March 31, 2010

I don’t want to go back! It’s definitely true that it doesn’t take long to take your stresses with you. They came with me today. And it’s taken 2 hrs to get them out. It takes that long to let go and start to be free enough to work and dream. This whole idea of blogging makes you so exposed. I’m not sure about it. But I come here with my list of things to do, schedule, timeline, thoughts to make public. After a day I have already institutionalized myself.

It’s very cold in here today. It’s cold outside, too, relatively speaking. And very, very grey. But at least the rain has finally stopped. I got very warm just before I came out here – I was getting a cup of coffee and digging through my bag looking for my id. I just wrote idea instead of id. I think that’s pretty Freudian, no? Anyway, by the time I got to the boat, I was so hot, so I took off my coat and sweater and stood on the deck shooting video in my tank top for most of the ride. It’s good to feel the wind, but there was something frantic about the whole experience. My camera’s battery died just before we docked, so I didn’t get to shoot the whole trip.

I feel like I am always trying to insert too much into a space too small, including things to do in slots of time, tasks to complete with limited power. It’s quintessentially New York. I remember a quote about the city – something about watching someone parallel park an 8 ft long truck in a 7 ft long parking space. So much resourcefullness and creativity come from the pressure and tightness, but I’m not so sure about it sometimes. Necessity is the mother of invention, but where is the room for inquiry and mistakes? My space out here on the island is raw and institutional and empty right now – I haven’t brought out anything very large. It looks like I’m not working, but I am. I think. Or maybe I’m thinking. It’s really a perfect set-up – being given the space to think, three walls but not four, specific times when we can and cannot be here. I’m starting to think the situation of this residency is more important that the space itself. I wouldn’t mind a little heating though.

I’m reading Madness and Civilization. Foucault says:

"Montchau, who cured a maniac by 'pouring ice water upon him, from as high above as possible,' was not astonished by so favorable a result; to explain it he united all the themes of organic calefaction that had succeeded and intersected each other since the seventeenth century: 'One need not be surprised that ice water produces such a prompt and perfect cure precisely when boiling blood, furious bile, and mutinous liquors carried disturbance and irritation everywhere'; by the impression of coldness, 'the vessels contracted more violently and freed themselves of the liquors that crammed them; the irritation of the solid parts caused by the extreme heat of the liquors the contained ceased, and when the nerves relaxed, the course of spirits that had proceeded irregularly from one side to the other was re-established in its natural state.'

The world of melancholia was humid, heavy, and cold; that of mania was parched, dry, compounded of violence and fragility."

March 29, 2010

Govs Island 3/29/10

I love the motion of the water. Something about this view, this isolation, makes it safe enough to write. There is a constant humming in the background, but I don’t think it’s a typical electrical hum. I think it has more to do with the boats. Or at least, it reminds me of the humming of the motor of the ferry that brought me out here.

This place is almost surreal. Actually, it is surreal. To be on an isolated island just 5 minutes from downtown Manhattan – is almost surreal. But the brightly colored fake palm trees and man-made beach outside my window, against the cold late winter rain, that really pushes us over the edge to the surreal. Life is so weird you can’t make it up.

The train just wouldn’t come today. I waited forever for the 1 train, and then got the 2, and then again the 1, and that was another forever-wait. I am starting to think this humming is going to annoy me. I’ll be glad when it’s warmer out and I can open the windows and let these sounds out, and new ones in. Anyway, I waited forever for the train. As I was waiting, there was this guy sitting next to me on the bench. Young guy, probably in his 20s. I couldn’t tell if he was disabled or schizophrenic or just very impatient, but he kept making popping sounds with his mouth and punching his thigh. But not in a very violent way. Then an mta worker came by, put some coins in the payphone, and called the dispatcher, and told him that he had been waiting a long time for the train. And I thought: Is this how it works, then? They just call from payphones and say they’re waiting for too long? I’d think there’d be some sort of system. Or at least walkie-talkies. It was doubly weird, as I’d almost never seen anyone use a payphone in the subway before for much of anything other than trying to pick up change from the change collecting-thing in the bottom of the phone. Or maybe to call a drug dealer. Anyway, but then the train came. The young guy stood and banged his bottled water against his leg. His pocket was filled with change and it jingled every time he hit his leg.

Is this journalism?

We took this little boat out here. The proper ferry is undergoing repairs. Something’s always broken in nyc mass transit. Something’s always broken. But the boat was beautiful, or at least the ride was. It’s small enough so that you can really feel the motion on the waves; really feel the weather. It’s an escape, but not a fleeting one. It’s more transportative than that. You enter a different universe when you leave dry land. You put yourself in the hands of someone else – I don’t know who or what – God, the elements, the laws of gravity, that curious guy with the tattoo on his wrist who was steering the boat. I can see why you have to cross the river styx to go to death. I can see why the I-Ching always insists ‘it would be advantageous to cross the great stream.’ I can see why water can carry the vessels of madness. I can see why people leave. It’s not constrictive – at least I don’t feel it that way yet – it’s very, very freeing. Not just physically. It’s the release from the standards of society – of any society – the leveling, the removal of any rules of behavior, of correct behavior, of linear time. It’s the rocking. So now I’m thinking, yeah, ships of fools, that makes sense. That’s probably a lot more humane than what we have now – the institution. But how long on a ship until a ship becomes an institution?

I had a boyfriend who was a sailor. He loved the sea, he loved swimming in the middle of the sea, away from the boat, away from the shore, in the middle of the night, under the moon, and feeling infinitesimally small. At the same time, he loved the structure of the maritime life. It’s not what you’d think. Most of his time was scheduled. And the time that was free, wasn’t very free, because, what can you do? There’s little room for ambition. No internet, no TV. Read, exercise, think.

Where is hope in all this? And, come to think of it, is hope such a great thing?

All I know is that the markers of time are different when you watch the water. These boats pass back and forth in front of my studio window in a semi-periodic fashion. Slowly, creeping, and they really seem more like large, slow animals. The waves seem to be going in both directions here. I know there are places in the Hudson River along the Manhattan shore where the water flows both up- and down-stream. I wonder if that's the case here. What seems to be certain is that time becomes spherical.