Coming and Going
Film still from Covenant. 2014.
The pheasant cock is strutting and croaking outside my window, searching for his dappled hen in the high reedy rushes; a thin but stationary mist hangs on the hills; and inside, I am drying the intricate, veined skin of a ewe’s afterbirth, spread out in front of the stove on the floor. Yesterday, it spilled from a ewe after her lamb emerged. Fragile and strong, tensile and responsive, its network of dense fleshy blood-pots and intricate branching veins tells the story of its exquisite attunement to the sifting and sieving, channeling and exchange of continually-circulating life force.
Filled with gratitude for the deep and steady contact with both the matter and spirit of life and death, I begin to take my leave. Today is packing up; tomorrow I head to London for a week of research into practice-based PhD programs which will support my filmmaking and research on multiple levels. Return, return, return, return.