Novel Ecosystems: Borderless and Contemporary City Landscapes
Size: 7" x 3" x .75"
Materials: watercolor, BFK Reeves, Stonehenge papers, micron pen, type writer written text, Canson papers.
This piece depicts, and speaks about a number of locations I came upon while working as a resident artist in Finland. These locations show the beauty of contemporary city landscapes when wild places are allowed to flourish within their borders. The full text of the book can be found on my website. The first half is a free verse poem I wrote that compares immigration, the policies that restrict it, and the bigotry against it, to the overwhelming, fanatical desire to eradicate non-native plant species. The second half goes over the facts and benefits of allowing these wild places in cities to flourish.
Complete text:
They aren’t from here,
they don’t
grow, live, here
naturally.
They interfere--
take space
take up light
breathe up air--
like us.
They live alongside us,
and we sway, reach,
alongside them.
They aren’t from here,
but we don’t—can’t,
will not, rip them up.
We cannot last,
we can’t get by on a
world where
taking, pushing,
separating is the limit.
We intertwine,
root ourselves into
the earth.
We take
hold of the ground,
the dirt between our
toes,
fueling our twisted,
mixed up
roots.
Our lives are the same,
we all want a place
to be. Somewhere solid,
somewhere
prosperous
somewhere full and
fertile.
We want plenty,
we want refuge for
our burgeoning
descendants.
To exist among those that
Know us, care about us
not for what we are
But who we are,
Living beings,
breathing and
breathing.
Living and
living.
There is no native,
Non-native,
Indigenous, non.
We are tied so
tightly together,
our legs, roots,
wrapped around
each other.
Our lives resting
on, and
Holding up
each other’s.