Caley Feeney, Ephemeral potato sculptures, 2022. Assorted earrings, et cetera, affixed to potatoes and displayed on dinner plates. Courtesy of the artist.
Their names are Jewel, Ashes, and Mosquito.
They were born old.
To be born old means
that you’re born knowing everything you need to know,
along with the pure power of baby.
By power, I mean, dependency
cuz the power to compel attention and care is the highest power.
Anyway, they’re old and dependent, and they pretty much know everything.
But they were just born, so they want to see the world.
They want to go on a world tour. What does this planet have to offer?
They want to experience it for themselves.
I say, “Well, we live on a very expensive planet. Is it even worth it?”
Jewel, Ashes, and Mosquito say, emphatically, in unison, “Probably not!”
“But we need to go.”
“Before we die.”
Sigh. They’re so old, it’s better to go along with what they say.
Plus, they need more experience before they can share what they know.
The knowledge needs to be activated.
So I pack some snacks and take them to the ocean.
Caley Feeney, Ephemeral potato sculptures, 2022. Assorted earrings, et cetera, affixed to potatoes and displayed on dinner plates. Courtesy of the artist.
Now we’re at the bottom of the ocean.
It’s so loud.
You can hear all the water on top of you.
The three are super excited about the lack of oxygen.
And they love the seabed. It’s actually soft, like a bed.
It gives way under my butt.
We watch a yellow sea spider feel its way towards a hot vent.
Each leg articulates with total precision.
The water on top of us goes CCCCCCCCHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG.
We’re holding our breath.
All noise, no oxygen.
It feels like being outside of time.
Being out of time.
Very little time left.
Mosquito starts crying, her tears absorbed by the ocean.
Ashes bounces around on the squishy ground.
Jewel rubs her face on a piece of rusted metal.
Then they tuck each other in, cuddling under the mud.
I watch them sleep.
If we think of time as something that moves us,
pushing us along,
all the way to the end,
then we want to fight it.
If we think of ourselves as moving through time,
propelling ourselves
through time’s substance
to get to the end,
then we want to fight ourselves.
When they wake, we’ll shoot back up towards the surface.
I want to get to the air first.
I want to see their soggy little heads break through the water.
Caley Feeney is a half Yup'ik multi-disciplinary artist originally from Anchorage, Alaska and currently based in Los Angeles, California. Her work has been exhibited nationally and internationally in New York, NY; Philadelphia, PA; Portland, OR; Nashville, TN; Toronto, ON, Canada; and Nottingham in the United Kingdom, amongst others. Feeney’s work has been written about and featured in the following publications: Novembre Magazine, Editorial Magazine, Mould Map by Landfill Editions, Centre for Style’s HEROES book, Discipline Press’ SEXINESS: Rituals, Revisions, and Reconstructions edited by Tamara Santibañez, and was Cixous72’s featured artist in the summer of 2016 amongst others.
Amy Ching-Yan Lam is an artist and writer. A poetry chapbook, The Four Onions (2021) is available from yolkless press. Her first full-length collection is forthcoming with Brick Books in spring 2023.