A pigeon flew through the open window of an enclosed back room in my Chicago apartment. This space is a passageway to the city, a place where I store things and keep my trash. I call it purgatory. This pigeon sits right by the open window – alone. I thought at first he had come here to die. Now, I’m not sure anymore. “He” could be a “she”, and she shits all over the place- droppings collect just below where she sits.

She comes and goes as she pleases. I thought about cleaning up the shit and I also thought about putting a canvass down below her seat – maybe she could be productive, of some use, and I would let the fallen shit paint a picture about indeterminacy, about shit, about beauty, about shelter, about loneliness.

I flew to Chicago from Cleveland, Ohio. I do this almost every week; flying is so banal. I am a pigeon. Or am I a hawk?
In Cleveland, I do laundry and clean and garden; take the dog for walks and talk at great lengths with my husband about our future and life and meaning. Our conversations have improved with distance, being together is richer – we work independently and collaboratively.

We inhabit islands. Our bodies are islands. Our homes are islands. He is not an artist. We speak different languages. We routinely construct barriers between each other, only to create desire and longing.

Everyday that we are together is theatre. Friday is Act I, Saturday: Act II and Sunday: Act III. It is always the same and never repeated, almost eight years running. If we have a small audience, they typically consist of people who know us, or who have been to the performance before. We are interested in meeting new people.

We both investigate subjects about time/efficiency, progress/process and imagination. He is a productivity consultant. I am in production as well. We both want to make decisions that will be considerate of a long-term vision.
I think this is a political act, because it is void of present fears that will fall away, because it is utopic, because we will not be around forever, because it is romantic.

We are Brechtian formalists and believe that language is not a neutral medium, which transparently conveys concepts, He uses graphs and diagrams to aid communication – and I am an artist who regards the material and it’s form and cultural meanings as important as the concept.

The view to the water and horizon from our Cleveland back yard is obstructed by a huge warehouse-like structure. The structure was never occupied or used and has been neglected for many years. Rodents and other creatures have come from all over the area and made a home there. There were three rats in our house last winter, which we caught with traps and killed.

It was disgusting and there was rat shit all over the basement. I did not see the rats; thankfully the traps cover the bodies so we don’t have to see the gore. I thought about how we don’t have television. Then I remembered that there really is no gore on TV, it’s mostly reality shows, soap operas and celebrity profiles. Maybe not having a TV, forces me to get information elsewhere- is that like opening up the rat trap?
In Cleveland, we have hawk– striking to see a bird like that cleaning itself on the telephone pole in our back yard. There is plenty of food for the hawk, supplied by the critters that have made a new home in the abandoned warehouse. My neighbor said that he saw a bald eagle yesterday. In my wildest dreams, I could not have imagined that a Bald Eagle would live in my backyard. It feels like an Overture. Maybe even a drum solo.

Sometimes when I’m raking the leaves, I wear my I Pod, and select a soundtrack for my life. The neighbors cannot let their cats out anymore because eagles and hawks don’t distinguish cats from rats, or so I’m told.

 

 

 

 

 

 

a short story about a pigeon and a hawk
a short story having to do with raindrops and smoke letters

Each raindrop felt like the surprise of stepping into a cold shower. Unwelcome. The drops were fat and I could count each, as it wet through my shirt.

It was like the time Isabelle hadn’t slept for days. She finally looked at her watch. Believing it was broken, she thought about where to fix it, wondered if she had caused any scheduling mix-ups. Then, with her eyes still stuck it’s face, she watched as the second hand clicked: only one second had passed. Her watch was not broken.

Am I as tired as Isabelle was that day? Not so tired, I thought. It isn’t always that way. A series of delayed moments. Hopping around in time like Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim. Except Billy didn’t care what he knew –he didn’t use that information like you or I would have. He never thought, “if, I only knew then…”

Everything in my life now is about logistics, about managing space and time. Our family has grown, we move as a unit, a cluster. We are all physically awkward. We are novices at making our way in the world, physically. We are not just larger extensions of bodies, like an automobile, where we can propel ourselves at high speeds, and maneuver quickly. First left, then right. Stop and reverse. Instead, our neurological signals are misfiring, all over the place. All the time. Each part having its own mind and intent. The goal is both to stay together as a unit and get somewhere. Minutes are endless, months race by.

The commute back and forth from Chicago to Cleveland, has changed. No planes no flying. I am not a bird. I am a donkey. Hauling shit back and forth. Literally. It reminds me of making sculptures. I used to just make and make and make. Production, accumulation, situate all of my creations before me, surround myself with them, breathe them in, feel satisfied, a little exaltation. A few years later all those things became burdensome. I hated them for being there. There were only a few exceptions. The creation of objects is a tricky game.
He looked outside and asked, “is there a storm coming?” and Sara realized she had never told her son about the time change. It was darker this day at 5pm, then yesterday. He was confused.

I met someone again, I knew long ago. On a website, of course. Where else? I had imagined in the past, as I fled from one place to another, ‘when would I ever see this person again?’ I thought then, before websites and personal computers, it would be in an airport. But here we are now, and it was at a website where one is meant to find their past. Join all of their past selves, like a wedding reception where there is no B list and no event. Each page is an obituary’s working draft.

Once in touch we remark on how remarkable it is to be in touch again, and we talk about how time moves so fast, and ‘what are you doing these days, anyway?’ My friend said, ‘I am mostly the same as I was back then, when you knew me well – about 50/50.’ So, I thought about who my friend was now, and what that meant to my memory. I thought of that poem by Robert Desnos:
(the last stanza)

I have dreamt so much of you
walked so much, talked, slept with your ghost
that there only remains to me perhaps, for
all that, to be ghost amongst the
ghosts & shadow a hundred times more
than the shadow which walks & will
walk gaily on the sundial of your life.

I want to hire a skywriter to spell it out above me – watch the words fall away, each letter fall away, as new ones form.
I want the emotion to exist in the material of the words themselves, and in the act of reading of it.
I want the breeze and the sky to be part of it.
I want the plane to be the violent imposter, cutting through the sky, responsible for it.
I want to look up one day and be struck by the noise, by the presence of each word held suspended for just a few seconds.
I want to have the feeling that I am perceiving something true.


So it is then, that I can never make this thing so. If I were to see it, it would not match the ghost of its idea. I never should have joined that site, just like I never should have watched the movie of my favorite book. It is over now. I am 100% sure of it.