Jervis McEntee, "The Hudson River Valley," c. 1874
Not sky-clad, but almost: washed with white gold from head to foot in the weak winter light. We lay dovetailed, watching the sun rise and kiss us both, stars settling under the cloud cover. Were we ever that young, then—will we ever be so young again? What they know about focus, those image-makers, won’t help them see: though we dim with age, my beloved and I; so radiant within our jeweled bokeh.
A stoat in winter pelage guarding a mountain hare carcass from a pair of least weasels
“...and soe is the shell gold, being dry and burnisht with the small tooth of a weasel fastned into a stick.” From "Miniatura; or, The art of limning," by Edward Norgate, c. 1627
The kit provides itself sharp edges, all erupting from buds near time of first weaning, pushed out, as baby teeth will be, when larger knives replace its nursing set. Imagine a farmer, then, who’d caught and killed a weasel, learning its canine tooth, the dagger that bled his rabbits dry, would burnish some great lord’s portrait. And the wild creature, its joy in killing as pure as shell gold, sold in pieces for its fur, for art.
Bildersturm: Damaged relief statues in the Cathedral of Saint Martin, Utrecht; photo by Arktos, 2003
The conservator, making restoration of all that had been scraped away, binding soft red poliment with rabbit skin glue: this pillow of clay upon which the Mother of God will again rest. The image, gouged down to bare parchment years after its making, an act of literal defacing, an iconoclasm. Unhallowed. The Mother’s face will be restored, but first—light. Slow gentle work, mounding the bole then sanding it, smoothing it. Later, a full warm breath from this living woman revives the surface so it can embrace a skin of light: the golden circle remade, unbroken.
"I had always heard that native people believe that photographs steal their souls, and here I learned that in Kayapo, 'akaron kaba' not only means 'to take a photo' but that it also means 'to steal a soul.'" From "Capturing souls," by Ricardo Moraes, 2011
A person walks down a street alongside their story, hand-in-hand with their protagonist, themself. One finds one’s character compelling, as do others, soon there are strobe lights. Your surface—skin, clothing, the ways you breathe out and in—are caught, teased apart, made absolute. Wading through a cold stream of attention, unseen teeth tearing off tiny bits of you. The aperture closes, swipes your soul, plagiarizing a last bit of flesh and turning it to pixels. “You” now is the story you walked alongside, as hollow as a reed, the text-slash-reader impressing the facsimile “you.” Nothing warm; nothing left with which to soul kiss.
Still (cropped) from "Rain Room" video, Random International, 2013
A glimpse, then, at the edge of a puddle. Skin white as the gibbous moon, radiant and cold; her glance up at me, appraising. A frog stalked by a heron would feel the same chill I did. She knows she’s soulless, no opening for anything imperfect as our finite warmth, or stories that have endings. A warm thermal footprint draws her attention: a young man walking. Marriage? No, those tales are wrong. It’s a wish to join a world of change, be pierced, made permeable. She's silvering the asphalt beneath his feet. A shift in the clouds, and an impossible sight— perfect beauty, soaked by the rain—stops him.
Gordon T. Taylor, "Diatoms: NOAA At The Ends of the Earth," 1983
My fingertips, light on a jelly jar, yours near mine, as we raise the dead—these are the things we’d do for art. We didn’t think to ask after our dead beloveds, then. I
wish now we had, not to disturb our fond dead, but to have taken comfort in a longer good-bye. We who stumble through uncertainty
in our shape-shifting skins—watch as the glass rings each letter, fast then faster, “L” then “O,” dancing towards “V” and “E,” then “U.” An
alphabet, spelling wishes as gifts; arabesques of touch/no-touch, all our longing, scribed in tempos as intimate, familiar as a heartbeat.
The other side of the board, the side the cup doesn’t glide upon, is lit in the absence of light—pin- pricked with souls, as improbable as joy, as beautiful as diatoms.
Emily Williams, "Water," 2016
The hand, passing through thin air, trailing a thread of lampworked, molten glass, bound to and binding a twist of slender rods all the colors of the tidepool sky. This work is done with a gesture and an incantation—the soft curse for a careless burn. If I brought you my open flame, would you steady my hand with yours, help turn this brittle glass to flowers?
