Returning

Becan, Yucatan Mexico, Anna Peach 2012

I speak about the trials of returning as often as I speak of the emotional pull of  leaving.  I seem to be forever in the grip of one of these two distinct poles.  We often say that to return is to go back to the comforts of what we know, but with all of the changes that we undergo while away, I find myself returning as a dramatically changed person that has more than a little trouble trying to fit back into the rushing tides of pedestrians.  With that, I view my environs with new perspectives, and often a great deal of confusion as I try to smush myself into the way things were.  As is the case with my return to New York City.  I was barely circling above Laguardia airport before the city pulled at me.  I had undergone a transformation by living very closely to the land in a foreign country for several months, and now the grey sprawl again took over my life.  It was never a very comfortable fit for me in our nation's largest city, but I continue to try regardless.

As I sat in the glare of the mid afternoon sun, I asked myself, "what in the hell am I doing?" while we were all supposed to be seeking out the Freedom Tower off the left of the plane.  And so I  begin the return process.  It sounds bleak, and  unfortunately it certainly was as bad as it sounds.  It opened up the can of worms that we all try to avoid discussing, that being the "why do we make the living choices that we make" question that is often so very hard to answer.  Why do we continue to return to places or people that are not such a great fit?  Why do we go to great lengths to justify the reasons for not living to our fullest potential.  It is a dangerous question to raise in the Big Apple, for most people cling to the city using the same justifications that we use to justify remaining in a failing romantic relationship.  Often the answer is as simple as we have invested far too much time into a situation that we thought would eventually pay off.  It hasn't yet, but yet with our heads still barely above water, it seems more tempting and far easier to stay put in the lackluster situation than to forge ahead into the unknown.  When you break it down to the simple truth that change is scary, it seems nothing short of cowardly to sell ourselves short.

With that being said, I am neck deep in change as I write.  For I couldn't very well write on the subject without at the very least guinea pigging myself to the hilt.  What will come of this?  I am not sure, but the very simple fact that I am writing about it seems to show that I am already in a better place for it. 

Inspired Walk

It was an interesting day today. Some healing, a chance to rest, a chance to eat. I laid in the sun, discovered a lake in the middle of uptown. Took the time to notice Spring before it goes away. I looked at light and shadow, talked about art with a four year old on the crosstown. I walked and walked. I came home to find my neighbor was throwing away a giant framed color photo of Milford Sound, New Zealand a place where I have stood. I watched my new videos that only make sense when seen as video. They fall apart as stills. The people blend into facades and the buildings melt into sky in kaleidoscopic images.

How do you make 37 NYPD smile?

So imagine me in my tree grazing costume, sandwiched between a hula troupe and a float of drag queens…it seemed only fitting that I would be in that mix. In the parade of life I would say I would probably be in the same exact spot. To summarize I would say that it is a Pride parade with the Grim Reaper…and so much more. I never really felt the mind numbing flash of the media until last night. My favorite comment was from a man who was thrilled that I decided to put the giraffe in a sweater. The combination seemed to thrill him to tears. You just never know what is going to happen. It was definitely a free for all at times with people pushing, grabbing and generally anxious prior to being let loose in measured doses into 6th street in New York. I was particularly impressed by the NYPD, for they sort of became my parade. I spent a fair amount of time trying to avoid falling into an officer, and spent an equal amount of time trying to make a few of them smile. Neither was easy, mind you as I was in a very chaotic section of the parade, as I later learned. It seems that there were sections that were exciting but not necessarily chaos. I was under the impression that the entire parade was careening out of control, but nope only a few sections including mine. But chaos seems to be my destiny, so onward I went, out of the main drag and tried to zigzag back and forth to the people. I mean people! Thousands and thousands everywhere you looked. People were at times twenty people deep, trying to catch a glance. I lumbered and even danced to the circuit boy club music, performed a modified hula, and was the official pet of the “massage parlor” girls. It was my own coming of age story with all of the characters marching along, but in an Anthony Hopkins direction style ie. Slipstream.

It was something memorable and definitely something to talk about next time I am around a campfire with a few tourists in the South Seas. I am glad I had the motivation to due it. It is amazing too, that you end up running into some of the same people that you saw earlier in the day. The Ghost Buster boys who I had spent the morning with on the Today Show, spotting me in the chaos, thanks to my height. Another woman recognized me from my parade of one down 5th ave, after Rockefeller Plaza. She grabbed my sleeve excitedly as if we were old friends. Costumes and parades are great like that, they seem to lessen the gap between us.

All in all, my very favorite moment of the day was spent trailing two zoo keepers strolling on their lunch break outside the Central Park Zoo. An elderly pedestrian approached us and informed them that they were being followed by a giraffe. Needless to say they laughed and gave that "everybody is a clown" look before turning to see that is was true. "Only in New York" I heard throughout the day and night, and it seems to be quite true.

