Written in response to the topographical images in Andrea Guskin’s “Fracture Zones” exhibit that features large scars deep beneath the surface of the Atlantic Ocean forming fracture zones. To create these images, the artist crunches, pushes, and smooths metal and then mends the fractures with threads.
How peaceful they look in their wooden frames—
our earth stories
written in folds—long, raw seams where
the crust split open, where
the earth tore itself to make
something new.
Eons of cracking open and settling again
for yet one more upheaval,
another strange, relentless explosion
into being.
How humbling to know that such accidents
and flukes, valleys ripped apart,
such molten heavings—
all that beautiful violence
of change
had to be exactly what it was
to get us here.
These are not scars. These are records
of becoming.
They are birthmarks.
And this also is the story of the soul
when grief and love crack us open.
Then too the earth tilts and
the heart splits along a fault,
everything warm spilling out.
We too are stitched from rupture,
shaped by cracking and settling
for yet one more confusing explosion
into rebirth,
carried along on waves of chaos and
accidental grace.
We too carry golden threads
that bind
our broken places.
And that is our inheritance.
The fractures we live through,
the messy, glorious breakage that
make and remake us.
Our ground always moving
in its deliriums.
Because nothing is ever
finished.
