Page 83 - Dark Matter Women Witnessing

When I tend to the world from the heart, it becomes poetics. Poems of praise may come to

my lips at any time. I can be touching something as mundane as a broom. But when I wrap

my hands around the worn wooden handle, so polished with age that it glows, I can feel the

life force of the broom handle. I remember that the handle was once a tree. And then I travel

beyond the confines of my room and my sweeping... It’s as if I see the sun shining above and

the soil below exuding its own kind of invisible light. I feel more alive when I think in terms of

these other dimensions. Envisioning the dance between outside and inside, high and low

satisfies me beyond measure.

I find ironing to be another rewarding activity. When I press a cotton shirt, I might start

thinking of the miracle of cotton, the beautiful cotton flower, and the women who first began to

weave it. As I continue to press down on the iron, I tune into the factory where the shirt was

made. Was it China, India, or Bangladesh? My thoughts drift to the laws governing the

factories, and I hope it wasn't the one in Dhaka, Bangladesh, where a hundred and seventeen

workers perished recently because of the owners' negligence. I ponder the route the shirt

might have taken from the factory to me. The men who handled the transport containers from

road to ship. The store where I bought the shirt. The sales clerk...

My love for “mater-ial” takes me far and wide. With lightning speed I travel in my mind to an

assembly plant in China where a thousand workers toil. The insane reality of this work

environment was recently portrayed in the documentary Samsara by Ron Fricke. In one

horrifying scene he accelerated the already inhuman speed of the repetitive gestures, each

sequence a few seconds, a quarter of a minute at most, underlining the fact that the workers

themselves have become machines.

I am a hunter-gatherer. Like a child, I cannot go on a walk without bringing back some little

treasure from Mother Nature. It may be a strand of grass, a heartshaped rock, some powder-

fine sand, a small branch with lanternlike seedpods, a clump of tender velvety moss, some

unusual-looking twigs. This habit of mine evolved into a work I titled One Thousand Treasures

du Jour, a precious celebration of the miracle of life. It is an installation of one thousand tiny

things, mostly from Nature, that bless our days, from seed to pebble to feather, all fitting 2” x

1.5” gray cardboard receptacles. I used the shells of small Diamond match boxes which in

their delicate craftsmanship (as industrialized as the process is) are a good 'match' to the