Lori D - Hither & Yon
Sept 7, 2007 - Sept 29, 2007
At The Narrows Gallery
Melbourne, Australia

"In this instance, the medium is the motorbike.

Armed against fatal impact only with a 40 year old visorless helmet, at a respectable rate of 70 miles per hour, 9 sets of squinting exposed human eyeballs take on the machine gun fire of autumn wind and rain. If I could feel it through the numbness, I would brag about the exclusive dryness of my hands, safely housed by my only 'waterproof gear', a pair of pink rubber dishwashing gloves. Fuel on reserve, backfiring up a steep mountain pass in total darkness looking for a place to sleep. Rusty old headlights flickering in and out of service, failing coil, stuck throttle, oil leaks, clogged jets, toothless sprockets, bad points, sloppy chains, to name just a few of our combined attributes.

It's late by the time we roll into the next town. Our trusty outrider/charm fountain sets out to find us a proximal host. While we await the night's nest to reveal itself: jump roping happens, cookie slaying happens, goonies soundtrack dancing in front of the auto parts store happens. Outrider rambles back. He gestures 'Let's go'. We follow to a dark yard behind a convenience store. Tonight's benefactor approaches. The women among us creep around in the shadows behind his rotting fishing boat on blocks trying to avoid being detected as female. ""Live girls?" he shouts in our direction. "Ladies! Welcome to Port Orford, the tit of Oregon. Make yourselves comfortable. You can use the shower in the house if you want to pretty yourselves up.". Of course, we didn't want to "pretty ourselves up", and we still don't to this day.

I am grateful for this man and the dirt he can provide us with to rest for the night. I am relieved to be here with my dearest friends sleeping in between a smoldering trash barrel & a smelly old fishing boat, while others, in this same moment are suffering the unfortunate fate of being embalmed gradually by white plaster tan stucko & beige carpet. I give thanks standing in a grocery store with numb hands thrust devotedly under the heat lamp at a fried chicken cart. I grin about the success of my vacation. I grin with a lustre just as potent as the guy sipping margaritas on the beach.

For whatever reason, we do not have the money, we cannot afford an earthly quadrant of our own. We have, so far, chosen not to donate the labor of our hands and minds towards that conquest. We are still hungry for the world. We subsist on the consumption of interactions with people, places, and things we have no mastery over. Yielding to the harvest of each day on the road, we hail the admission that we do not know what will happen to us next. It is hard to tell whether our little resistence is merely a product of our lack, or an emblem of our wherewithall."

- Lori D