I’ve been thinking a lot about play and playfulness here in my residency.

My third day in residence at Djerassi, I join fellow residents Wei and Daiane in their Tai Chi practice. I have only previously tried Tai Chi once, for twenty minutes, when it was part of an employee wellness demonstration years ago. Here on the mountaintop, I decide to try it as a form of exercise. I can’t do my customary lap swims here. I imagine it will be something like yoga. Good for my body, but also meditative.

Waking to strong offshore breezes, I created a new photographic work, mindful of Nick's observation in The Great Gatsby that "... man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation ... face to face with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder."

As a writer of a novel, experiencing the first week of the Djerassi Resident Artists Program has been both distracting and provocative.

Even the gophers struggle

Tunnelling in dense caked dirt.

Fissures grow deeper

Widening the space between the plaques of dry brittle grass 

The matter straining, stiffening,

As each molecule of water evaporates.

Paralysis holds the nutrients in place, 

Greedily restraining what tries to grow.

Dig, plant, nourish,

Listen, prune then flourish. 

Remember. 

We need some flux 

For anything to thrive.