certaintriangles

Excerpt:

I start by telling you about the old Chinese ladies in Riverdale Park rubbing their backs against trees, my interest in mapping through the body, and in using my body to respond to the land here. I wanted to map that which directly grounds you - not a thing in the distance or an overview.

The pile of pages are on the dining table - they are crumpled and faintly moss-stained. I leaf through them and describe the place they were rubbed; these pages were rubbed between my back, arms and hips, and the rocks or tree roots marking the edge of the Cow House Studios property. The front and back of the page - but there is no front or back, it's a meeting place.

I say, I don't even really know what all the body parts are called.
I say, I want to write something from the perspective of each of these points, where the 'you' and the 'I' are ambiguous, unfixed, mutable.

I refer to the cartographer, Barry's, demonstration of mapping and projection - the grapefruit and the flat page - that these rubbings are flat projections of 3D forms that are accurate indexes. A document, but not a representation; the thing itself.

I show you photos of the tree roots and rocks and refer to a youtube tutorial: 'how to insert a clip in the middle of the timeline' - someone asks if inserting something will move everything else around it?

Then we go outside, I take you to the trees and rocks where I did the massage and point to the place where I did tai chi.
I say they're related - like flip sides of the coin. Both are 'maps' of navigation, orientation, rather than property. I refer to Barry's discussing of mapping in Ireland as being always about identifying property - the bird's eye view. The rock-tree massage is 'functional' but not utilitarian in the same sense: it's a function of healing and possibly erotic stimulation. These are a slippery intersection. [When did they become separate?] With these two 'maps' - the massage one is an internal navigation, of figuring out where in the body will trigger/relax/connect to another point, and to the point of the rock/tree surface. Surfaces and masses connecting. And feet in ground - rooted in triangulation.