Letting go

I let Waterhorse go to the sea (last week), in a solitary reunion with its environment. It could have been a place of great importance. A great ship landing...an explorer's visit...or even a place of devastation. Instead I chose the spot where the waste water spills into the cove. A calm space where fattened baby sea gulls drift in the shelter of artificial constructs. The launch had none of the grace that I envisioned, that is until the sea claimed it again. The launch was simply a crash of dry seaweed upon the water's surface. Nothing more than a swift drop. The sea first pushed it in before slowly unraveling its woven form, reshaping it into ribbons that again took on life. The ribbons of kelp were now bleached from the sun, and the salt now brought to its surface.

In Hawai'i they say if a lei is returned, so will you-so I am not sure what to make of the drastic movement that pushed the piece under the false stone that covered the waste water pipe until it was slowly turned and unraveled before being sucked out to sea in dramatic swirls of life intermixed with steel grey and punctuated with waste. The young gulls continued to test their wings against incoming gusts of wind. Gradually the wind threw rain like thorns in my side. I walked in then, thinking my small ceremony complete. Walking the trail of cod back one last time to the shelter of home.

Oh Canada...

*photo of me in the much warmer Pacific ocean

I feel a world away as I repack my bags for the sixth? time for short hops between locations. I am heading back to isolation and introspection after a short but memorable look at town. Funny thing is that I feel a world away from the summer buzz of town life. People prowling about til four or five are then followed by men spraying the streets down to remove their residue. The town cleans up nicely with many hosers and sweepers happily picking up the remains of the night. It doesnt help any that the messages I receive from home are filled with much the same partying. I cannot even reach anyone since there is a party every night I ring up. I am left with my rather innocent whale and seabird footage and little inspiration to take part in the chaos.

I miss the ocean and the sound of the birds. Entire days filled with nature observations, cooking and art. The town offers distractions, too many it seems, for everyone is running about and I am not sure where they are going. I realized that I enjoyed the two months in the cove, even though the inability to make a phone call, buy groceries, or even have a cup of coffee in a cafe took some getting used to. It isnt so unlike what most of the people north of here have to do for the winter.

I think we are spoiled rotten. It changes your perspective on things when you have to think ahead and buy groceries for the month...or the winter. I have watched artists panic after viewing the options at the 'mom and pop' shop. The die young crowd from Toronto is no exception.

I will be hiding out in yet another cabin, though not as close to the sea. The sea is still visible and my main source of inspiration. After an amazing amount of video, I will be returning to the basics, working with fine silk thread and fish bones. I have high hopes of continuing my writing that I have been avoiding. The camoflage piece will make another surge ahead...
*note to self... work on it please*

Gannets nesting

Rainy days

I baked gingerbread today to fight off the rainy cold that has snuck back into the days here. The fog and rain have swept in amazing sea things in the weeks past, from ice to seals (though dead), Capelin (fish) that have provided food for the whales and birds, and of course my favorites the plankton, zooplankton, jellyfish and sea snails. I try to remind myself that this place is best in fog, though I am having a harder time with the rain. It did drive me back to my to do list which was growing so long that it seemed impossible to overlook. I had to do obvious things like organize the mess of papers that I continued to pack without sorting through. I had to organize the DVD’s and actually try to make some kind of label system that I would later recognize as order. Last but not least I had to try to figure out what is next.

It is a funny thing that happens when traveling, time suddenly is running. I went for a few outings to view nature again after feeling like a hermit in my room. I went out at night as well so to hear a friend’s band play. At some point the fun activities became too much like distractions that never end, and the to do list grows. I need to recapture the tenuous balance that allows order in the relative chaos that is travel. At times I need little more than the smell of homemade cake to set things right, to follow the list of ingredients until completion. It seems to have worked thus far in ordering my activities, or you would not be reading this.

I have also found it amazingly hard to work surrounded by people at all times. Artist residencies can be like that, with an ever changing list of characters that cycle through. I had found my writing nearly stopped again due to it. Writing is my most private creative acts. I need to complete a thought in one go; else I drift never to return. One day I just stopped my excellent daily writing discipline. The chaos ensued. You do not learn these things until you go through them. It made me think about how we live in a short attention span kind of world where even the news interrupts itself. I find myself doing the same and then regretting it. I sometimes wonder if it is somehow a result of our coffee drinking excess as I find myself thinking, and acting in frantic spurts when I return to the stuff.

Meltdown

Still from video by Anna Peach, Newfoundland 2007

Meltdown seems to be the theme of the days here. All things are in motion, even if the motion is the slow disintegration that eventually leads to the destruction of the form. A slow shift that is barely detected as an object drifts in its own melt. Not sure if that is too much description given for a video made of melting ice created when the growlers (broken sections of icebergs) pushed ashore. Beautiful in their simplicity. Elegance found in their isolation from the environment in which they belonged. I often wallow in my own melt, but it just seems better when they do it.

