#weavingwaters

Today I gathered dirt and water for my “Weaving Waters” collaboration with Jessica Green from the Summit Tunnel.  The Summit Tunnel is a railway tunnel in the Santa Cruz Mountains built by Chinese laborers in the late 1800s, where more than one horrific explosion happened.  The tunnel is no longer in use, having been dynamited in 1942 by the Army Corps of Engineers.

I perch on the roots of a splintered tree, dead but so alive with moss ferns and ivy, its root tentacles reclaiming earth from concrete, patiently working dirt and clay.  The continuous pour of water, splashing hard against rock and gravel and concrete walls softened by graffiti and wet green moss blending unexpectedly, harmoniously. I wonder what possessed the owners of the South Pacific Coast Railway to want to blast a tunnel through this mountain, a mountain belching methane and pockets of gas exploding collapsing on the bodies of the Chinese laborers who once worked here, who saved each other, who worked in mud and rock and dark, whose comrades became singed flesh, whose bones were never returned to China, who bravely did work stoppages and fought for better pay, all to open up a hole in this mountain, this mountain that fought back and reclaimed the land, this land now owned by the San Jose Water Company, this land that no one visits because NO TRESPASSING signs are everywhere, tacked to mossy trees and rocks and barbed wire fences. I wonder if my car has been towed. The water splashes loud, insistent, and my jars of dirt and water sit between two waterfalls, three sticks of incense burning a gentle plume of smoke, my small gesture of remembrance. I gathered the dirt from inside the tunnel, near where it was blocked from the dynamite blast in the 40s. The ground wet yet so packed and hard; I took a stick and scratched and scratched until I could gather a little earth with my fingers. I filled the jar bit by bit as I exited the tunnel, scratching and gathering, then placing some gravel from the tunnel mouth, some dirt and leaves from the outside, the living world. Now I sit and listen to the water, waiting for the incense to burn down, alone in remembering these nameless men who fought to chisel a hole out of a mountain.

For more historical info on the Summit Tunnel, please see:

https://www.santacruztrains.com/2017/12/tunnels-summit-tunnel-2.html

https://hilltromper.com/article/horrors-summit-tunnel

Lydon, Sandy. Chinese Gold: The Chinese in the Monterey Bay Region, Capitola Book Company, second edition, 2008.

MacGregor, Bruce. The Birth of California Narrow Gauge, Stanford University Press, 2003.

Thanks to Scott Trafton for his dramaturgical research support.

Today I visited Paradise Park Masonic Lodge, formerly the site of the California Powderworks, where a sizable community of Chinese laborers lived and worked, segregated from their fellow white workers, from 1864-78 until they were fired due to pressure by local white supremacists.  I walked behind some second-growth redwood trees and clambered down a slippery steep slope underneath a covered wooden bridge to gather dirt and water for weaver Jessica Green to use in our collaboration.

January 26, 2019

I never feel comfortable here. The initial sense of suspicion, of what are you doing on our land, of being marked as outsider has infected all my experiences of this place. I perch half hidden underneath the wooden bridge built for the Powderworks in 1872, back against a concrete support. The river flows, fast and bustling over rock, below. I dipped a jar into the waters, running so clear, scrabbled with fingers and digging stick to gather rich black dirt, redwood leaves and cones, grasses, half river mulch, skeletal leaves, moss and dirt and tree root all together and becoming each other. The black dirt is inches away from river sand, light and soft and sifted like brown flour, so close yet so separate. Today, I gather only the black.

I’m delighted to be launching a new collaboration with Jessica Green at the instigation of Cara Hagan, who’s curating an interdisciplinary art exhibition called “My Place or Yours” based on a model of “artistic surrogacy” involving long-distance collaboration.

Jessica is an extraordinary weaver living in Appalachia on Cherokee land (see http://alittleweather.com/about/).  Inspired in part by this Mixing Waters project, we’ve decided that I would gather materials -- dirt, water, etc. -- from the sites in Santa Cruz where Chinese communities once lived and mail them to her.  The current plan is that she will integrate those materials, potentially as dyes or stains, into her hand-woven cloth before mailing the cloth to me to performatively animate in some way.  

Today I visited the San Lorenzo River at the site of Santa Cruz’s last Chinatown, gathered some dirt and water, and did a bit of writing. 

Friday, January 18, 2019.  

The grass is tender and lush, a specific green we only see during the rains.  January is springtime in California.  The riverbank is rain-soft, squishy muddy, heels of my boots sinking into the earth as I scoop earth into the mouth of my mason jar: layers of wet river sand, muddy dirt layered with leaves and twigs composting, river gravel.  I pick up bits of foliage, native redwood and “invasive” immigrant eucalyptus.  Today is soft, hovering between sunny and overcast, the river brown and fast, singing a quick brisk gurgle as it flows to the sea under this narrow concrete bridge that leads to what was once China Lane, the ramshackle memory of wooden houses, the lost sounds of laughter and life.