My Neighborhood Is...

Years ago, the Boys & Girls Club branded fence posts, one side with what their neighborhood meant to them, the other side, with journal entries from Bruce Farnsworth. The fence stood in Spenard for some time, and after being taken down, the planks were stored at The Nave. They called on Bruce and I to revive the pieces with a new installation in a back stairwell of The Nave, with pretty much free-reign on the project. On the left wall is a journal entry written by Bruce, which reads “The bigness of Alaska makes us feel lost the way looking up at the stars makes some of us feel like we’re going insane. But it’s the very bigness that seems to account for the constant bumping into ourselves that Alaskans experience. Large surrounding spaces create a kind of psychic miniaturization. When the distances between ourselves and everyone else is great, the compactness of our interior becomes exaggerated—forms a solitude of expanse where we run into our own pettiness and cowardice at every turn.”

The rest of the piece is a collection of the other side of the posts- what the Boys and Girls club saw their neighborhood as. The center is a blackboard where you can add what your neighborhood means to you.

Kerby helped us a ton with the carpentry and installation, and being able to work with Bruce (a legendary artist here in Anchorage) was such a gift.

FROM THE NAVE (referring to the last photograph):

“Last week, The Nave was honored to host the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska for five days of Art & Culture Classes. Written and left on the 'My Neighborhood Is' chalkboard installation within The Nave, this beautiful poem speaks for itself.

Text:

"I feel pain in my body
when I grasp at my culture
my muscles brace at centuries
old blows from boarding
schools ∞ + more
I grasp at the strands +
braid them back together
bringing two things together
that might otherwise
not be joined"
~eternal weave 2023

Chin'an; Gunalchéesh, Háw'aa; Thank you to Tlingit & Haida artists, neighbors, and relatives, for gathering here in Spenard. We love you!

Special thanks to instructor Rae Mills for granting permission to share this poem.”

Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo

Perhaps the World Ends Here by Joy Harjo

The world begins at a kitchen table. No matter what, we must eat to live.

The gifts of earth are brought and prepared, set on the table. So it has been since creation, and it will go on.

We chase chickens or dogs away from it. Babies teethe at the corners. They scrape their knees under it.

It is here that children are given instructions on what it means to be human. We make men at it, we make women.

At this table we gossip, recall enemies and the ghosts of lovers.

Our dreams drink coffee with us as they put their arms around our children. They laugh with us at our poor falling-down selves and as we put ourselves back together once again at the table.

This table has been a house in the rain, an umbrella in the sun.

Wars have begun and ended at this table. It is a place to hide in the shadow of terror. A place to celebrate the terrible victory.

We have given birth on this table, and have prepared our parents for burial here.

At this table we sing with joy, with sorrow. We pray of suffering and remorse. We give thanks.

Perhaps the world will end at the kitchen table, while we are laughing and crying, eating of the last sweet bite.

in between

Capturing only the monumental moments makes me think that my life is made only of grandiosity. But how did I arrive there? In moments like this. Togetherness. Ordinariness. Holding your hand walking down the street (for no more than a minute at a time). Admiring the fancy Firehouse with all the Seattle-hipster-Firefighters sipping lattes inside. The trip before the trip. The excitement of what’s to come, but more so, the excitement of being right there. And these photographs that bring me right back.

the abduction

On this night, the final night of 2022, I was abducted by aliens on the 600 block of South Street, only doors down from Olympia II Pizza (assumed sequel to the very, very successful Olympia I). Although I look worried, I was really more surprised— I had just enjoyed a very lovely night, eating soup dumplings in Chinatown and walking home in the rain with my girlfriend. As I beamed up towards the spaceship, it occurred to me just how many dumplings I had eaten, and it struck me that I was sort of a human soup dumpling myself. I couldn’t help but wonder whether this made me more appealing to the extraterrestrials.

still no Leica

I drove down to Hope alone one day to hike real high up a mountain and a guy saw my camera and offered to take my photo. He had a camera himself, a Leica actually, and I had a strange thought, what if he gives me his camera? To keep…

He didn’t—instead he took my photo, with my camera (not the Leica) so here’s me, without a Leica (but still hoping he’d give me the Leica).

city lights

The buildings in cities make us feel small, but the stars would make the buildings shrink to nearly nothing. If only we could see them.