A Journal of Thank You. 2019.

Your contribution to Residency on the Farm makes art.

To say thank you and to show off our residents, here is a journal of art. These are pieces artists made specifically to share with you, our donor collaborators.

If you want to find out more about the artists, take a look at the Those Who Are Alumni page.

Meanwhile, enjoy!

Who’s Who and What’s What in the Journal of Thank You:

Emmy Bean, Song
Matthew Hayes, Digital Generative Art
Andrew S. Nicholson, Poetry
Jay Pike, Viola
Jennifer Roberts, Photography and Monologue
Sarah Roots, Essay

Ritual to Find the Name of Your Next Lover

Augur the ants.
In the heat, they form black letters.
What you read in the swarm
comes hazy, language
before tongue.
Ants in heat thicken to thunder.

Augur your memory.
In the heat, your eyes closed to rain.
You heard showers pounce on fronds.
Another’s lips—the kiss came elsewhere.
Moments like this one, you are the beyond.
A silhouette crosses from past the horizon.

Scavenging for heat like a sugar-thirst,
you are animal after all.
Praise desire.
Praise every sweet want.
Close your eyes.
When you press the lids, phosphors
will lust to list the future rollcall.
They are your names, and you are alive.
Your colony numbers in thousands.

Ritual to Transcend

Slip into the landscape.
Be the unseen hand
cranking cogs into motion.
Insect is the clearest clockwork.
See the beetle, how it first ratchets
the hard casing back and then unfurls wingspan.
Breeze ticktocks. You are the dart into air.

Rye blade in your palm
holds the shape of a mainspring.
You suspected all along.
As a child, you traced oak bark
for seams. Face down in dew grass,
the field felt like a curtain.
You could part rhizomes, press on, and pass.

Not a god, nothing so violet—
but maybe the scene has daimon’s green tones.
Window ajar, you hear rain
on red slate below.
Night sky wheels. Vault turns adazzle.
Someone pedals the instrument.
Above spins the glass harmonium’s swell.

Spring Birds

Spring birding in Chicago begins, of course, as winter birding. March 21 will come, but it will not bring the spring that exists in your fuzzy memories and longing dreams. The cold weather ducks will still be dabbling and diving in Lake Michigan, and the trees will still be bare. You’ll probably need long underwear, wool socks and thick mittens, and there’s a good chance you’ll be grumbling about it.

When spring truly arrives, in April and May, be prepared for the slightly manic quality of it all. Bright Yellow Warblers will flit around the budding trees, and bizarre little Ovenbirds will creep around with their jerky gait and orange crowns. As abundant as the birds are, you will probably be more aware of the abundance of birders. You might see birders out for 11 hour stretches, unable to tear themselves away from the cornucopia of species, or view a cranky birder yelling at an enthusiastic 12 year old for climbing a tree. Winter was long and spring is fleeting.

The frenzy excites, energizes, but it can also feel a bit . . . much. This mirrors Chicago as a whole, people emerging from their hibernation to exuberantly fill the Lake Shore path. You’re always reminded in April of your old boss, the one from your first year living in Chicago, who told you that most suicides happen at the beginning of spring; people don’t mind being depressed so much in the winter, but when it sticks around to spring it’s too much to bear.

It can be disorienting to look up one day and realize the magical stillness of winter is gone; you are no longer the only one out by the lake, and the default setting is no longer quiet. There’s magic in the spring too, of course, and it’s in your face whether you like it or not: fertility, migration, new life, new feathers, all mixed up with the pollen in the air around you.

First you notice the warblers: the Blackburnian Warbler, appearing like a flame in the branches above your head, and the serious looking, yet hard to take seriously, Wilson’s Warbler tilting his tiny black cap to you in the woods. And then you’ll get into the funky stuff, and spend an April evening traipsing through a marsh with a group of people intent on viewing the Timberdoodle, the species with the most delightful of all bird names with the most delightful of all bird dances: the sky dance. At dusk, the male Timberdoodle gives off a nasal buzzing sound and then rises and twirls in the air, his feathers creating a lovely whistle. When he lands, he’ll again sound off his hopeful calls. For a chance to view this bizarre display, your group is willing to slog through wetlands as the light and temperature drop.

Your group of ten will amble around the marsh, catching glimpses of swooping Eastern Meadowlarks and a far off Northern Harrier scanning for prey. An intense debate will break out over whether you’re all looking at the head of a Bald Eagle or a plastic bag in a distant tree. As the light dims, you’ll begin to stop periodically to play a recording of the Timberdoodle’s call, hoping it will fool one into responding.

You’ll all make your way to the edge of a grasslands area where, behind your backs, still bare branches rise into the blue black sky like bronchioles spreading into a lung. You fan out into a line and start walking slowly into the grasslands, no one talking now, all listening as intensely as you can. Someone plays a few more recordings, and then you wait.

You’ll hear it: the buzzy PEENTS and the sound of its feathers twirling in the cool April air. It sounds tantalizingly close, but the light has completely faded by this point and the night will not yield a single glimpse of the elusive Timberdoodle and its fancy dance. But just knowing that this bird exists and that you’re close, close to the bird and close to people all marveling together at the weird and the wonderful, that is enough.