red apron/skirt around me, took up my position in front of the gazebo and held out my red balloon and wax-sealed letter. I could see Jing coming from far away. She was running. She was worried because she was a few minutes late, but I wasn't worried. It was fun to see her rushing towards me, across the parking lot, then across The Rose Garden. When she arrived, she introduced herself and her friends. They were holding warm drinks and cameras. I gave Jing her first letter.
She broke the wax seal and thus the journey began. The first letter simple said "Let go." I handed her the red balloon. She let go. It had a trip line, so it was caught a few feet above us. I pulled it back down and gave it to her again. She let go again. It popped up above our heads. It seemed she wanted to take it away, so I broke the fishing line that was holding it to the gazebo. Then she really let go. And off it soared! I wasn't expecting that. It got swept by the wind far far far away. It went high into the sky and we watched it all. I'm not in the practice of releasing balloons, not since my childhood anyway, so this is something I haven't seen for a very long time. It reminded me of all the sad, magical, childhood moments when the balloon got away
The roses weren't yet blooming and, while there were some tulips in bloom, the garden was mostly bright green grass and dark brown earth, so I decided to add some color. I'd made 30 red, blue and green patterned paper flowers and attached them to wooden skewers. The four of us planted them in 3 rose beds. Then Jing and I put tags on the real roses. I'd made 20 round tags with new rose names on them, names from the information Jing shared with me in her questionnaire. There was Jing Rose, Funny Rose, Honesty Rose, Order Rose, Real Rose... We tied them on with thin black ribbons. Then we had a tour of Jing's Garden and read out the names! That was fun.
After this came more wax-sealed, handwritten notes, 12 in total. One note told us to fill a little blue vial with revitalizing water from the fountain, one asked us to dangle our fingers in the fish pond and wait for a fish to kiss it, one asked us to "Follow" and we went up onto a little hill and into the woods to find some funny invisible birds with black feet, then we went through the echo chamber and said the one word we wanted most of all, which not surprisingly was DANCE which we did for a bit, then we went over a bridge where we struck poses that reminded us of our home country, China, then the whole group of us stood on golden disks which allowed us to see ourselves as our family saw us, then Mimi wrapped herself around the Tree of Dance
many times in many ways. The next note said "Stay." Jing stayed while Mimi ran down the hill and up the next hill and almost out of site. Then she waved her red apron and came ambling back down the dirt road.
The second to last letter said "A Greeting," which Jing received in the form of a hug when Mimi came back. Then came "The End."
Mimi
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A. K. Mimi Allin is the current artist-in-residence at "Project: Space Available" on Capitol Hill in Seattle (1 April--31 May 2010). Her residency project is called HAM or Hold, All Movement, for which she'll build a hold (think of a ship's hold or a closed inner space) and stock it with a cot, teapot, personal library and a communications station, complete with shortwave, VHF & HAM radios. With this she'll learn morse code and earn her amateur radio license. Not long into the residency, she'll begin to reside in the hold, listening to radios at night &turning the info she records into gestures by day. Yes, lo &behold, she will eat ham sandwiches during her residency. At the close of her project, there will be 3 public performances, 2 within the hold and 1 in thin air, after the hold has been dismantled. Forget what mother told you. Tune in. Tune in!
http://www.projectspaceavailable.com/
http://thepoetessatgreenlake.blogspot.com/
http://corporate-poet.blogspot.com/
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