Charging

Abstract

This is a homemade ceremony and an attempt to understand what home is made of. The present is only here with the past. Each street in Seattle has its own history. The Duwamish River tells the story of settlement in its straightened curves. In this city, there are no individuals. Only complex entanglements, beneath the surface, of life, lineage, and history. Perspective is shaped by experience. Each perspective has its limits of understanding. Charging is an attempt to look deeply into what has been assumed or taken for granted. A process of inviting this city's streets, strangers, trees, rivers, and plants into the body and then onto the page. Weaving together family, city, land, and water it becomes apparent that home is built as much by what we do not know as what we do. These poems and prose explore the tensions between urban and natural space, between concrete and water, and between personal and communal.