Recipe for rust ink
It's earth's surest colour.
I have always wanted to run like an ostrich. When I was a child, I thought I could. The trick was to run watching my own feet, until the paved stones of a housing complex in Nairobi, Kenya, began to blur. The ostrich is earth’s largest bird, our fastest bird, and can kill a lion with one kick. I didn’t think about that part where the ostrich hides her head in the sand to escape danger.
Red is the first colour a baby sees. The hiccup of our unsteady earth.
These days I keep the bone of happiness trapped between my paws, lick it until I see my own reflection. I burrow deeper into the memory of sunshine. Alexander Chee never thought of killing a thing until he planted roses and the beetles came for them. I’m still at the part of the story where I plant roses. One day they’ll bloom, bountiful. I’ll think again of beetles. Every country I’ve lived in has been coming apart at the seams, my whole life. And yet every day in every country someone does something good. I’ve seen it. Happiness boils alongside the beans, a single hot pepper.
Here’s what making paint has taught me: because a star’s last breath is iron, rust is a sure colour. Red is the first colour a baby sees. The hiccup of our unsteady earth. Cassandra is prophesying the future and we cannot hear the sound of buried wheatgrass germinating. The cartwheel of a dying star. The ostrich can see three and a half kilometres into the distance. Her eyelids are pressed against the warmth of the future and it is a warm orange. Her chicks pick the future’s kernels out of the sand.
One day you’ll follow her. We’ll find the future’s rusted nails and commit them to kitchen vinegar. With this ink we will paint the portrait of our last home. Everything that survives fire is already here in your smallest sigh, your littlest smile. •
If you want this little (5x7 inches) watercolour, it can be yours for $15 (just message me! or browse more art). Just know that the colours will “settle” into variations of gray and brown with time. It’s painted with foraged inks — no rust (yet) but there is dogwood fruit ink (the pale yellow) privet berry ink (purple, turning to blue when it bleeds into the dogwood) and walnut ink (for the feet and neck). The marks on the bottom are made with the wildly spiralled seeds of clematis virginiana (also known as Devil’s darning needles!). Here it is:
If you’re not done reading into the future yet, here are two more pieces that look at time slantwise:
On the road to tomorrow, baby goats sleep.
I want to enter this year with the confidence of baby goats who sleep on whatever part of the road their rope lets them reach. They want the warmth and the sun and nothing in the way. Heads on their bellies – thick, hairy, sweet – they sleep. They don’t mind the rubber wheels that thunder past them.
Maaike, the imagery of your words in this piece is absolutely stunning. "These days I keep the bone of happiness trapped between my paws, lick it until I see my own reflection. I burrow deeper into the memory of sunshine." - I loved this!!
Your pieces just keep getting richer and richer. And your art, stunning.