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Victoria -
I love hearing the bird audios. I've noticed cardinals since the colder months. And, each day when I would go to walk Ramona when it was chilly, gloomy, or damp, I would notice that one or two cardinals would show their redness amidst the gray. The mood of my day would be shifted immediately. I know that they're native to Illinois, but I still see them as little blessings of color (:

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tacia, it took me a while given a busy week, not only with work but with family visits and events, which did not allow me to sit with your work for longer.
Since I saw this, I knew I wanted to read it out loud for you, as a gesture of gratitude. You make me think about my beloved maternal grandparents, Lucio Cabal and Ligia Escandon. My abuela Ligia passed last May 10th and I miss her dearly. One of the objects I always share as "structures" of my "making-of-place" is a miniature nativity she gave me. And curiously, mi abuelo Lucio, from the warmer lands in Colombia but moving to the cold capital Bogota, also kept bringing with him little plants that grew in his hometown, craving to make a little warmer Palmira (his town) within the heart of the cold mountains of Bogota.

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Cerca de tus abuelos, mis abuelos, tacia

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Alicia, I appreciated how your story about this clock interrupts a sort of functionalist logic that we tend to have with objects... Objects like these are not about what they do, but what they represent.. their talisman-like powers... Specially, if they help us to heal, remember, stay close, resist... I wonder if this is another form of functionalism that we add to the objects?

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Sad story about the blue jays!.. I would have never imagined!

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Plants do have lot of stories to tell and wisdom to impart on us humans and animals. Tacia, I enjoyed  hearing your story a couple weeks ago about how you brought your banana plant with you from Florida to Illinois. So the plant is your abuelo Raulito? It's a nice thought that he is with you through the plant. The natural world has a lot to give us, and we must take care of nature just as it takes care of us. I'm also drawn to plants and have a lot of indoor plants and outdoor plants. I'm also drawn to the sea. Sadly, while we don't have the ocean here in the middle of the country, at least we have some lakes and rivers, as you've discovered. And the skies, oh the skies! They are beautiful, so vast and awesome as the weather systems change and storm clouds roll in from the west. I love it! So, while we lack the ocean, the sky ocean is wonderful out here in the middle of the cornfields!

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this is the cardinal couple that seems to return to our yard year after year. i always wondered where they made their nest and laid their eggs.

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Listening to the blue jays reminded me of when we were young living in New Jersey and the blue jays would swoop down and peck at our cat Penny as she was just trying to walk in the backyard. They were mean! My siblings and I would try to chase them away, but the blue jays didn't care. They would keep attacking the cat. I always wondered why they were so mean while other birds were not. To this day, while I think that blue jays are majestic birds, I can't really appreciate them because of how our backyard blue jays abused poor Penny.

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Catalina, although you can't easily go home to Colombia, even more now because of Covid, it must feel good to have photos of your family and objects that remind you of your family that you can always take with you as you move from place to place and home to home. As you say, they are your anchors....anchors to who you are. They--your familia--are anchored to you wherever you are as you move through life.

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Toria, your sharing of your home and the things in your home and how they are connected to memories really resonated with me. Lately I have been thinking about how I want to purge, get rid of things because I have much more than I need or desire. But choosing what to keep and what to pass on can be difficult. There are some memories and meaning in some of our things, our stuff that gives us comfort and makes us feel. I thought about the colorful, painted animal clock that a friend gave us as a wedding gift years ago that stopped working a long time ago, despite my many attempts to get the clock working again. But that doesn't matter, because what I care about the clock, much more than that it can indicate the time, is that it's a joyful painting of animals and that it was gifted to us during a joyful time of our wedding. So, the clock is going to stay on our kitchen wall for many more years I'm sure, without ticking.

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Here is the recording of a very proud Blue Jay that I run into a few days ago

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i do find myself returning in this question to my little home that i am trying to build inside myself and trying to extend the rooms in it for others. i am trying to be green green green and let us share in the fruit of being.
on the right is my baby fig tree that i've yet to find a name for and below is my aloe vera named talavera after my other abuelo ulises fonseca talavera who passed a year ago and who was gifted to me by my abuela lleana fonseca paez a little after the funeral as an offshoot of one of her own. talavera hangs in front of my bedroom window and we say good morning to each other every day.

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while trying to feel out the new space for my own roots in this new place, i have been regularly visiting this river and was surprised by these ephemeral ponds in the woods nearby. i am missing the ocean and the canals and the lakes, but am grateful for this river too. this new sky is a lot like the ones back home-- v big and blue, and for that i am also grateful.
this past week i have been holding extra close to me this book called "how to do nothing" by jenny odell that is, quite frankly, changing my life. i haven't resonated with a text like that in years. but i bring it up because she has this point about resisting in place that i feel very much inside of as of late-- what does it mean to resist the pressures & structures of violence from where you are? how to escape without literally leaving? how to live your future now, how to not wait to be saved.
so again, i am in this space of trying to move widely like the trees do without worrying so much about my feet.

