make yourself at home
2020
copper wire on hardboard.
Tell us everything
the waves whisper in your ear, feet dangling off the dock above the deepening swirls of blue
You’ve been here before
Grass welcomes the bottoms of your feet; lush jade comforts the spaces between your toes
and musk from the woods fills your nose
We’ve been waiting
Between the cracks in fallen trees are sprouted fungi, their forms grow vigorously in front of your eyes;
bark begins to split and break for the strange matter to consume and claim its ground
Come closer
They’re beautiful to look at, but their force is too strong to let your fingers reach out
The forest blanket awakens, tickling the soles of your feet and urges your body forward,
the opening that let you in entangles itself closed, vines have submerged from the bed of earth
and wrap around the oak giants, the soft evergreens and their fungal residents
This is nothing you haven’t seen before
The waves feel much further away now but their whispers stay close to your ear, a soft breath that starts
at the tip of your ear and runs miles down your spine
The beautiful forms that grew themselves between the cracks of the trees, suddenly they are in your palms
The crevices of your hands and tips of your fingers are filled with mildew and the decay is spreading itself, growing up your wrists
Your arms have become the vines that wrapped themselves around the oak and evergreen tree guards,
the roots that have become your legs and toes
and veins that once ran under your skin, they’ve plunged down to the ground,
so far deep through the earth that it could touch the waves whose whispers send your eyes to rest
Make yourself at home
make yourself at home is an experimentation of a soundwave wall. Every line drawn here in wire is copying the soundwaves received when recording myself saying this poem out loud. The poem itself visits sites of loss, growth, self-discovery and a stumbling upon comfort. It dives into an imagined utopic world, or perhaps a real one, where the forest seems to lure you in, it heals your endured past, and consumes you whole. The folds and bends of each string of wire overlapping one another – living, breathing, decaying, its life itself telling us a story.
This installation currently resides in the first floor display case at Living Arts Centre Mississauga.