16 Textures for a Lost Home
Writing about this work can be found here, and can be read before or after.
This project is in correspondence with Contours and 4 Samples.
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“As usual we were forced to work with freshly approximate knowledge” - from The Hundreds, by Lauren Berlant & Kathleen Stewart
116/2=58
##:SoakingPan58
Loose glue and water and red one prong out soft ending silver one prong out sharper ending. Before one stirs while one stirs with a starter conversation because the rest of the day hadn’t conceived of itself yet. After, bowls return, unfinished, cleaned and made the same tomorrow. I saw it as warming repetition, much like eating porridge.
##:FallingJackets58
Over door hanging, ten pins, two rows, the bottom row inaccessible from weight. Closing the door heavy from the jackets, which will fall. Brush of friction - fall. Pool at the bottom, sometimes two deep. Easy blame for a quick messy exit. Once I couldn’t find my bag which I knew was there. Jungle vines, dig, fall, found it.
##:ChairNoise58
The rough scrape back of a chair to free the legs and move, is a noise different to lighthouse and sailor. The meaning- desire so strong to connect that the grating of wood pushed into wood isn’t heard. The impact- notification. Look busy and then break for held conversation. Centres and peripheries in buoying motion, come here, celebrate.
##:SoapDish58
Blue glass soap dish, left of the sink, was a present. Ridged walls, the kind that make jumping a finger across feel genuinely worthwhile, the divots big enough to inspire a swell. Thick to make a full note when tapped. It got mulchy with little soap deposits, I only cleaned it once, jumped my newly soaped fingers across.
##:JumperBales58
Wool, worn in the sweatier months and harder to wash, is always perfumed. Although rooms always are of those who have beaten the air, this smell particularly would reach from the stacks, followed by the folds, as sponge pushing through grill. I could always tell when you had worn something. Folded nicely, different place, softer neck, slight scent.
##:PlantSeedlings58
Dried winter bouquet on the table, spilling itself all summer. The shavings would cling to the tablecloth, a flat palm wave or raised palm shuffle wouldn’t unsettle them. Only tape could pick up a congealed sequence like raindrop on window. They were kept all year, losing change but keeping meaning. Somehow the constant shed didn’t shrink the plant.
##:StrainedSheet58
Fabric’s erotic is the pinch. Something stretched, something unseen trying to come out, or the full weight of a body, dancing a bedsheet into itself. Like arrows pointing, like quicksand rushing, like veins drawing. No end but flesh, pressure moves, pinches, pulled like suction of a bitten lip. Pinches too in the wrinkles of the ceiling holding water.
##:BalancedFrames58
I judge people who don’t have framed things. People who aren’t able to demarcate little pieces of special from the consuming powder paste of the market optimised rental flat. We had 24, I think. To name a few: two gifts from work, assortment of makings, stained bedsheet, marking of significance, folded painting, made paper, Bowling print, children’s postcards.
##:WornEntrance58
The regular shoes at the door, looking at their dirty work. Ridges in the old dark wood flooring slow fill with black depository (not the floorboard gaps which we are only concerned with when the basement light exposes their porous). I noticed this at my last place, lighter wood, here the grain’s richness masks this kind of grit.
##:SparkingPlug58
The extension cord from the big shop would spark blue when fed the plug pin. Brief spark, blue spark, always enclosed in its cheaply bright white case (an important distinction from the other one which was yellowed but sturdier). Every time I thought of replacing it, but I paid my five pounds for the thrill. A tiny eroticism.
##:MarkedTable58
The glass table top, an extended bayed back away from the sofa. It is split into four: three ovals and a central pinch. The closest oval is marked. A dripped mouth touched residue, a mist from a cup too hot. The new stain middles the room, you can see it. Next time, I will have used a coaster.
##MouldingWalls58
The first of a few times the kitchen flooded I was napping and didn’t notice. Bottom floor flat, water flowing down the walls. Living below someone, you notice their creakes, you get their standing water. And I’d notice that the ceiling paint would patch and peel. And be sorted and patch and peel. Just more men looked, noticing.
##:PosterNoise58
Throwing duvet off, blanket slips. Her waking, turning. Door open, air traps. No sound but mine, calm. Then pierce shock run dark fear. The house is always large at night. The gaps under the doors are big and something, everything, is in. Reach the toilet, I’m faced with it, spread out. The Miffy poster has fallen off again.
##:PlacesWhereDirtWouldBuild58
Skirting board in the hallway, behind the big mirror, fold of the toilet seat, side of the dresser against outside wall, under the acrylic fray of the bed, tomato splashes on kitchen tile, crevices of drying rack, frictioned dust on the bathroom mirror, hair stuck to the bathtub, loose stuffing from the draft excluder on the door mat.
##:PlacesWhereWeWouldLive58
Racing hallways when you were back, side of your desk you looking up, at the table you on the side with the counter me on the side with the foldable edge, plugging my laptop into the TV you on the sofa with glasses Auburn jumper and food, holding just outside the kitchen door, heads touching on firm pillows.
##:MorningFace58
Quarter past nine, three lights are on. Laptop screen, white, insipid. Outdoors, grey, drab. Eyes above early stretching jaw, pudding soft. Horizons of powder yellow t-shirts loomed so large. Three steps, approaching the side of the chair, head now resting on her stomach. If people could see me then, they would have thought my fruit flies were stars.
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