The Ingredients

The breath Drawing

A map of lungs on top of a figure with directional lines that lead out and back into the center pillar of the page. A image prompted by my observation of two physically conscious elders attempting to control their breath and heart rate.
A praxis with the desired results being a physical and mental digestion, discipline and relaxation it was intriguing for me to watch them delve into this mental state in my presence without introduction or warning.
to let another person watch you while you are moving with your eyes closed takes a great deal of trust. A trust in your self to be able to find a place of comfort while under the light of my gaze
a trust in me that I will not act in any way that is harmful or otherwise communicable through your observation in sight.

Through my wonderment I often followed suit. Sat, smiling from ear to ear bringing my attention to my breath. Letting my stomach drop as I filled my lungs with air. Attention to what I am filling up with and how I feel as the air stretches me up, out, down again.
Giving me more time, one minute how many breaths.
In and out.
Face flush with consciousness and calm again.
Breath.
In and out.

The image conceived became a reminder to be conscious of what is coming in
going out of my body my mind.

Through my eyes and out my mouth

I made this sign to remember I have a wide range of control I may exercise over this process.

As pulsing infinity these two orifice pathways filled with infinite possibility.
What is/has/will come out/go inside?

Right now air

Right now light

Right now fills each up with what is/has/will be

Right now the only color I can see is purple pulses

within these passageways are my martyrs

I love my country to which I mean I am indebted joyfully to all the people throughout its history who have fought the government to make right.

To all the sons and daughters.

Our fore mothers and fore fathers came singing through slaughter

through hell and high water so I could stand here

breathless at the sight

How a raging river of tears cut a grand canyon of light.

My ancestors

My martyrs

those I came from past my parents

The images of ancestors 

I have are constructed using regurgitated stories, media and me

So I made her
this blood, dusk colored ancestor who travels the path protected by her own martyrs.
She is as much i part of me and i choose to see in she

Those surrounding her are not those who spawned her but those she choose to remember.

Considered rats with wings

these pigeons were dead before she became acquainted with them

Fused to the pavement of New York City streets each died frozen in a position of flight

they never realized in their lives.

Their memories do not sadden me.

I believe their suffering is over and am grateful for their contribution in their guidance to where I am

I see vaguely the pathways they chose to walk and their lives inform mine

these passages are the foundation for a receding wall where a dissecting silhouette sits reseeding

This structure has an entrance.

The archway.

As of now there is no light passing through this archway as it in fact casts a shadow.

My mother who is no longer my physical home or primary source of nourishment is much too large to travel inside though she stands at the entrance as witness

Picking the skin on her fingers- A nervous habit of self mutilation I proudly acquired and then resented

I was confused to why my dearest mother Mary stood naked outside the gate before she faded into the ground that would hold my feet

Oh my mama! She gave me these feathered breaths! Oh my mama! She gave me these fancy feet I’m walking on.

CONTRONTING THE MATERNAL- JULIA KRISTEVA

BUT DEVOTEES OF THE ABJECT, SHE AS WELL AS HE, do not cease looking within what flows from the other’s “innermost being,” for the desirable and terrifying, nourishing and murderous , fascinating and abject inside of the maternal body. For, in the misfire of identification with the mother as well as with the father, how else are they to be maintained in the Other?

How, if not by incorporating a devouring mother,

for want of having been able to introject her and joy in what manifests her,

for want of being avoke to signify her; Urine, blood, sperm and excrement. Harebrained staging of an abortion, of self-giving birth ever miscarried,

endlessly to be renewed,

the hope for rebirth is short-circuited by the very splitting: The advent of one’s own identity demands a law that mutilated,

whereas jouissance demands an abjection from which identity becomes absent.

