up and down i'd see the river go - 02/27/25

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This past year seems to have been a lesson in becoming more embodied. I’ve always lived in the world of air, a weightless thinker, looking for answers to ethereal questions, but overtime I’ve grown tired and more faithful.

 

I am more and more attracted to the world of earth, finding it to be a great counterweight and holder of memory, of movement, of migration.

 

I first found chalk at the cliffs of dover before struggling to understand why the water in my London flat felt so drying. Limestone. Then I began to see it wash up on the shore of the Thames, rounded by the water.

 

Up and down, I’d see the river go, starting at its highest, before emptying itself. I wondered if the moon might also be tugging at the blood in my body. I thought about the moored houseboats floating on the river, slowly descending, and finding resting points on the uneven beaches.

 

Here, again, I found the chalks and felt drawn to their light. Washing them, I immersed myself in the sensation of the running water. As they began to shine, I found that I could see more clearly. I’d carry them back and forth, arranging them on the studio floor, painting them. I’d listen to the dull, harmonic, thuds they made as they fell to the concrete.

 

I felt a kinship with these chalks and they led me on a pilgrimmage to find the lost graves of my Bedfordshire ancestors and I discovered how integrated they are to the regional landscape of southern England and beyond, but I never found the right head stones. Instead I found country lanes where short-legged, muntjac deer watched me through farmer's hedges.

 

I saw gleaming, red pheasants hiding in the brush and I met Sarah and Steve in a cabbage patch near Whipsnade. I saw myself more clearly as I met my anxiety in the dark, walking alone past hay bales, feeling carried ever forward.

 

They've led me to places I couldn't before imagine, so who was carrying who, I wonder. Me, the stone, or the stone, me?​