Pale pink dyes

Pucapanga is a vine. It has always been climbing around me, and I never knew you could dye with it, mixed with white vinegar.

Now the random bits of cotton in my house are a pale pink. They were collected, cooked, dyed, then left to marinate overnight.

I bought 10 cheap canvases, and because they were there, I painted on them. I didn’t think. I just painted, and I am not sure what I even painted.

If it’s there, you might grab it and make something. You might find out the only reason you hadn’t made it was the $4 per canvas, which is hardly a barrier. The paintings came out without words, like a baby without a name, delivered without a plan.

It’s not that complicated. Get out of the way.

Give it a good place to land.

Inner bark

I've been very focused on plant fibers.

They are the rebar of the plant itself, like the rebar sticking out underneath the highway in Denver when we drove through a few years ago.

This is where my inner poet gets loud.

There's a textile called llanchama that comes from the ficus tree.

Where it maps on the plant, the fiber category is "inner bark."

It has to be beaten and dried before it's useful.

Artisans know about its careful removal, then paint on it, wrap babies in it, or make clothes with it. It reminds me of the inside of the basket, on the outside.

A Eucalyptus tree shedding outer bark, not inner bark

The Tunnel of Love

Most births happen inside a tunnel.

The baby is just along for the ride and doesn't remember any of it.

Adults go through tunnels too.

Underground.

Our dark work is underground, safe from our conscious mind.

It's what happens in seeds. In plants. In plant fibers, and in the ground everywhere.

We aren't tuned in to the tiny fibers a seed puts out when the conditions are right. The purple-top Kansas grasses seed without our permission. The forest floor is a cemetery and a cradle, like everything else.

It's dark work. Poets explain it best.

The tunnel of love and the tunnel of pain are the same tunnel.

Quito, Ecuador 2018