Scrolls

I set my binoculars down so that I could write you.

Every morning I wake up and bring the magnifying lenses to my sleepy eyes.

I want to see which way the river is flowing. Because did you know the East River is a saltwater tidal estuary? I’m not so sure who gets to decide who is a river and who isn’t. But, you see, estuaries are a third space, a border zone, a collective process. Ecotone is the formal designation. It’s a site of flow, nourishment, movement.

A living coastal body that carries the water. Lonely rivers flow to the sea, as the old song goes.

But, sometimes it’s so still I can’t believe my eyes. A site of peace. The placidity will soon be whirled by the ferries zigzagging commuters and early bird tourists across the waterways of this big city. But right here, right now - stillness.

The other day I was walking the piers and some strange music drew me in. An echo of the past that I couldn’t place at first.

The little machine that prints out ferry tickets was going berzerk. Tickets spewed out all connected, not severed into one-ride-per-person just a never-ending ribbon, one continuous eternal ticket with no date direction or deadline. I stood before it allowing myself a rare moment of astonishment wondering if this was some sort of divine machine intervention. It just kept rolling out the scrolls. The hologram edges sparkling, one long river of possibility within a prismatic frame. Holy trash for the taking. Awe gave way to the worry of being watched as I remembered all the eyes in the skies pointed directly at me. Surveillance sure can wreck the poetic spirit. A small wounding alongside the technofascist state’s more grandiose brutalities. Point blank gunshots to the face, for example.

Fuck ICE.

I ripped the never-ending ticket from the machine almost losing it in a gust of wind. Another reminder to hold on tight to the unexpected gifts. You never know when you’ll need those tickets to set sail on your ghost ship or some other transient vessel. Another reminder that the you, the me, the empty page that we have in front of us is all there is.

I feel the eyes of our dead on me — not the same kind of surveillance from above, but more of a steady seeing from below, from down deep and all over really. Some human, some otherwise, most hungry as hell. Their shadows an invitation, a reminder that our stories never truly disappear. The unseen, the erased, the suppressed are also subversive, southernmost, emergent.

I’m sitting here with the ferry scroll. I’m on the verge of writing right on it. I have access to some good pens but almost always opt for the green-capped La Quinta-stamped ballpoint, a mighty fine quill that I’ve held onto since my days on the road, when I chased the glitter on the highway with a vengeance.

My hands shake more when I write by hand now. The heartbeat of urgency and precious aliveness moving through my fingertips. Our ecotone’s currents running through my body. Maybe it’s terror, maybe it’s a source of ecstatic uncertainty. Maybe it’s ok to not know for sure. I’ve been saying there is no knowing a lot recently.

But a mantra can only become presence when accompanied by big loving deep breaths taken together. I always forget to breathe.

I’m an artist in residence at Mass MoCA for the next few weeks. My studio overlooks another river. I left my binoculars on the other river’s edge but not the scrolls. Holy trash for the taking.