Small Writing Cabin

The lodge can seem cold in the dead of winter, or at least a big space to heat up with propane. I dream of a small writing cabin, perhaps 6x8' with straw bale walls that could almost be heated by the body working in it. An 18" straw bale wall has an R value of 54, which is way beyond any building code. I imagine a desk, some shelves, a window, a comfortable chair, and perhaps a loft bed. Perhaps some way of making tea/coffee?

In connection with this musing, I append an image of Heidegger's Black Forest hut, famous as a place of meditation, and now the object of a book length study by Adam Sharr. Compare Michael Pollan's A Place of My Own (two images below): "A room of one's own: Is there anybody who hasn't at one time or another wished for such a place, hasn't turned those soft words..." [See May 22 2009 for a follow-up].

Coral, cord wood and termites

I cannot get over the discovery (and dating, thanks to Molly Miller) of the sheets of coral fossils on the limestone slabs - 450 million years old, or
thereabouts. Somehow I want to draw that fact into the YB experience. Options: one could try to make rubbings of them (or photograph them) and display them indoors, in a gallery structure nearby. Cf. Chris Drury's thumbprints/mushroom spore prints. One could try to recreate the originals in cement etc. But what is the point of any of these options? To facilitate a multi-leveled temporal awareness. Watching a spider spin its web, one also bears in mind the evolutionary process that has led to it having this skill. And that 450 million years ago, the earth had no humans - indeed no plants, no birds, no dinosaurs, or mammals - everything lived in the sea. So here we are, looking at this highly visible trace of a world that completely predates almost everything we know. Is this experience important? Heidegger said that to be truly at home (heimlich) in the world, it must also be a little unheimlich (strange?) to us. This temporal depth is one good way of bringing that about. It begins perhaps as a focal experience, and then turns into a modality or tonality of a broader capacity for experience. It may e.g. encourage making connections between things, it may draw attention to aspects of things unseen, it may allows us to see things in new ways. Perhaps we will have sharper eyes for process, for long cycles. Is 'seeing differently' not the point of art? I still don't know whether the art-object matters (however material or dematerial), or whether it is always a mere means to a new seeing, and in principle substitutable.

Today the cord wood pile was begun, and the results of December chainsawing collected from beside the new road. I raised a platform of treated wood on concrete blocks on the lower level outside the basement. This is supposed to discourage termites. Though some of these logs are surely already termite-infested. I imagine them dropping off, and looking for another home. I am preparing for the wood-burning stove, even as I read that as a planet we need to be heading for zero carbon emissions. Is it enough that these new stoves are highly efficient? Or that they will help me burn less gas? As I stack these logs I am reminded of one such stack I saw - in St Anton-am-Arlberg (Austria) when I was teaching English to a certain George at the age of 16. There the wood filled a cement arch at the front of the Pension. The sun dried it from the side, and the arch protected it from the rain.

Termites, some facts:

• Termites have been around since the time of the dinosaurs!
• Termite colonies eat non-stop, 24 hours a day, seven days a week!
• Termites have wings that they shed once they have found a good place to build a nest.
• Termites cause up to $2 billion in damage per year!
• All Termites are social insects and raise their young as a group.
• The total weight of all of the termites in the world is more than the weight of all the humans in the world.

But compared to coral, termites are new arrivals.
Termites = Terre-mites? Mites of the earth? How much entomology can we learn from etymology?

Thin Ice

The lake and pond are frozen over. Long ago, living in Pointe Claire nr Montreal, the St Lawrence seaway used to freeze so deep that trucks could cross. Here, I dare not trust the ice with my weight. At the pressure of a foot, it already begins to creak and crack. The arctic air has really crept in everywhere. The horse-trough has only a dimple of open water on an inch-thick crust of ice, where the continuing trickle still keeps things liquid. How does it happen that moving water can be below zero? Do the horses understand that they can still drink? I took a hammer and made the pool a bit bigger. But I imagine it will freeze back again, incorporating the new iceberglets. The horses have grown hairy winter coats, but they do look cold. Could they be stolid sufferers and I not know it?

Heating this house when it's 10 degs Farhenheit is neither cheap nor easy. It feels like trying to use a summer house in th. e winter. If I had the stable cottage working I might well set up a small warm winter study there, like the polythene tent I once made in the attic in St Marys Crescent.

