Leave Fall

Coming upon a huge pile of red autumn leaves in the neglected indigenous medicine garden at Kule Loklo—a restored Miwok village in Pt. Reyes National Seashore—and an idle rake, I chose to put my labor to use: raking the leaves into serpentine piles that resembled the red clay frescoes of KulKulKan, the cosmic serpent at Teotihuacan, north of Mexico City, then on display at the De Young.

My intention was to labor to help restore the medicine garden, but with a temporary, Goldsworthy-like twist, imagining that the Miwok villages, like the over 400 Ohlone shell mounds that once occupied the Bay Area--as do the vast structures at Teotihuacan. Might our own California cultures monoliths and mounds have been more like Goldsworthy? Meant to be in tune with the earth and decay and not stand apart from it as in with the Mexican pyramids?

Additionally, I created a series of Billy Collins-like plain-spoken poems to accompany the experience of Leaf Fall (of raking, and decay) including One Thing My Father Taught.