Necessary changes

I am preparing to move throughout the world once again. It is necessary for me to gain perspective on the changes I must make and to truly face myself. That has always been my way to work things through. Take away the familiar and all that remains is yourself. It is very hard to overlook problems when you strip all else away. I began sorting my things and came across my journals. How far I have moved away from them. They were like those rocks in the earlier post, constant and strong. I decided today to post a travel journal entry from a few years ago.

August 12, 1999
Isle of the birds
Cook Islands

I stand against the clean white counter. Three flames burn, two candles and one beneath the kettle. The power blew again, my secret wish granted. Voices coming from the darkness. Crickets. My painting earned itself a candle. A vigil. The whole house is mine for just one night. Then they will come alone or in pairs, together or separate. Filling these six rooms with strange voices. Asking the same questions in different ways. Pulling me out of the cavern and into the light. The generator kicks in returning life to how it was. I reach for the light switch, turning them back off.

Moeraki

(Moeraki series-ongoing,Anna Peach,acrylic, maps,history books on canvas)

I could not sleep last night. Wandered and stared out the windows. Maybe it is shock...maybe reality has just set in. I posted my favorite rock painting, they never made the website, but insted each one went to different part of the world. Very different people own them now, but they share these three rocks. I just keep painting the same painting, but they never look the same. Always three stones. I think it is like my Kyoto book that I made, sitting alone in the temple garden. Drawing lanterns, never alone for long. Thirty views of the temple garden it was called. I drew with a calligraphy marker until it was dry. I thought I was dying...right before doctors tried to tell me that was. When they said it, I convinced myself that I was going to live. Ended up being the medicine that was killing me... they blamed Sumatra...I never did. I always return to that kind of garden, natural or invented. Stones that lean on each other for support. All over the world there are stones like that. Melting into each other with time.

Revisiting Chicago

(Moon Jellyfish, Anna Peach, stills from video filmed at Shedd Aquarium Chicago, 1/ 2007)

I found myself spending day after day in museums on my last visit to Chicago. I had left myself a week to explore after I completed the installation in Sheboygan. I was so nervous about that installation due to the 20ft ceilings, but all ended up fine. Different than I had envisioned but fine. The Spirit house took on an octopus or squid like shape, due to it being in a group show and not being able to stretch lines out in all directions. So squid like it was. I have always had an interest in the “freaks of the sea” as I began calling them affectionately. I think it was part inspired by my first time snorkeling on Weh Island, off the Northern coast of Banda Ache, Sumatra. That first time looking under water brought me face to face with an octopus, a large cuttlefish, and a school of lionfish within five minutes. The later brought up memories of a scull and crossbones warning on the tank of the Shedd Aquarium in Chicago, both a fortunate and timely recognition. It also began an ongoing preoccupation of mine. Simply put, I am interested in how we experience nature. How is it filtered, censored and recombined so that people can again relate to it.



In Chicago, I took an afternoon to revisit the Shedd, after milling about SAIC for an hour or two. I brought my video camera and simply filmed the lot. From the chaos of the diver feeding fish in the big tank, with air hose caught on the turtles fin, to the serene but otherwise ignored Moon Jellies that top my post. I thought about why a man sloshing around gasping for breath while conversing with the man on the p.a. system was drawing such a crowd…and why for only for a few minutes before turning attention elsewhere. I stayed for the whole event, and by doing so I got to see him hand feed sand colored rays the size of salad plates, that no one else seemed to care about. I thought about our diminishing attention span and the need to see it all.



I sat alone in a darkened space with the moon jellies. I sat there for an uncomfortable length of time. So long that staff members began to check on me to make sure I wasn’t up to something, like say learning or reflecting on something. It seems like more and more if you stop too long you are a vandal.

I went on to see the Field museum and stayed there an equally long time. I stood in the Big Island lava flow section to see if it would elicit some feeling of connection for me, and it did due to the blaring video of a familiar news reporter in a vintage broadcast of the 1980’s eruption. I went on to sit by a Spirit House, a long house, alone on an atoll, and later looked at the stuffed birds that I recognized from the paces I have stayed around the world. I had fed their relatives papaya near Timor and laid in hot sand to watch their babies hatch in the Cook Islands. It was all so strange to be here together again in such different circumstances, considering they were stuffed. It was all so structured, in a way that life in these places never is. It made me feel fortunate to have had these places play a role in my experience in this world. Even though it was such an alteration of my experiences, it was enough to make me want to stay. I wanted to tell someone that that bird sat on my shoulder, that it made me feel alive and not so threatening on their tiny atoll called Takutea, but then thought better of it. I left the museum grudgingly where I walked in the cold evening air all the way to Michigan Avenue, and stopped to watch the Canadian geese sleeping in Grant Park. As I walked I tried to think of someway to tell these things without having to say a word at all.