I'm on emotionally thin ice right now. YB is being suffused and invested with the kind of care that makes a place into a home, just as that same warmth is being withdrawn from Lothersdale, in the wake of my mother's death. Cannon County is not Yorkshire, and yet there are moments of mirror resonance. Struggling to stay warm is to struggle for the very idea of home.

But it is part and parcel of YB that it change seasonally. With the leaves down, the woods are more open, the trees more like writing against the sky. Less welcoming, more sparely beautiful.

A new year

News: The aquasculpture is now submerged after the rain. A few more inches and the lake will overflow into the pond, and the whole system will be recharged. The horses look a bit wet and sad. Berzerker is confused. He wants to come in, but then wants to go out. Truth is that he knows he wants something, but understands that something in simple spatial terms. Really he wants to be stroked, but does not know it. Once successfully stroked, he abandons the inside/outside game. This is my replay of Freud's fort/da game. Religious belief, perhaps, is a similar translation of a desire we cannot articulate/acknowledge into one we can understand. 2009 will be the year of the great leap forward at YB. I have hopes that the funding for the residencies will be forthcoming, and that the collaboration with the Yorkshire Sculpture Park will move forward.

Art Program Proposal

Yellow
Bird Sculpture Park



Place and Time: A Dialogue with Nature
Sculpture Residencies and Exhibition 2009

Proposal
To organize an inaugural exhibition of site-specific sculpture and earth-art at Yellow Bird Sculpture Park in the Summer/Fall of 2009. There would be four month long residencies (two for each of August and September), and 10 awards of $750 for costs involved in preparing and installing individual works selected from maquettes, proposals etc. The resulting exhibition would run for six weeks Oct 1 - Nov 15 2009.

Aim
To establish Yellow Bird as a site for displaying and enjoying outdoor sculpture and earth art, to promote the educational benefits of public art, and to bring local artists into contact with the wider international scene.

Budget
* Residencies [4] @ 1000 + travel (max $600), materials ($400), accom + misc costs $500 [$10000]
* Awards [10] @$750 (travel, materials etc.) [$7500]
* Prizes [3] $$ ($2500, $1500, $1000) [$5000]

Planning and organizational assistance [$5000]
Other costs (incl installation, advertizing and promotion) [$2500]

Total $25000

Collaboration hoped for with Vanderbilt’s Studio Art Department, and Cannon County Arts Center. Financial support tba

Wet dreams

Everywhere cold grey rain - cascading off the gutters, soaking the screened-in porches, turning the horse pasture into a paddy field, spawning fractal rivulets, chasing the horses onto higher ground. Tomorrow, if it lets up, I must see if the lakes have filled again, swallowing the exposed submarine rock sculpture, repairing the effects of the summer drought. I am lucky to be able to welcome the downpour, even as it dampens the spirits. How far can one extend that principle of affirmation? Nietzsche once asked: How well disposed would one have to be to will the eternal return of all things? It is not just passive acceptance of the rough with the smooth, or a recognition of the interconnectedness of all things. It is a capacity to delight even in the ugly and misshapen. But we need to remind ourselves not to be sentimental. Can we not delight in the mosquito's aeronautical skills, and its delicate proboscis, even will its existence, in some sense, while slapping it into oblivion?

The rain pours into the night, turning grey wet into black wet. I think tonight is the night of the longest moon. Will its white glow dissolve in this rain? Or will it nonchalantly swim across the lake, staying as dry as a duck? If you watch very closely, can we see it pull itself up on the far side of the lake, and towel off?

I imagine unending rain. The Flood comes, surrounding the house, gently floating it off its foundations. It bobs like an ark. Grateful horses embark in pairs, joining the deer, the squirrels, the turkeys ... Global warming will have strange often dramatic consequences. Will YB return to being an inland sea, once more supporting coral, as it did 450 million years ago, the fossil evidence still shouting from the limestone slabs? Perhaps not: "The United Nations has found close to a third of the world’s corals have disappeared, and 60 percent are expected to be lost by 2030". We can surely embrace change, but not decay, dissolution, loss of diversity. Art is truly important in galvanizing our creativity, but it would all be in vain if it produced rainbow froth on flat beer, if the earth died even as we celebrated the latest crop of baubles. How can art bring a return to what makes the whole game possible? How can art become e(art)h?

Giving voice to other beings: Santa at Yellow Bird

http://video.aol.com/video-detail/im-dreaming-of-a-white-christmas-xmas/2039833095

with thanks to Joe (the real plumber) Prince