hybridity, pits and stomachs

I liked the idea of feeling hybridity in the pit of a stomach and perhaps its necessity to survival. I see hybridity as a re-enactment of renaissance ideology. Homo faber becomes art's resistance to the dominant "buy everything" paradigm. Making in and of itself is a revolutionary act.

In our conversation in Art and Ecology class we came upon an analogy of creative process to ecological process. I queried the students as to how such a relationship worked and we discussed a kind of gap, we assume exists in creative process -- input in, output out, but in between the human mind/experience/hand creates something unknown, and not replicable from one maker to another. Then we wondered about where that gap exists in ecological process. Bill proposed procreation as such a gap. I, intially, having just been through having a baby and seeing its prosaic side, thought not, but in mulling and caring for the now six month old, have found a mystery in the replication of species that does seem to mirror the creative gap, as well as seeking a deeper understanding of the preciousness of the mundane creative. Rather than elevating any one act to higher, seeking to look deeply into every act.

I spent last week on spring break with my husband, hiking the borders of Albuquerque with eight teenagers, carrying my six month old son on my chest. The creative process of understanding the city from its edges became a real exercise in detail. The plants are ever so different on each edge. The whiffs of danger, from the lawless west side with a newly excavated set of bodies dumped some ten years ago and the memorials to a teenager burned alive by his peers, contrast with the east side's friendly hikers in the latest Patagonia shorts carrying nothing but keys as they exercise for their hearts. North and south are both pueblo boundaries. Northern is populated up to the edge with large horse estates. South is empty and our hike ended at a 1915 survey marker showing the edge of the airforce base while helocopters buzzed by checking us out.

As we walked, I found myself pondering the fragile wetness of human life often. My son's mouth searches for my hand and chomps, a surpising silky wet orifice in a dry land. We often keep him diaperless, so I was stopping to let him pee at the side of the trail. So wet on both ends. The students were charmingly unprepared to walk at the beginning of the week and not so charmingly wedded to their electronic devices.

thoughts