This Long Lasting Ghost

Process

2021
Assemblage with cuneiform text engraved into antique cast iron, carved and treated ABS plastic, colored jojoba and holy oils and brass snake chain.
15 x 20 x 2 inches
Collection of Brian Parrett

This small piece was constructed in tandem with Solipsistic Coma during a period of emotional darkness (merely framed by the 2020-21 Covid epidemic). That side sleeper living within found it time to turn again, to squirm like Gigers alien in my solar plexus. The body Keeps the Score, a book by renowned psychoanalyst Bessel van der Kolk led me to investigate EMDR therapy and I hired my first therapist. It is, (maybe was by now) time to remove a thorn sunk deep since I was yanked from my mother at birth; sunk further with each trauma, self inflicted for the most part. There, I’ve said too much again… Cuneiform is possibly the world’s oldest text form. Maybe something this ancient can draw deeper into the well of recovery. Special thanks to Oeyvind Bjoeru for correcting my poem pieced together from on line Sumerian hieroglyphs, and to the bear for you know what.

Take hold of that fear

Abandon it, this long–lasting ghost

You know it, you came from it

Enter the gate

To call it by name to find it

I will reveal my secret to you

I will return, I will go to yonder side

I was there, I was here

Release

Pure

Sweet and beautiful release

Leave it behind

Until the bud’s day