Silvias Find a New Moon
2019
Los Angeles Municipal Gallery
Los Angeles, California


Eve and the two Sylvias


Flying fish are ray-finned fish with highly modified pectoral fins. Their chest plates are created by the need to protect themselves and their community. The feeding aparati protruding from the winged rays allow them the ability to launch into air while nursing each other young and old providing a necessary defense.

It is thought that flying fish evolved their mechanisms for flight to escape from their many oceanic predators. Young flying fish may have filaments protruding from their lower jaws that camouflage them as plant blossoms. Some flying fish also have wing-like pelvic fins that help them to glide faster.  These labial appendages flutter from their watery lubricant into the air adding extra propulsion into beyondness of freedom. These species are called four-winged flying fish.

The body is the site of trauma.
The body is the site of trauma.
The body is the site of trauma.
The body is the site of trauma.

I repeat this until it settles in.  Until you can hear it. Until you hear me. Until I hear it. Until I allow it to be heard in me. Until I feel it.

This journey goes through the pavement under the dirt. I mold objects with that dirt and fire them to use. We all have been and are sipping from those bowls.

The degree I’ve been an accomplice to power, with positive thinking, chastised and feared by friends for not joining “The Secret” hoping I’d get some juice. Some gain. Some traction. If I didn’t it was my fault.


Health:

I injected what was called pharma high grade medicine into my body for almost 10 years. Not 1980s lower eastside NYC style needles. Nothing that offered me an escape or altered state or relief from pain. It actually caused pain, a physical wound as a marker of my inner suffering. But it quieted my rage at having a body not working the way I want or need. I made money for that Pharma company and I was complying.

In 2002 during a really intense installation of an artwork that spelled out the word TERROR, I got debilitating symptoms of multiple sclerosis. My eyes saw everything in double vision. I could barely walk without bumping into walls tripping over the floor from crazy vertigo and with a left foot that dragged itself in unlinear directions. Get out of the way. My left hand and arm was numb. I was terrified and had no health insurance.

Flying fish can make powerful, self-propelled leaps out of water into air, where their long, wing-like fins enable gliding flight for considerable distances above the water's surface. Ancient Greek name ἐξώκοιτος. This means literally "sleeping outside", from ἔξω "outside" and κοῖτος "bed", "resting place", koitos I thought meant sex. So named as flying fish were believed to leave the water to sleep on the shore. This versatility to pass was a helpful defense mechanism as was stated above and made them extra vulnerable at the same time. And so Eve slept on the Sure. It seemed to serve her. She morphed her wings and flew towards light as her energy needed. This allowed her to see many Sures. Sures that were different from the one she knew at birth. These places sparkled and gave options to grow those wings from her pelvis which felt so good. Eve always chased that feeling and felt deep down it would take her to good places.


Prison industrial complex:

In 1988 Eve was murdered after being held in an abusive relationship for 2 years, they were together for 20. He spent 2 years in prison with a prosecutor seeking the death penalty but he got off with insanity defenses and had 7 years in a forensic psychiatric hospital. There he started a romantic relationship with his nurse. He and she got married. She left that nursing job to then run an office cleaning business together in Trenton.

Freedom: we want freedom. Now what do we do with it? Let us have the room to decide. For a predator that spends its entire life in the water, the flying fish’s ability to glide is akin to being able to disappear. Silvia  couldn’t believe the power her magical forces could provide.

In 2016 Eve’s son was arrested for repeated conviction of a drug offence. He spent 1 years and half in prison. He got beaten up by prison guards and his face is permanently altered into a different shape because of scaring and systemic refusal of medical treatment.  He has a personal injury attorney and they are seeking financial damages of 100,000 for his pains. A first offer by the corrections company was for 10,000, which they declined. They are going to higher courts and likely before trial will settle in the 50-75,000$ range.


Education:

Eve married Michael and decided she wanted to go to college. So after having her second baby, and first child with Michael she got her GED.  She’d drop the baby off with her mother in-law at her 12th floor senior housing apartment in Far Rockawy and drive a school bus with her 7 year old daughter Tracy and drop her off at school. Tracy is Eve’s daughter from another relationship. He is noted only by his face cut out of a wedding photo.

It is explained that Sylvias have an especially have a hard time surviving until they can reproduce, resulting in them having a lower fitness. Along with relationship difficulties, abiotic factors also play a part. These non living chemical and physical characteristics of the environment are tough on delicate bodies and highly sensitive constitutions. Harsh ocean currents make it extremely difficult for small fish to survive in this habitat. Difficult environmental factors in the flying fish's habitat have led to the evolution of these modified fins with extra length, fanlike bone structure, collapseable membrane between said bones and sensitized tips. As a result, Sylvias have undergone natural selection in which species gain unique traits to better adapt to their environments. By becoming airborne, flying fish evade their predators and environment when its harsh and form their own systems  of internal energy generation and emanation.  

We knew he was Jewish and Eve converted to Judaism to marry. Grandma Jenny and Titi Gladys did not approve but she was pregnant at 17, what were they to do? She loved saying she was a nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn, but she was born and raised in Spanish Harlem. Tracy never pressed for more information about her Dad which I didn’t understand at the time but only now realize whom am I to know what is best for my sister, it is her prerogative. Not mine.

