Signs

Signs

I’m at my corner. It’s around 4:30 on Sunday January 19^th-- snow is the overwhelming visual, and through it I am doing some specifically snowy associate thinking.

The way it further disguises history and mystery with another physical layer. How this physical layer makes me work that much harder to uncover “it," how I thrive on challenge. 

So under this layer of snow, I make my dangling clodhopper snow boots dance around, stirring up the slimy brown leaves who neatly lay themselves upon each other like human spooning. I dance my boots until a neon orange slice of trash surfaces, and I instinctively begin creating a narrative. After the narrative sounds right in my head (punk ass teenager letting her litter fall like its nothing, because to her, it is nothing and I feel that because I’ve been there too, thinking like no one cares about this neighborhood, so why should I?) I move on to another visual. It’s interesting my thoughts here ended, or felt complete and ready to move on after a human history was evoked.

 I am a human hugger, holding my magnet up to “nature,” waiting for humans to be pulled into my biased attraction.

 A new object. A red and white “Do Not Enter” sign tagged with permanent marker, “D.S.H.B.” (a violence, "don’t stop hating bitch"). I wait for my thoughts to emerge, first slowly, sleepily like flurries, then eventually ravenous and energetic like a poignant squall.

I am transported to my early childhood. This is rural (rural) Pennsylvania, I got an R.R. address (rural route) and I’m walking to Homer’s pond. Before walking up the small hill to the pond a sign’ll be passed that’s only read when a guest is in toe. They’ll stop. Read it out loud. They’ll inflect humor or disbelief or straight up fear. They’ll laugh nervously, they’ll lower their eyes asking in a low toned seriousness, “are you sure we’re allowed to be here?”

“Trespassers Will Be Shot,” a message from Homer. Now here in Pittsburgh, people are divided into two groups-- those who walk past in familiarity, and those who stop to consider the sign: “Stop Shooting We Love You.”

I am thinking about violence. The violence of words. The violence behind warnings and the way these acts of violence are muted or invisible to those who are used to it. When I first read that sign here in Pittsburgh, I fantasized about riddling it with bullets like a metaphor. 

 “Stop Shooting We Love You,” is a perplexing message. Who is this message directed toward? Shooters…shooters of bullets, shooters of violence, shooters of hate, shooters of negativity. And who is we? The community. We (the whole) love you (the individual, the smallest unit) regardless of the bullets we feel/know/see you shoot (stop shooting).

Associative thinking: I want to share a poem that confronts this violence straight on. This poem was written by my close friend/ mentor/poet, Kathy Sheer Bonnano, in response to the grisly murder of her daughter (she was strangled with a phone cord by an ex-boyfriend).  

Look, violence is nature...here to stay. Like Kathy, I got my art (writing) to understand it-- to consider/question/challenge/agree/deny/avoid/like/dislike/scold/praise/belittle/minimize/maximize it. I welcome whatever thought-- enlightened or not-- that trickles into my brain surrounding the issue.

I’m just talking the talk here. Watch how Kathy walks the walk…considering violence through art, through nature, thus transforming it forever into an untouchable beauty.

Poem about light

You can try to strangle light: 

use your hands and think 

you’ve found the throat of it, 

but you haven’t. 

You could use a rope or a garrote 

or a telephone cord, 

but the light, amorphous, implacable, 

will make a fool of you in the end.

You could make it your mission 

to shut it out forever, 

to crouch in the dark, 

the blinds pulled tight—

still, in the morning, 

a gleaming little ray will betray you, poking 

its optimistic finger 

through a corner of the blind, 

and then more light, 

clever, nervy, impossible, 

spilling out from the crevices 

warming the shade.

This is the stubborn sun, 
choosing to rise, 

like it did yesterday, 

like it will tomorrow. 

You have nothing to do with it. 

The sun makes its own history; 

light has its way.