(54, Powers of horror)

Jouissance being…

The pleasure principle according  to Lacan, functions as a limit to enjoyment: it is the law that commands the subject to 'enjoy as little as possible'. At the same time the subject constantly attempts to transgress the prohibitions imposed on his enjoyment, to go beyond the pleasure principle. Yet the result of transgressing the pleasure principle, according to Lacan, is not more pleasure but pain, since there is only a certain amount of pleasure that the subject can bear. Beyond this limit, pleasure becomes pain, and this 'painful principle' is what Lacan calls jouissance. (Dylan Evans). Thus jouissance is suffering (Ethics).- Wiki 3/30/11

One possible account for the absolute pain that my mothers care evolved into

during the years 2001-2005

Food Loathing is perhaps the most elementary and most archaic form of abjection. When the yes see or the lips touch that skin on the surface of the milk-harmless, thin as sheet of cigarette paper, pitiful as a nail paring- I experience a gagging sensation and, still farther down, spasms in the stomach, the belly; and all the organs shrivel up the body, provoke tears and bile, increase heartbeat, cause forhead and hands to perspire. Along with sight-clouding dizziness, nausea makes me balk at that milk cream, separates me from the mother and father who proffer it. “I” want none of that element, sign of their desire; “I” do not want to listen, “I” do not want to assimilate it, “I” expel it. But since food is not an ‘other’ for “me,” who am only in their desire, I expel myself, I spit myself out, I abject myself, within the same motion through which I claim to establish myself.  (3, Powers of Horror)

Food Loathing was dear to me though not a seed I had to swallow and hold so deep in the pit of my stomach for I had the forces to expel. I hid my vomit in my hands, massaging it down the drain in the tub sink present in the classroom. I was ashamed of what was clearly internal in color and texture.

Ashamed only until a friend took interest and wanted to see or a parent needed a demonstration of why I would not bite into the side of juicy tomato or partake in the tip of a banana.

I refused the medication

It would not work

I did not want it to work for the messages that streamed from my stomach told me how, what and when.   

 Information I believed would not harm me.

Now I have learned

Though often I do not abide and call the stinging scold to hit my teeth

Demanding chew again

still I consider the above lessons valuable and I hand pick what I want to feed others and myself

EARTHSEEDS- BE WARY OF WHAT WE FEED EACH OTHER; is there a connectivity to be found in agreeing upon constant change?

How about in admittance of desire
I desire change the way I desire my lover

I desire hypothetical companionship constantly

I desire people because I see their change in me

in the light of their eyes touching corners and crevices in need of a good sweep
illuminated! and given a once over
and over
a dusting
swept into the air
useful to make tangible

When this light becomes touchable

In the dusk

In the twilight

The skittish light shows me what I am looking for

It is I that fills in where the light does not

I recognize my direction during my deviation and change to what I see

for I desire to sow seeds I wish to watch grow.

To see grown to a practice

of how I treat other and myself.

A never-ending trial with myself as residing judge reflected in every surface.

The reflection articulating itself as an indefinable pattern.

This patterned reflection grows in every direction if attempts are made to draw, graph, explain from the center, side or otherwise it infinitely expands and complicates,

It cannot be pinned down or made still

But it is clearly on everything

A sameness that is both uniform and appropriate to each local in matter, form and pigment

Yet it is own separate entity

Where observable outside forces effect it as a whole

Comparable to watching the wind pass through a field of grass

Where each blade is effected differently

 animated in motion near others who have been so too

To the point where I can watch the air travel in front of/through/past me

A visual affirmation of the experience

If feeling it wasn't enough

THE EPIC ARROW ON THE POST OFFICE WALL

The iconic imagery of fetuses life cycle supported by youthful conceptions of reproduction

Long before I began to menstruate I was riding high on a wave of my public self

based on uninformed conceptions of pollination

at eight years of age I digested and parceled out what I knew of my sexuality in my sleep.

Where a florescent scene illuminated the nibbling of corn on the cob genitals

So close I could hear the crunch

I sat on the #1 local across from my rearing on a diet of street walking, train riding and science fiction

mama showing the way

on the foundation of my unnamed ancestors
she illustrates the possible pathways that are open to me