the sense of an ending.

dreaming of the sea. always.

*helen warner

the end of the rainbow.

i first posted about this 'life size' (these words somehow seem, not quite right) dollhouse by heather benning a few years ago here.  now, as then, i feel haunted by this experiment/project, especially lately as i contemplate what it means to build a new home out of all that is abandoned /  forgotten / misplaced. 

when i was a little girl, my father had started to build me a dollhouse. this meant the world to me. we didn't have much money, and watching him attach scalloped edge after scalloped edge to the roof was something i still think about vividly. it was never finished....and when he passed and i was let back into his house, it still stood there unfinished high on a shelf, lost at sea; it's pale, unstained wooden skin harshly contrasting with the dark wood panelling of the walls of the living room i first learned to color in. 

there is something about both of these lonely, un-lived in things that give me a kind of dark hope for the future. 

to navigate.

i will keep all things underwater & whisper my memories into stone for safekeeping.

*werner knaupp.

collecting wounds.

when i was little, my father & i would roam around looking for treasures in the streets. he was always attracted to ceramic figurines, and we would often find them missing a limb or hand. to remedy this he also collected limbs for reconfiguring  . . . . nothing was ever too damaged, too broken, if it still had some beauty.

something about the delicate yet subtle violence of these sculptures by justin novak reminded me of those nights walking about with him, looking for things left to be forgotten.

the eye, the edge.

jones beach. february 2012.

"If I longed for destruction it was merely that this eye might be extinguished. I longed for an earthquake, for some cataclysm of nature which would plunge the lighthouse into the sea. I wanted a metamorphosis, a change to fish, to leviathan, to destroyer. I wanted the earth to open up, to swallow everything in one engulfing yawn. I wanted to see the city buried fathoms deep in the bosom of the sea. I wanted to sit in a cave and read by candlelight. I wanted that eye extinguished so that I might have a chance to know my own body, my own desires. I wanted to be alone for a thousand years in order to reflect on what I had seen and heard—and in order to forget."

— Henry Miller, The Tropic Of Capricorn

the black sea.

for months after my father passed away nearly three years ago to the date, i've had re-curring dreams of meeting him at the lip of the sea in long island where i was born. it is always a night sea, the moon reflecting on the dark water in snaky silver slivers. we stand at this cusp together, our shoulders slightly grazing each other as they did that last time i saw him. he looks out into that inky abyss as i look up at him forlornly, pleadingly. even in the dream i know he is not real, that we are not really there, but the little child folded up inside me like origami wants to pull him away from that terribly beautiful edge. 

something about these images by dylan shaw reminds me of these feverish, lucid dreams. so strange and sad.

escape artists.

lately i've been having dreams of that particular black sea. sometimes the sea is black because it is a night sea & it glitters with the reflections of stars. other times it is black because it is ink. i dip my fingers in and they bleed dark onto the sand. something about fay ku's work reminds me of this dream, because it seems in the dream, i am always facing myself, and always looking for a way out or into the sea.

xo.