“...a flux / so constant...” Of sound and image, relentless yet delicate. Not linear—a fluid fumbling. As crystallization, as wood grain, as flight patterned. Follow, be guided, through. Kristina Jipson's work reminds us of how formal rigor can open into the natural exquisite. [SA]
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GREEN STATE
Our identical words might constitute two
ways of framing: ours,
the pines seen round the outside so near
together in their action
against the dark; ours, our similar parts
left together in that room
ringed by its distance from the pines.
We would make good
pictures of our sometimes accidental searches
as we would make good
of what is faint or dark in the pictures. Hands,
the pines, cracks less visible
in the wood than in bright arcs radiating
white over the glass. We shut
out by effort our awareness of what little
variation in light that room gave
to cue us and watched the white to white
passing as intensification
suggesting collection, a mounting on itself
the contents of that sky
separating us from the rim. Our nearly touching
features, no less objects
than drawn splashes across that sky, waxed
damp in their resisting
the over-whiteness as water resists submergence
within itself. The pines
as the glass supported around us fully or partially
submerged us into a flux
so constant as to allow no difference to pierce
those walls we thought permeable.
The frame: our static postures there behind
the glass choosing not one
course over another but one course after another
in succession like the thickening
of our exhalations slowly raising a descending
force against the house.
But we could move our bodies. We could
choose whether and how much
to be immersed. There only through our
deliberate seeing as: hands, the pines,
that room for our coming slowly to consider
what it is we may have wanted
to ask. Whether if we could not find
sensible sounding sounds
with which to describe our experiences we must
feel in our embarrassed way
our experiences to be beyond the range
of sensible. Our making
impulse was to realize, to make back from
our realizations the pines
acting blackly around the house to give us
far off even in our wondering
at our strikes against the white to prove
their darkness was an edge.
It was too many ways at once. We to start
would agree to start which was
less than how to do it. We could imagine well
motions more intimate;
the pines, definite, given by our hands to replicate
for our pictures our touches
gentle against the wood. Or we to sunlight
before their action and increasing
the depth of our excitement with each increase
of red light by sunlight falling
upon the wood. It was hard to feel: hands,
red light, projection of ourselves
into the pines to try sensations of being part.
Or going outside in the usual way.
Through the door instead of the glass—
our first action being a revival
of the house around us—stairs, floors, walls
more wood than green
in their persisting in their arrangement
despite the lack of our attention
to sustain them. We to air lights, pictures,
what goes active in the wood,
loosed plural again our rooms into bark
restored by its being true
bark, no longer active but holding beneath it
layers more active than our hands
within it, moving. Ours to fear: brown rings
as bent, film brown to shade,
the pines unframed by our casting centers
on their centers as we saw them
in the wood. But we were doing something.
We shifted limbs to disorder—
frames, points, the pictures vague as branches
tracing cuts throughout the pines.
We with water would wash them blue to varied
ground beneath the canopy, to shade
lights beneath our hands; we internal responding
to capture would blue-light
capture with our care for those small branches
then easily cut through by contemplation
of what could be sharper in the pictures. Hands,
rings—it grew later. And the canopy
must be black and rapid with height against the far
red of that light that would pass
as through veins to clear the vessels of some weight,
some dangerous stay within
the stem stuck upright so forward and rigid
as if in fear of what yet
would move it. We would move it. We redder
beneath than within would need
that blue going darker as we needed air
against our cuts to cure
the pictures of the pines, cracks, sun-flecks
over our seeing not blue light
housing the window formed by the frame we
formed to frame it, but instead
those hands beside us, still worried. Still
indoors. Our senses from
outside would be to one another as eyes apart
but looking right up close
at their apartness and widening, not at the trees
as they saw them beneath
the glass, but at the pines as we held them fast
to black collecting evening meanings
inside us, we having what we believed must be
our own peculiar way of feeling,
if only a little, those feelings secondary to what our
senses could yield us in pictures
exposed through blue light to profusion, the inexhaustible
growing and shrinking back again
of the cracks we fingered to prove it. We knew
what would not follow our shins
pushing gaps through the grass. Engagement,
active, of what we called ours
went still redder than the white of those clouds
absorbing light and composed of parts—
actually separate, actually working in opposition
to one another creating tension
between us and that separateness we would not
call ours: sun through thin clouds,
how we stood in the pictures; that we stood
for the pictures. But not to repair.
We in our reaching state could not sustain
the pressure of some clumsy play
at seaming the narrow bands grooved to peel
open over our wrists. And the glass
made it different from how we remembered.
We in that room were more
than two receiving; we had within the white
flat real things and we felt adequate
together protecting them. There was no colored light
to fall on the wood; our hands
made burdens of our patience trailing damp
rings around the room. It was precious
to us; the inward frames of our hands made square
houses to remind us of things
that happen in houses—collection, arrangement—
we leaned to look in. But those other
people—we must appear to them unmoved.
We must put up with them
in the regular ways. They would have our mystery
lined to limit what might be
awe at the possibility of trying what we were trying
though we never said we
were trying; we were passive even in our action
(film, hands, the pines sounding rings)
together making tools of our detachment, our stayed
leaning to feel it, more. The frames:
limbs fitted together to measure need in triangles
of blue light. It meant our necks
arched out of vertical, compression; it meant
need in triangles of blue light.
We would give our knees bent to joint floors
gone wooden in the pictures
produced in the dark to make visible the postures
of our minds less joint now
than those boards bearing enlargement
on our papers in contact
with the glass. And when we said we wanted
to walk through the black
that made the pines an end around the house
we meant I did—I would stand
behind the glass making evening mean the pines
or we to blue light as
twilight low in early summer to picture you
sleeping soundly in that room
and me to find the pines in black shapes
made of cardboard and glued
upright in boxes that opened loudly beneath
my hands. We would not have it;
you as I’d make you—other and not so exposed—
would picture me sleeping soundly
in that room where you would watch the pines
inching closer to the edge
that was to you the glass you pressed against
your hands drying more in our room
than in the pictures where they drew dark limbs
out for cutting. The minor
transformations of those hacked branches within
each frame seemed to seek
increasingly to make themselves new, to build
into their arrangements a reference
to what we could call true: hands, lines, that it fell
cooler as the light went bluer or
that we were too warm in that room with its walls
through which we could not pass.
That touching bark, no longer green, grew
to wooden around us as our cuts
grew to dry within the pines acting lately
like shadows on the window
framing hours. We had two ways of making
words for one another, both ours.
That the cut ends of the branches scraped shapes
against the glass; it meant need
in pieces of good sky produced in the dark
and perfectly visible.
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