We have explained earth's runic language,
interpreted its layers of fossils and forms, recorded and transcribed its marbled notations—its colors, hierarchies, textures, and ancient but still changing ways-- established a chronology to chart its events, to give a history to earth and its days. We have hypothesized a molten center, grinding tectonic plates diving under others of their kind, a weathered skin scraped clean by glaciers-- swamps, then ice ages, swamps again, snow-- the catastrophic nature of comets and volcanoes, and the erosive effects of water and time. The atmosphere has been appointed earth's muse, its billowing clouds as the breath of life, cleaver of valleys, leveler of hills, and creator of seas: vapors, winds, and waves are under her decree with floods and droughts as their consequence, uniting the planet in an interwoven connectedness. The old maps had it right-- monsters are lurking in the depths and those medieval bestiaries were not strange enough to explain the fossils that we have dug up: a parade of characters from trilobites to dinosaurs sinking from rulers at the tops to momento mori down below. Then came humans and agriculture: crop circles, fret of fields, cities, mines, serious dams, airports and planes, skyscrapers, freeways, constant wars, dumps, industry (light and heavy), strip malls-- now a planet betrayed and debased by human flaws. In the end, a reckoning will come and the earth itself will record our tale. The speed of the planet as it sweeps through space is beyond our senses, its bulk, its turning beyond our control, the earth holds us close and here we will remain-- not dust and ashes or tattered grasses, but both bone and clay. Nancy Christiansen
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AuthorI am a Northwest artist making collages from mulberry papers stamped by hand from original images that I have carved. Archives
April 2024
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