Cutting Fences

Prologue to “Cutting Fences” —
An Introduction in Three Parts


1) A Song

It’s wild forever
It echoes every song
It’s wild and it’s singing
With us


2) A Theology     (Isaiah 42:10)

Sing to the Lord
A new song
And His praise
From the ends of the earth
You who go down to the sea
And all that is in it


3) A Haiku

Who doesn’t go down
to the sea? And who doesn’t
become what’s in it?




Cutting Fences: Part 1 —
The Nature Preserve, Wire Cutters, the Wild is Forever

There’s a small nature preserve near here. Right now there is a construction project going on next to the nature preserve and the construction company erected a chain-link fence right through the nature preserve itself. But the fence cut across an informal path people trampled through the wilderness as a shortcut from one part of the suburb here to another. Rather than give up that path and walk around the fenced-off area, some enterprising people simply brought wire cutters and snipped the chain-links and rolled back the section of fence blocking the foot path.



Cutting Fences: Part 2 —
Karen Kilimnik, Wire Cutters, Stonehenge is Forever

“Me—I forgot the wire cutters—getting the wire cutters from the car to break into stonehenge:”
KAREN KILIMNIK, oil on canvas


A couple of years ago I drove up to the north side and visited the Museum of Contemporary Art when they had the Karen Kilimnik exhibit. I saw this painting in real life. I got to stand about two feet away from it. I was pretty excited seeing this in real life, even though I know in the contemporary fine arts world it is not unusual for “artists” to sub-contract the actual painting of their images. I don’t know if Karen Kilimnik actually painted this—I’ve never read any suggestion that she doesn’t paint her own works—but I really don’t care. I like the image, and it’s a cool title. I don’t even care if the narrative about Stonehenge and wire cutters is real autobiography or as fantasized—Kate Moss?—as the face and body of the “self-portrait.” I don’t care. I like everything about this exactly as it is regardless of how or why it came to be what it is.



Cutting Fences: Part 3 —
The Ocean as Avril Lavigne, Wire Cutters, the Ocean is Forever

I don’t know who cuts fences in real life.

Teenage girls who look like Avril Lavigne
with teenage boys who look like Kurt Cobain?

I’ve never cut a fence but I’m still here
and now and then I bump into a fence
and often, now, I find myself thinking
of cutting fences that get in my way.

I’m not a teenage boy and I don’t look
like one. And I don’t look like Kurt Cobain.

But if I ever see someone who looks
like Avril Lavigne on the other side
of a fence and she looks like she’s waiting
for me regardless of what I look like
I’ll cut that fence. It’s just technology.

Like a phone, a computer or a boat.

Boats float. But the ocean is forever.

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .


Karen Kilimnik

Miranda’s Words And Caliban’s Music

Freedom From The Wild/Lost In Metonymy