hitting the ground crawling

The sun beats down; beats her behind her neck, the small of her back, the back of her knees. Finally beats her down to the hot sand where she falls, face-down, offering the blistered soles of her feet to a small group of curious seagulls. Something green and sticky, like strands of chlorophyll, swirl behind her eyelids. Bitter spit pools in her mouth before the green turns to black.

Detail of a sunspot

Galileo, Thomas Heriot, and David Fabricius first observed sunspots with a telescope in 1610 | All About Sunspots – One Minute Astronomer.

(Another dream fragment: One hundred islands spread out from the shoreline into the grey, distant horizon. To her sleeping mind, they seem to be specifically designed to meditate on. She feels excited to tell her Buddhist friend Erika about them. Initially she finds it easy to hop from one to the other, barely pausing to breathe. Soon they are further apart, and the water separating them becomes ever deeper. Unable to reach the last cluster, where she needs to be, she starts treading water.

The Rock Islands of Palau

Ancient Small Humans’ Bones Found on Island

“Paleoanthropologist Lee Berger discovered thousands of bones of small humans in a pair of wave-washed caves while kayaking among the Rock Islands of Palau.”

Waking up, she remembers how her dream from the previous night ended. The blister-hot sun and bitter taste in her mouth. She was walking on Muizenberg beach which was transformed into a nightmarish scene with oil-slicked black sand. Men and women and children, all wearing yellow anoraks, rushed back and forth between the shoreline and a row of large trucks. The beach was strewn with debris of every description: broken cupboards, chests, kelp entangled rags, toasters, chairs. A pink hula hoop.

She was clutching a large handbag against her stomach. It was filled with soil; dark and fragrant. A few seedlings have sprouted here and there. A drunk man passed her, begging.

She ignored him and kept on walking, away from the disaster.

Now staring up at a corner of the ceiling where a spider is spinning a silver double helix. She imagines stroking its grey, pulsing abdomen with her forefinger. She wishes spiders weren’t so soft-bodied; so difficult to pick up and hold.

“The genus Argiope includes rather large and spectacular spiders that often have a strikingly coloured abdomen. These spiders are distributed throughout the world. Most countries in tropical or temperate climates host one or more species that are similar in appearance. The etymology of the name is from a Greek name meaning “silver-faced.”

Argiope (spider) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

present tense

I’m learning a new visual language; a new way to express my thoughts and feelings. Also a new post-literate language to write in. Fragmented sentences thread my days in the studio. A bit like a broken spiderweb, the sticky strands stick to my mind as I scribble them down. Don’t look for meaning here, the marks seem to say.

The sentences I hear are short and cryptic: How afraid we were. How hard I cried. It is cold. Something mysterious is going on. The parcel arrives.

Don’t look for meaning here.

Mostly my thoughts leak through my pen as asemic writing. Pages of scribbled pattern. I try to capture it in my stitchings; the reverse side of words; of images. Where often, the real meaning lies.

untitled | willemien de villiers

untitled | willemien de villiers

untitled | willemien de villiers

untitled | willemiendevilliers

More soon. Who knows where this will lead?

In the meantime, happy creating!