Motion and Gesture
a part of our language
Narrative
an embodied form
of discourse


VIII.
Immune System
as an act
rather than
an organ


IX.
creative drive
sex drive
death drive
thumb drive
disc drive


X.
interface
what is our human boundary
when we modify ourselves (as a human race)?
race against what?
techno hack vs body hack
genetic modification vs microbiome
integrity of the body (modesty)
replacement organs
anxiety as an artifact


XI.
How do you heal the landscape
without erasing its history?


XII.
The difference between Sacred and Rigid:
Holding Space vs Space being Held

Community holding something is different
Than a Structure holding something

Am I the Container
or am I contained?


XIII.
Memory
is a person a thing a process?

identity/structure

is the meaning in the words
or the person who hears them?


XIV.
a transition that feels
like there was no
transition

trying to manufacture a myth from the materials at hand

A woman comes to greet me.

Dragons wind their ink drawn scales around her fierce little body, laughter crouches at the corner of her dark eyes, and in the accented syllables that escape from her mouth, equal parts music and brusque staccato.

Leading us down the hallway, she pauses to point at a variety of looms, young people crouched over them, working patiently. Some small swatches of fabric tests are pulled out, and while she talks about the weave as experimental structure, I am distracted by the regular patterns they display. Clearly their intention was manifesting an architecture, but I suddenly had a sense of the development of fabrics like Scottish plaid, or the various patterns claimed by small African nations, how that architecture became a symbol for bodies of people, of a culture. It seemed vastly important, this idea of strength underlying aesthetic value, driving our instinctual relationship to form and function. Like a kaleidoscope I suddenly saw the relationships between weaving and community, how everything in our built environment is an expression of that from cell walls and bone tissue to cityscapes and culturally distinct neighborhoods.

We were documenting the deconstruction of a woven installation piece designed by two young Latin American architects, to be taken to a group in Oaxaca by the tattooed Filipino woman, and all around us are accents and cheek kissing and this ancient art form they all were involved in various aspects of and I could feel so clearly my lack of connection to history. My history. My profound lack of cultural presence.

The oldest known cloth that's been unearthed came from ancient burial sites, and death rites are some of the earliest distinctions between human and animal in our anthropological history. The 'patterned sky' we helped to disassemble was designed around a similar self awareness, of life after being a canopy, it was made to lead multiple lives, just like it tied into preexisting holes in the concrete wall it was threaded around. Histories layered on top of each other, meaning arising and dispersing as that wall falls under new eyes, gets viewed with a new lens. Our tattooed loom master brought a bunch of handmade cakes for everyone to break bread/cake together before tackling the walls with tools, and it felt like communion, like a ritual that was necessary to take part of. I took a bite of something out of respect for some underlying sacredness, but might have had more to do with my hunger for connection, the void where my roots should be, those internal pathways I never even knew existed.

My parent's generation who came of age during/right after the civil rights movements and the draft and the Vietnam war and the slaughter of MLK and JFK and the student riots - they were doing the hard work of tearing down the walls and institutions that were holding America back, but as those same people move towards their twilight years, they have less communities to feel apart of, have formed their lives around fearing and distrusting the desire to be connected for what might come with it, and I've come across articles and statistics about an age where loneliness is largely becoming the thing that walks our parents and their parents through the threshold at the end of their lives. In older cultures, still living closer to the earth, age is a highly valued part of the life cycle, and the rites and rules they keep are still connected to a sense of why they are doing them in the first place - but I live in a reality that covets newness, youth, where an accumulation of history is a Cardinal Sin. Even my grandmother communicates care through a scattering of 5 or 20 dollar bills we've all been handed throughout our lives, and I wonder if she feels like she has nothing else to offer us. As we continue to succumb to capitalism's appropriation of our individual traditions into seasonal profit, how does it erase the histories that created them, those grooves in time and space through which we have carved our existence, our identities, our path? As our relationship to the harvest fades, do we distinguish 'Fall' by a pavlovian response to the smell of pumpkin spice in the air? How many Pumpkin Spice Lattes will it take to fill the void in my memory of when my grandmother used to hand-make pumpkin pie, but gave in to the ease of the grocery store? What would happen if the moon suddenly stopped rolling along its samskara? How has its steady weaving across the night sky and through our bedtime stories and in our blood helped us to know ourselves?

If our species evolved out of nomadic family groups who weren't anchored to a specific plot of earth - then maybe we aren't creatures with literal roots and childhood homes, maybe it was always stories that connected us to each other in the river of time. Maybe we have confused the transubstantiation of idea to flesh as brick and mortar, as something permanent, a monument, rather than bearing the warp and weft for a spell, until we can pass it those younger than us. As we spin the yarn of our lives, shaping the fibers and coloring the thread with our individual fight for space and sustenance, shelter and connection, the care with which we craft our social fabric is what builds the walls and pathways we walk along, and I am becoming aware of the cut threads and gaps in my transmission. We are all momentary manifestations in a multi-generational artwork, claiming that responsibility might be our birthright and burden as a member of this human collective. The threads falter earlier in my family history than I can quite reach back into, but maybe I've been fumbling most of my life looking backwards, against the arrow of time, to figure out what threads are mine to bear before I can turn around and move into my future.

If something has no history, how can you prove it exists? How can I prove I exist?








The spider, along with its web, is featured in mythological fables, cosmology, artistic spiritual depictions, and in oral traditions throughout the world since ancient times.

Traditionally, the stories involving Spider Grandmother are narratives passed down orally from generation to generation. The Hopi have the creation myth of Spider Grandmother. In this story, Spider Grandmother thought the world into existence through the conscious weaving of her webs. Spider Grandmother also plays an important role in the creation mythology of the Navajo, and there are stories relating to Spider Woman in the heritage of many Southwestern native cultures as a powerful helper and teacher.

Although accounts vary, according to mythology she was responsible for the stars in the sky; she took a web she had spun, laced it with dew, threw it into the sky and the dew became the stars.


The Fates were a common motif in European polytheism, most frequently represented as a group of three mythological goddesses (although the numbers differed in certain eras and cultures). They were often depicted as weavers of a tapestry on a loom, with the tapestry dictating the destinies of men.