North of Nothing

Abstract

North of Nothing was sown in a psychiatry hospital unit as scribbles/seeds in a notebook, germinated into cotton, spun into fibers, woven into poetry, and finally sewn into a quilt. It is an exploration of and a meditation on a depressed mind. Starscapes and cellscapes stretch up through silt and grey matter revealing repressed traumas that, once met at the surface, can be transformed from hopelessness to stillness. It is the reluctant admittance of pain — the end of a suffering. The I within is at once me and not me, a composite of multiple selves in one life, selves of past lives, selves formed from calling on the mad and mystic women before me, inviting their possession in. It is text and textile existing on thresholds —past/present, host/ghost, science/magic, Hypnos/Thanatos, comforter/shroud . . .