René Francisco
June 8 – August, 2002
   
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Swimming in Y'all

When I get up I drink a glass of water and take a bath. As I drink I look to see if the water has been boiled or not. As I bathe I inhale carefully to discern whether these trickles of water smell good or bad.

As I do these things I like to wonder which ideas arise from them and influence my work throughout the rest of the day, and "enjoying an endless meditation" I let the water flow, like a tributary that forks at my body and connects me to the rest of the world, as if words ran through my memory and escaped with my sweat through my throat:

"…… the pleasant voice of water, the water came down a stairway, my words spread along the keel of the calm waters, to the lukewarm water's bed, black waters of unknown purpose, though the waters are always very clear and the bottom is visible, stone star tossed into eternal waters, like the fog on the water, blinking water, eye that you guard, steps of water support its eyes, careless water and fire, found waters that shall never form an isthmus, they wash their feet with gaseous water….."

When I place my diving boards in the middle of the street I'll picture all the people passing beneath them like a great torrent that can receive me, like the historic waters that flow through the city into which I have at times wanted to plunge. Perhaps they, at some moment of their day, as engrossed as the fluid that springs from this idea, will dream of themselves as rebels, as distracted or utopian as I.

-René Francisco

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