Scrapes, scratches, cries.

Not far from the art barn, a wire angel has been hanging for days, suspended between two trees. The first two times I saw her, I didn't have my camera. This afternoon I went back and looked at her some more. It's a startling piece, vaguely sinister but also startlingly lovely, angry, forbidding, helpless. Harsh. She's an angel who would grate rather than gentle. She's cold and removed but also so fully human a figure. She's alighting or removing herself--one hand reaches to clutch; the other withdraws, falls away.


One foot is out for landing or for pushing off. The other curls behind, pointless for the time being.


It's the hair that hits me hardest, that somehow says to me: this is a vulnerability. This is how we are now, how we do now. This is what it will be like when we pay.

Not even I know fully what I mean.