[Piel de Noche]
This piece is about memory. It's strange how memory is not really what we think it is--that it is permanent, like a fixture we can look back on when really, memory is elastic. It's subject to editing. We change it to accommodate our lives, our needs. We romanticize it, we demonize it, sometimes both simultaneously. This seems to happen to an even further extent when something we loved, or thought we loved dies. The blurry font, faded bone paper and haphazard binding are meant to elude to the muddiness of memory. I weighted the cover so it resists the reader as if to say, "Are you sure you want to recall this? Do you want to deal with this now? With all these people around?" Then the cover slaps back onto the table exposing the pages.
The book is small, only 6 inches long. I wanted it to be intimate, something you'd have to hold in your hand to read. Each page is hand printed, one letter at a time with water-based ink, sewn together with coffee dyed thread and mounted inside the wooden casket.
My dear friend Rick was a peach and translated the text for me. (Thank you!) He did an artful job, making sure it remained lyrical and wouldn't read like stereo instructions. This is the text in English:[Night Skin]
Beneath the blood black maple—
The dying leaves dance a dance of animal bones—
and I am putting on my night skin.
The evening grass—
The wet hair of a boy I used to know—
it was the kind of love that drew blood slowly.
The trees, waif skeletons of Luna moths
soon to be stripped twigs praying for the cover of frost—
I hear the shudder and coil of living things below me
where tendrils of trees intertwine—
when roots touch—do they make a sound?
Do they know one another?
The breeze stirs the branches in slipperless steps—
Telling me that summer has passed.
The sun is merely a whisper—
The taste of ash lingers there
as the naked quiet of night crawls towards us.
The brushwood weeps a scarlet psalm
as I try to remember his skin—
It was the kind of love that made you fierce.
Beneath these bundled twigs within arms reach of the dead—
In my night skin, I am there with him
tender and fading, the dusk drawn by wind twine—
Where we dance a dance of animal bones
for the last time.
Molly Roberts 2007
I'll be glad to get this thing off my work bench! Now it's time for a little rest and relaxation. First thing is First: Detox! Since I've been making things like a banshee I've been living on day old pizza and pot after pot of coffee with minimal catnaps. I'm looking forward to walking into my studio wearing my pajamas with my hair all awry to begin tinkering with all the ideas that have been piling up. I've got dream boards to create, journaling to catch up on and new years plans to plan! For now, I'm off to dream of buckets of cold water and cucumber facials!What do you kids do to rejuvenate?
Wishing you Much Peace and Many Blissings!~*
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