I loved riding that bus with her. She was beautiful with her curls coming out of her multi-color patterned scarf on her head. Wrapped tightly starting with the front, she’d pull the reds, browns and oranges and shock of magenta shapes swirling it around her head and would tighten then bring it back to the neck, twist the fabric and then back to the front again twist again lots and then tie it off in a knot at the top above her third eye when she felt fancy, or in the back when she didn’t or there were rollers in her hai.

Eventually she enrolled in Queens College where she took classes in urbanism and Puerto Rican studies. She grew her curls out natural into a beautiful round Afro. Michael got a perm.

Sylvias live in all of the oceans, particularly in tropical and warm subtropical waters.

Their apartment on Maple Avenue in Flushing had orange wall to wall three inch high pile shag rug. There were no shoes allowed and no furniture. There were lamps made from #10 sized cans lamps with circular patterns punctured through the tin hanging low. Real low.

Someone they knew got a bunch of them from Mexico and was selling them. When company came over me, Tracy and Barbara Anne combed the rug for her, laying the fibers in directions we liked. We ignored the grit in the rug. The wide toothed lime green rake smoothed the twisted fibers out in orderly patterns, to look pretty. When the guests came we were asked to spread out the masonite squares on the floor so that people could put their drinks down.

With a flip of her wings she glided with grace across the surface of the water towards a sure. This one was exciting and her own. It had walls for easier protection. Sylvia suggests that difficult environmental factors in the flying fish's habitat have led to the evolution of modified fins. As a result, flying fish have undergone natural selection in which species gain unique traits to better adapt to their environments. By becoming airborne, flying fish evade their predators and environment. This increase of speed and maneuverability is a direct advantage to flying fish, and has given them leverage when compared to other species in their environment.

Research has shown that the flying fish has undergone morphological changes throughout its history, the first of which is fully broadened neural arches. Neural arches act as insertion sites for muscles, connective tissues, and ligaments in a fish’s skeleton. Fully broadened neural arches act as more stable and sturdier sites for these connections, creating a strong link between the vertebral column and cranium.

I was once told that I always was on the hustle; that it was in my blood. I have nothing, truly nothing on Eve.

It is the blood of margins. It is in the blood of making something out of nothing. Of spinning the moment’s story, how it played.

Eve and Michael bought a house on 159th street. A mint green Dutch Colonial. It was shaped like a windmill should be attached to it with the Main Street train line rumbling under and beside us. The basement and the attic were converted into apartments. The 2nd floor was where her mother , Jenny Ortiz lived after Freddy left her. Freddy was not Eve’s father. Grandma Jenny worked at one of the concession stores at Laguardia Airport. We all lived in the back of the house. Sunday mornings Eve would give us a list of items to pick up at the local shop a bunch of blocks away. Bagels, bialys, cream cheese, lox, orange juice and the New York Times. Walking by ourselves we’d divvy up the goods since it was heavy for one of us 6,7 & 8 yr olds to carry all those blocks. She would smile widely, giggle with us seductively, pointing out how cosmopolitan we were, how delicious it was going to be, “throw in some Entemanns chocolate dipped donuts or pecan coffee ring if you want”. Scared walking down the street by ourselves afraid to make lose the cash in our hand, afraid to make a mistake in te store, it became normal to carry.

When the day the food stamps came in, Eve presented it like we won a grocery store sweep where you rush around and grab as much food as you can and put it in the cart at one time. I actually thought they won that sweep. I think she told us that actually. It was a benefit, we were flush, we were doing great. Going food shopping, buying the milk, eggs, and cereal. Lots of cereal. We always were golden and went upstairs to eat with grandma if we were low on hot food if it was decadent lox or cheerios. We lived on a pendulum and she made it grand to do so.

Eve now spotted a particular gold light and swam towards it. This one had an extra special glint that soothed and promised rest and care. These whispered sweet promises touched with comfort every red root and core in her spine and cranial tendons. These whispers spread throughout her fan structure and begat her all four wings. These whispers made the pelvis throb and the fourth wings grew longer and more ruffley with a strong sinewy pulse. Both the dolfinfish and shark told her of the Sures that this time were guaranteeable and would allay every fear and heal every punch and jab. This golden salve would protect her from all predators forever and she would belong. It offered her a secure reef to attach the eggs, the growing ones , the tired ones, limping ones and older ones. Attaching and banking on this she took flapped fast almost 35 miles per hour, steered her rudder close and jumped. Eve buttoned her peter pan color up, tied it off with a ribbon she joined Michael with his bow tie and off they leapt into the canoe.

Eve rescued a historic 200 year old German Bank Barn on Farm Cottage Road in Peapack, Gladstone New Jersey from demolition and began the  renovation with two ponies and a yard and it was never quite finished .

And then came some shaking, and bulging underfoot through the ground. The black and brown earth bubbled. The percolation was thick and creamy like sweetened café con leche. The Nata was cast off like an irritating net stuck on the back of your spoon and the gush forward began. It snapped the bank barn into 3 pieces, Farm Cottage Road zig zagged into two and the ponies ran far. The wetness rose up and formed a huge arc of brown and blue and it lunged forward with a soothing roar. Splashes of wetness fluttered everywhere whistling spits with flicking tails and whispering fits of batting wings in surround sound as hundreds of thousands of Eves, Sylvias and Silvias skimmed tree tops on their way.