Machine, it has been so long that I forgot to brew the tea.  I will go make it, and think about the fine jacket I got today, mmgph. I make notes to myself, light from behind walls, play with reflection and shadow, better than the jacket.  I summoned all my peaceful patience, and it came, waiting to get to the studio, but it has sprung leaks like my makeshift blackout curtains of contractor bags and white duck tape, nothing like actual duct tape, which will remove your fingerprints if you’re not careful, or if you are. The non-silver, safe for the masses duck tape quack lets go at the first hint of heat, and won’t adhere to a surface with any dust.  And so the white stuff has bubbled and chickened out at the seven foots seams, and light bursts through under the pressure of the day. 

 I am in my studio and the waiting is over, the piece is so simple, crickety-creak crickety-creak.  There it is, simple as nothing you ever saw, made out of shadow.  I pray for simple.  I think about mechanical machines,  Where is the line?  When is it not mechanical?  And the lenses.  Get me to the studio.  Here come the lights.  I need light color in specific swaths and tiny motors that might need to move very slowly. 

My head has been under, my whole head, bobbing for this installation, it trickles in, because it knows, good lord, how difficult it is for me to look, like driving into the sun, squinting for so many reasons.  I think of the maps and the playing cards fluttering out the window, I think, where on the road was I.  and remembering is not possible.  I go in through the front door instead, from the present, I step in, which disturbs all my gorgeous dust, and open the curtains.

It cannot be as bad as an unbidden recurring nightmare to see a thing again and miss the mark again.  I watched a construction crew dig an enormous hole in the side of the pond basin, the machines and the hole, operating on the same visual scale, made the man look very small who jumped in and disappeared.  Little mysteries.  I tell myself, just do the thing you can see, just do the orders, do not think about step two, about where it will come from, even though I can already see it.  it blooms, it junglates, it lushes out with misidentified leaves.  It glows from within.  It shows itself to me in the writing, would not have expected to have to find the work in my writing, a makeshift thing it is, and sore.  And cursed by my own mind alone, for not thinking about step two.

But first I walk in the door.  I am thinking about hinges and defying gravity at the hips and elbows.  I am thinking about balance and Calder and foreshortening.  And tall upside-down shadows, light rain and wooden ships.