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in sitting with this invitation, i've been thinking about the spaces we occupy in & outside our bodies. the touchstones in my everyday are the plants in my apartment and the ones i go to visit in my walks. they also inhabit spaces bigger than just their physical selves-- through their pollens, their scents, their grasping roots. they look like they don't move, but they do. they don't look like they can talk to one another, but they do. so i've been taking my lessons from them and learning to figure out what it means to listen to those who've passed on and how the past is in our present.
the poem is an ode i read in bed aloud to my cat the night that my bisabuela mima serru passed away this 26/10. the background is a new leaf of my red banana plant named raulito after my abuelo raul diaz on the same side who also has passed on. i dug raulito out the backyard of my mother's house this august with my hands to bring them with me.

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I was thinking of your video on my walk yesterday, Alicia, and noticed how the birds were singing to each other and so I wanted to share the song from one of the red cardinals that I like to think of as my neighbor

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These last few weeks I've been staying with my family, as we had a recent addition to the family who I wanted to see. Even outside of this prompt, I've been thinking a lot about what it means to return to my family's home, which is where I spent a lot of my childhood despite it being my grandmother's house. I question whether this is my "space" even if there are things here that belong to me - my bed is mine, for example, and I've left books and other personal items here such as clothes and gifts rather than move everything over to my apartment. As my father prepares to buy his own house, too, I'm thinking about this sense of belonging I do / do not have with regards to my family's personal spaces, too.
I've shared this video because, for me, the altar my grandmother has always had in her house is something that feels personal despite not having been the one to construct it. These are my family members that are remembered, even if there are a few who I didn't get the chance to meet (such as my grandmother's parents); despite this connection, though, they are still "close" to me in a certain respect, regardless of immediate location or conscious thought. Literally and figuratively, these family relationships are close to me at present, even if I question my place there sometimes.
-Lili

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I also relate with finding "anchors" through objects, that I can carry with me where I move...

And I relate to walking and being outside of my house as a "place" that enables me to connect with where I have been and reflect about where I am now... which is what I shared through my story.

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Alicia, I am stunned by these amazing connections that you are drawing from the "outdoors" , what is not contained at least apparently, what has been part of your movement, as "home". Or that is my interpretation!... Also the sounds of the birds that you describe a marvelous cacophony of movement, sound and activity, makes me think of the aliveness of "being in movement"... rather than confined to a spot.

But I am also thinking about how sometimes it's easier to connect to oneself and one's history through being "nowhere".. or rather, in-between locations as a location where we live..., so our minds and affects can take us to another place where we feel more groundedness...And our bodies can remember the experience..

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Victoria, this is a moving beautiful assemblage of objects, memories, stories and movements.---Movements through your house, through your life, through the planet!

I can almost imagine you engaging with all of these objects, and a little of the back story. I also imagine the difficult choice of "curating" what to bring with you when you move...

And how does the lamp remind you of your mother?--- so powerful the affective anchors that some objects contain... or activate.

También me encanta encontrar español en tu lista. Y me pregunto si el español vive en tus objetos. e historias. de alguna forma

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The things in my home. One quadrant of a soon to be seamless screen-print.

A chair with two blankets - one that is colorful, quilted, and thrifted from an antique shop down the road from my mother's house and the other used to be my father's. Two pillows found during garage sale hunting from a lovely older woman. The chair - given to me by godmother. Hulled down here from the city on the back of a truck.

Flowers - I was engaged with.

A clock  - plastic and turquoise. I had questioned whether it worked and it does...perfectly!

A tea pot - red covered in hearts. Where I mess around with herbal teas like nettle, red raspberry, oat straw, red clover,  licorice and more - a promise for new knowledge!

String lights - a replacement for an absent ceiling light

Lamp - reminds me of me and my mother.

Frida Kahlo in skull - reminds me of Oaxaca, Mexico and the family that shared their home with us.

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Here my story of the objects  I chose to talk about my space

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Here my story of the objects  I chose to talk about my space

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INSTRUCTIONS FOR THIS WEEK'S EXPLORATION

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INSTRUCTIONS FOR THIS WEEK'S EXPLORATION

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Read these invitations.. take your time, and Enjoy!

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Prompt 2 : Where are you/What is close to us? --String Figuring

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Share a real/fictional version of “the place where you are” 

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Share a real/fictional version of “the place where you are” 

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Animation by Mary Kate Ford

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I went for a walk and tried to pay attention to as many angles around me as possible