Washi — Eriko Horiki

If I were a mathematical formula I would be a chalkboard full of symbols and arrows. No. I would be many such chalkboards.

Or maybe a just a crayon writing 1+1=

With no answer. Wondering.

Perhaps as a song I would be a combining of something that resonates in thunderous bass tones with a lightness on top, and a thumping beat…There would be a chorus of punk rock. As well a clear ping ping of water on a ceramic bowl. Dancing.

Or as a meal I could be, on some days a handmade feast of carefully overlapping tastes, textures, and temperatures. Salty, and sweet, spicey and bitter. Singe your tongue in one bite, cool drink of bubbly in the next. Other days I am reheated leftovers, soaked in yesterday’s flavors. Reminding.

As a weaving I might have threads of moss, and my beloved’s hair, the purple plastic tassel from my bike when I was 9, the silk of longing, and itchy wool — (because life is many things but not comfortable.) I would be an elfish cloak that allows for air, and magically keeps out the cold. Wrapping you in love and ideas and giving you gumption to explore. Tending.

I could be a painting, with thick chunks of color and contrasts, broad shapes that say BANG! Or the tiniest daintiest filigree of small brush strokes, a blade of grass arching in a breath of wind. An ink on paper where the ink soaked through to where we meet. Reaching.

I could be a poem, like water that reflects the me that you see, and changes each time you read it. Crafted in language so open that I remain able to move and change within the words. In that case I might not make sense. Learning.

I could be a forest, a meadow, or a tide pool. A desert or a tundra. I could be a puddle of muck that is just forming into moist possibility. I could be a mushroom holding the communication between trees. Living.

In each of these I am described in a set of messages that explain and confirm one another. Messages that sing to each other. A coherence is happening.

And when we meet you will see another set of images, a woman in shoes and accessorized in the thing-ish world we live in. I will dress for the occasion of our meeting in something bought in a store that covers me in a culture of signals so you will know where to put me in your library of codes. And you will do the same. Hundreds of years of messages are flying between us. Respectable? Lovable? Worthy? Status?

But which codes have we chosen to message each other within? Which signals are obscuring the others?

Can you still feel the texture of my math? Can you breathe the ink of my wool? Can you be a blade of grass with me? Implicitly, in the waft of us, in the style of us, in the way we are… makes the weave of our communication.

Changing the code changes more than the message… these are portraits of possibility.