4 July 2020
Dearest Fazal,
Thank you for the exquisite, unexpected gift of “30 Moons” that has traveled across the distances from Switzerland to America, from Zurich to Castle Valley, Utah. It took me several days to find the clarity of mind to open the mysterious slipcase made from a photograph: a shroud, a scrim, a veil. I held it in my hands like a family album, yours, not knowing what I would find inside. Through the gauze-clothed cover I detect framed pictures, snapshots placed on shelves with all manner of hidden objects. I see a bejeweled mask with eyes watching me like your eyes unblinking. The embroidered flowers on the delicate draped fabric create a deceptive foreground, a tease that the contents inside will be a soft unfolding. But I know better, having spent the last three years with you in collaboration, an artist and a writer, traveling and attempting to translate the arresting landscape of Bears Ears National Monument with the community of Native People who surround Bears Ears and live in this dry, erosional beauty.
I turn the slipcase over and find the seam exactly where these thin curtains open or close depending on one’s intent—clues are now offered. I have no choice but to enter in—and as I do, I am met by a girl with her eyes wide open. She is looking past me, past you to a place of light that is shining through her. If the future is holding her gaze may it be gentle and kind, but given where we are now in a global pandemic in the throes of the climate crisis, I know this is magical thinking. Children such as this beautiful brown girl wearing a carefully constructed sweater with a striped hood framing her face deserve a cloak of hope. One shiny silver button that keeps her sweater closed tells me she has a mother or father who cares as we had, dear Fazal.
Her mouth turns downward, her upper lip dark with a line of light shining on what is known as the angel’s bow. Two small circles appear on her lower lip like drops of dew. Her nose is round, tending upward. A tiny tuft of black hair peeks out from the hood, but the focus of her eyes will not be deterred. There is a story here, an illuminated moment that you were there to witness.
Is this what childhood is—a series of moments when the world lights up and invites you in? Or is it the time when we learn how to look adults in the eye before they can hurt us, a reminder to us now that we, too, were once a child born into this world as an innocent?
Just now, a young Say’s phoebe is perched on the back of the chair on the porch. Our eyes meet. It flies to the next chair closest to me, our eyes meet again, and it flies toward me fluttering in midair for a closer look and returns to the same chair. I continue to write as it stares. It has not yet learned to fear me or our kind. It flies again. The wee little bird is now hiding in the willows. Oh my—the phoebe is standing on my head as I write to you—I must be still.
The phoebe is hovering above me, she flies and is standing on the edge of the roof watching. I believe this child was looking at a bird. She is watching the bird now as her eyes look up from the photograph next to me.
Love,
Terry