Projects and Publications

A Miscellaneous Sampling of other Work/projects

SHEEP SHEARING

“Lamb,” someone called. In a flash a small gate in the shoot was swung open, the lamb bolted through into the waiting pen, and the gate was closed. The lamb bounded around the pen, feeling free in enough space to run and jump. It wasn’t actually free, and it hadn’t escaped the discomfort of a shearing. The inevitable was just prolonged. The lambs or yearlings were culled from the ewes because their wool wasn’t as long or as fine, and the longer and finer the wool, the better the price. This was just a simple way of keeping the wool separate.

WATER NEEDS

Branch Cox took the microphone and told the crowd that there were government subsidies for the farmers that would need it. Awkwardness pervaded the Fairview Elementary school gym, an awkwardness that was spawned out of principle and reality. You see this gym was full of farmers and shareholders of the Cottonwood-Gooseberry Irrigation Company. The majority of which were adamant republicans, conservative to the core of their beings. Taking handouts from the government was against what they preached, but the reality was that without the subsidies there was no living. They wouldn't make it this year. Not with the water being so low.

It had been a bad winter. Bad, not in the way most people refer to a bad winter: with snowstorms galore, and foot after foot of snow. This was a really bad winter, almost no snow, no rain, no water; and in Utah, for farmers that was bad. The farmers in the school gym would be lucky to get one full crop this summer when usually they could get 3 crops.

WAVES OF FEAR

I had been playing a game of cat and mouse: sneaking towards the water line, then sprinting up the beach before the wall of water could reach me. Then the cat caught me. I’ll never forget the way I clawed at the sand, trying to grab hold of anything, being relentlessly sucked by the vacuum of water, crying out for help, and then the water was gone, and I ran up the beach past the waterline.

SCRATCHING AN ITCH

I sit in the shower and crank the hot water. I stick one leg in, then the other. The water is scalding. It burns. It burns like an itch, but it is real and tangible and more unbearable than an itch. It burns, but it feels good. It burns so bad that I get a queasy feeling in my stomach, and my body starts shaking. I can’t leave my legs in for long, but every second counts. Every second makes the relief that much better. This sounds sick, I know, and it is, but when I’ve tried not to scratch all day long, this is one of the few things that brings relief. Burn it off, I think. Burn it off.

PERSPECTIVE

Everyone experiences life differently. There is no such thing as a shared experience. Everyone witnesses and experiences events from their own perspective: their personal history, their understanding, their point of view. I took videos of my family and tried to duplicate the essence of each video through language, and according to my perspective.f

Gerrymandering

I looked away for only a moment.

When I turned back you were gerrymandering

your brother’s face with a PlayMobile.

BEDTIME STORY

Flashlight bright, lighting the ceilings and walls,

“Lie down. Lie down. Don’t worry about your twisted

Nightgown.” It never took me so long to fall asleep.

All right, then, here we go: “Long enough ago that I was just six years old my family had a dog named Rhombus.