I'm the Ocean
Spring 2023
Risograph prints from digital photographs and monotype prints. Title and colophon letterpress printed. Blue vinyl cover.
"I am the Ocean. & the journey begins! SALMON. Gnomeville. The most beautiful piece of driftwood in Western Washington. THE DEEP DARK OCEAN. First we experience confusion, the signs don't seem to tell us the right thing. The first warning of danger. Wind! Wind! Wind! Post (after) -- comes hunger. And the driving begins. Downed power lines, closed road. I saw a kitty and missed a turn. I love the two-lane highway. Logging. Arrival. Transcendent wind darkness hits instantly: in the forest, angels passing right into my eyes in the night. Following footsteps and, with a crash ahead on the bridge, we enter a cloud... ...and out slowly, slowly, when we hit the water again, we are late and wait and wait. But next you get to fall in love in the salt air and arrive home and sleep and experience it all again in your dreams. Ferry. Long may you run."
On December 26, 2022, I took my first Winter drive to Rialto Beach on the Olympic Peninsula. Just days prior, there had been hazardous storms, snowfall, and flooding. Many roads were closed and others had horrible visibility due to rain. However, the journey was important to make. It was Jude's first time seeing the ocean. It was my first time returning to the peninsula in 10 years. I was following a road someone I once knew took often. On the drive back from the beach, in the late hours of a Winter night, we got stuck in deadlock traffic on the Hood Canal Bridge (the 3rd longest floating bridge in the world at 1.988km). Minutes turned to hours and we stepped outside of the foggy car and into the road only to find 2 vehicles crashed into each other head-on. After I finally dropped my friends off at their home, I went around the lake and came across the silent statue of a car perched on construction rubble. The driver was nowhere in sight.
The ocean is violent, brutal, unforgiving, and giant. To see water as peace is to not see water at all. Our lives are fueled by raging fervor.