In grade school when you learn how plants work, at the same time, how human work, how the blood circling around makes its way back up your legs, you place a piece of celery in a cup of water and food coloring. You watch the red, blue or maybe yellow march its way up the stem and to its leaves.
A bottle’s open top is its horizon. The stopping access of the world. Gravity moves up rather than down. The terrain of a ghost trap. The view from the lobster. Building a ship in a bottle means building it underwater or at least already lost at sea. From a remove. It takes patience and care always at a remove. My nose always on the other side of glass. Patience, care, remove, fragility
Bottles grown from seed, transplanted several times and trained to climb. Hanging in a shorter space than where they were grown, uprooted and roots uplifted.
Diaries that track each vine and their transplanting. A tracking of the routine presence of watching them.
Moments that uncover indecisions, or masked spelling mistakes—where an erring “a” in “differance” has been gently transformed into an “e.” Hesitations, misspellings, and auto-corrections in teaching.
