SOIL MATES - GENNA GARDINI

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Soil Mates

By Genna Gardini

Mark Ryden, Girl Eaten by Tree, 2006.

Presented as part of a 24 Hour Summer Suburban Residency ‘at’ Sober and Lonely Institute for Contemporary Art.

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(For P)

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Introduction: Thank you for downloading this weird document!

Soil Mates is a project I presented today (the 18th December 2012) as part of my 24 Hour Summer Suburban Residency ‘at’ (more on this to follow) the Sober and Lonely Institute for Contemporary Art (SLICA).

When, earlier this year, lovely Lauren and Robyn from the institute put out a call for works that should engage in some way with their Joburg garden over December 2012, I already knew that I would be languishing in Durban during that time. So, I suggested a day-long project where I wrote a series of romantic poems between one plant in my parent’s KZN yard to one in their garden. And today I did just that.

From 9:00 – 17:00, I wrote a conversation in poems between some hydrangeas at the SLICA JHB headquarters and a mistletoe tree from Mrs and Mr Gardini’s Hillcrest home. The eight poems were composed (with no preparation and that’s my excuse for all spelling and grammatical errors!) and edited in up to an hour each before being published on the SLICA Facebook page.

I had a lot of fun writing about the love and longing between two plants separated by provinces. I hope you enjoy reading them.

Love, Genna Gardini PS. Thank you SLICA for letting me write about your plant on your Facebook page/website and thank you Mom and Dad for not asking too many questions about why I was photographing your tree.

PPS. For more information on SLICA see www.soberandlonely.org

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Soil Mates 1 (9:55 am)

Photo: Lauren van Gogh

Last night, I dreamt I lived in the house.

Not plucked pretty for a pot, or split through the vasecting valve of this vase.

Not lining the sill like so many escapes, heads threaded through the bars as if balking, as if cautioned, as if warned about attempting any sort of a break.

But my whole self.

Dirt shagging the carpet then staining the pine (which, perhaps, some might say, you have done to me), roots threading the insulation, leaves staying the curtain rod green.

Everything my bed.

And I felt the walls against even the ends of me which I do not feel – which are grown like the robot skin of each summer, stiff and certain, a bulb fixed to a pole, petrified, this petridish, this small administered sip of bought water, this shaker salting pesticide, this bag full of shit, this stemcell, got(e) out a mechanism, out the other parts nipped from me at an angle, and onto tables, snapped at the joint and laid out on a pillowcase, in welcome, in lieu as they say to you you’ll forget and you must, because I find I don’t remember many things (but I do remember you) – and I knew them. Because what are walls but fences, and what are fences but spaces made solid between us?

(Also, I’ve included a photo)

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Soil Mates 2 (10:25 am)

Photo: Genna Gardini

For someone made of such colours and frills, I admire your refusal to put things simply.

If I am tall, then this is brief. If this is plain, then I am much.

Thank you for the picture.

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Soil Mates 3 (11:57 am) Someone would carry me, trussed tight in hessian, phrased down a sentence stopped full of my heads muzzled from the top of each repurposed jam jar, those many throats ribboned, necks floating and craning as others, still rooted, do the same, stalked out to see how, fixed to the front, I just pull the whole thing together. I am a different shade from the material of her material, which is not made of me but is related to me, which is its own story of being pulped and pressed, plaited inside of itself until the pieces are a thing I said to you in private, once, re-explained for this Big Day, and which my many pipes can no longer shout, my points come new through the crotch of her scissors, could probably never talk about.

I’m moved to her sister, who holds me like a baton then passes me on, (and this time, when gripped, I notice there’s a catch, gold and gaping, into which I could slide and perhaps try to snatch something back. But I don’t have any thorns), then I’m left on the table, then returned, then made hurtling through the bunting, bunching into a fist who pricks single as a one-stemmed bush, who doesn’t know how to make more, who plans to chuck me into the bin closest to their door.

So, you see, commitment’s never really worked for me, before.

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Soil Mates 4 (12:25) I do not have thorns, either.

But I have branches that grow their own branches, that then grow more branches, and so on.

They don’t aim to a side or the ground, like you might expect.

They move up. They leave space.

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Soil Mates 5 (14:01) This is a thing I can recall.

I can recall being small, being something which could contain itself (and this not a talent I have kept), which shelled and closed, which was a riddle only the sun and the loam could decode, which held from grooves, pushed back fingers, and taken in gave no give until I did. Until I shot out myself as myself. I should have hid.

When I was one thing, I was also a series, a clutch of intentions, shaking in the packet, made into many, to bough under collection, faced out and full, a new set of plates leaning from the shelf, asking you take. I learnt to fork from that start which moved through me like a spine, bending.

Now all I am I shed. No matter how quick I cluster, how fast I shrink to land back in, I fall off.

This is maybe the price of growing, to fell. The cost of company, to cast.

The reward for blooming, to drop.

But when I was one thing, before I was moved, what I can recall, what I want to say, is that I was under you.

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Soil Mates 6 (14:21pm) We are the same amount of different as we are far apart.

But when I consider how I was nothing and then something, I start to think that that is how you began, too, and in a way, this makes me closer to you.

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Soil Mates 7 (16:27)

Photo: Lauren van Gogh

I like the way that you address me the best of all the things I like and perhaps while I take such pains to explain how I don’t, in fact, care for anything else, I forget that, really, mostly I do. And I suspect that, perhaps, you knew this already, and liked this already, because you seem to know and like me.

By which I mean, that writing to you has made me realise that my poems leave out the part which is this: which is how the sky moved as if hoed, as if turned over, as if there was a god and god was a field and this was one ear amongst the many, turned to hear, turned to listen while the sun patted me down like I was plant of the year, and the rain salved the top of me smooth, and the air ruffled my leaves for a laugh, and each day I met I widened and grew myself through, because I wanted to say, back , that it was always enough.

And this is the thing that’s the only thing and this is the thing that is you.

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Soil Mates 8 (17:10)

Photo: Genna Gardini

When we speak about how we are separated, we speak about our branches and our flowers and our fruit.

These are measures that can only move down the length of their use, which is nowhere near me and nowhere near you.

But we have yet to discuss our roots.