'I Believe' Project

I have started a new blog for this project, I Believe.

http://taramariaford-ibelieve.blogspot.com/

I will be regularly posting interviews and writing about the interactions
and process throughout this project, so check in often. thanks, Tara

The Point of Interaction

In my time, a fragrant flies by a sense which dangles outside of my nose. In my time, connection to meaning comes and goes; it slides down a pole, rides the waves and trollops down a path to home. Meaning is defined within context. It is the significance of a thing. In words, images, feeling, meaning can not be defined wholly without using past references. A thing that is meaningful, is full of meaning to one and/or many; yet, the pictures that are drawn are wide and far from one another. A memory that is full of meaning connects into a well as deep to China and is unexplainable to a witnessing gesture. When ‘ness’ is added to a word, it ensures a state of being. It becomes a noun, a thing in itself. An embodiment of the thing.

Meaningfulness is the state of being full of meaning. Meaningfulness resides in the lower regions of the well of being. It is a butterfly wrapping it’s wings around the wind as it flies, softly embracing the thing and letting it go. It penetrates the heart, slowing time with it’s ripples.

One must interact with the thing in order to experience this state of being.

The process of interacting can be conscious or unconscious, take seconds or a lifetime. In slowing down this process, the first phase is acknowledgment. It’s like saying ‘hello’ or waking up to the thing: object or event. Your body can wake up to the event without your mind ever being notified. By saying ‘hello’, you are becoming aware of one aspect of the event or the whole event in itself. It requires a focus of attention from mind and/or body and/or spirit.

Once you’ve acknowledged the aspect or whole of event, you must invite it into your self for it to become meaningfulness. By focusing your full attention and opening, you are inviting the event inside your self. If you want to practice doing this consciously, breathe deeply as you focus on the external event. Breathe in the event on your inhale, breathe your self out on your exhale. This is the beginning of the dance, the mingling of inner and outer. Continue to breathe and focus on this dance, it will become innate and you will begin to feel the point of interaction: the particular point in between where your energy meets the event. This dance is essential in this process, stay with it as long as you can. You might begin to feel an expansiveness that begins in a center of being—a universal being—and expands outward. Continue to keep your full attention on the event while allowing the point of interaction to inform you.

At this point there is an inter-relating that emerges. A third thing or event surfaces. This new thing begins a life of it’s own. You can shape it, push it or pull it, bounce it up high to the sky; but it is a thing in itself. You can not erase it or shove it in a corner; however you can ignore it. And it will re-emerge whenever you engage with the initial event. It will want to speak with you, ask you what’s changed since the last encounter. If you want to practice this consciously, you can engage with it as a separate event and begin by saying hello, inviting it inside your self and dancing with it.

When the practice becomes forming the space in between inner and outer, everything, every moment is meaningful. Space is given to form the relationship at hand. Meaningfulness becomes intertwined with your being, as a state of being full of meaning. The life that begins in a center will inform the relative layers. A string is long and thin, is defined by it’s extensive lean-ness. White are walls, clouds and pants in a particular prescribed manner. Lost are the manners above all hunkered body parts. When I said you could become this other, I meant you might not want to.

A Study of Boundaries

May 28, 2009

a study of boundaries........I needed to separate a line, pull it from the others to examine it. the quality of consistency in form dictates the outcome of the puddle at the end.

first a smooth and even line
then a little bit thicker
finally a jagged, uneven line

what does a line do to another line?
it mimics it, it races it, it crosses it
and perhaps just stays with it

when inside becomes outside, the lines fall to the floor.

Time and Line

When time plays still,
a moment pauses
and an image is rest assured.

When time plays still,
an evident line
points to a masking,
or not.

When time plays ‘til
the end of days
and the moment keeps on knocking.

Moving

I am not alone here.
A shadow follows close
behind, bends beneath
a reflected image,
certain that I am worthy of following.

A Clean Slate

I am confused today

How did I get to here?

How do I know

what I believe to be knowable?

I am who I am

right now

but

I have no idea

what has happened in between

me now

and me then

I feel dumbfounded

by this state

this heightened awareness

of unawareness

How will I move forward

without the in-between

layers

that make up

my perception

of my initial experience

if I can’t remember

what that was?

How can I stand to

long-leggedly

step forward

into something

I won’t remember?

Reflections of a Lost and Found Self in The Midst of a Collaborative Art Installation

As I sit here writing, I ask my self: what have I to gain? and where have I lost?

In the beginning I thought this event was to be integrated and distinctly minimalist. Four columns, four series of projections, darkness and a lit up triangle with slow fluid descending from above. The show was this and plus or minus equations that filled up the space. In between the columns, whirlwinds of tension blocked the participants. The air was dank and cold. Life had just fallen, crushed by giants, onto the floor. A disaster had taken place with the kind of destruct that eliminates space. The quiet had pushed into the floorboards.

And as I walked a foot, stepping carefully onto the floor, I wandered into some vacant place in my self. I felt an emptiness that is different from space. When I speak of space, it is not empty. It is filled with expansiveness and molecules and energy. Emptiness is scary. It is void of any thing, as I know it. No wonder all those plusses kept arising. When I think of what space means to me now, I fall to the floor. I feel my body being pulled to the earth. And I can not stop this.

As I continued to walk, a glow of two walls with the tip pointing at me began to ask what I was doing there. At first I did not listen. I kept pacing around the columns. Then I heard it again. She didn’t call my name, but I knew she was calling only me. I glided toward her with my weight on the floor. I stepped half-way around the structure and found a third wall, the supporting wall. I peaked through the openings. The air increased and suddenly I felt like I was at the beach gazing into the faraway sky. Drips of clear fluid slid down thin strings into sand. As I stepped onto the sand I felt the layers falling off. I felt alone and naked, warm and alive. I reached up to touch the fluid and found my self. There I was glistening back at me. The fluid slowed around my fingers as they met each other for the first time.

One and three does not mean three minus two nor three equals one. To be in collaboration is to remain unique and complex and to integrate, inter-mesh, fall softly to the winds.