I used to walk and never get tired - I clambered over mountains in North Carolina and Colorado - I've jumped gaps in beaver dams and waded across streams - I slowed down, but didn't stop
When I was very young, I would spend hours playing in our dirt and gravel driveway digging holes and burying toy soldiers and cars - there I discovered that when I placed a magnet in the soil all these filaments would organize around, tiny speck of iron - who knew! I began to draw lines of filaments back and forth across the driveway - I was proto-magnet
If we chose to, the lives of others proffer no end of material to judge - the comforts afforded by this material are deceptive; it is better and healthy to examine the lives of others for material to love, to find connection with.
My family stories don't go further back than my grandparents and their childhood reminiscence of perhaps older family - who were most noted for not having teeth or for being very feeble. The census reveals lots of farmers with some military service - people dedicated to doing nothing special and not talking. Following my great grandfather through the census (a notorious drinker and womanizer) I think the census captured him in a brothel in Griffin - which the census taker refers to as a boarding house, where most women are in their 20s and the men are older. My ancestor left with three other men "before information could be obtained." Which is circumstantial, not proving anything, only that the process of elimination says this could be him, who otherwise would not show up in the census at all - not entirely outside of possibility
I notice two kinds of people who approach me as an artist: there are those spurred by paranoia who are suspicious of what I could be doing; and there are those, many more, who are curious, who seek to engage imaginations and connect
What glorious fun, where life just grabs and carries me along for a bit, without analysis or critique, only delight
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