“Holding is not easy. Holding requires tension in one’s fingers, joints, body, and emotions. Every strain creates weakness.
“Water does not hold. It is held. Free from withholding, water’s power overcomes rock, fire, and most elements.
“Yet water cannot play its role without vessels and channels. Even this essential ingredient of life needs to be held.
“Water is a necessary life infrastructure. But when polluted with toxins, that which sustains us simultaneously poisons us.
“Colonization is like poison in the water.
“Is it possible to cleanse these currents?
“It is not easy to be a root. Roots hold earth together, resisting erosion. Roots channel sustenance into the body of the plant.
“A root is not as powerful as water. Nor does it need to be. It is a remarkable quality to be breakable, yet choose to hold ground.
“To be weaker than the dominant infrastructure and still hold on, to remove harm while providing nourishment.
“This is an ethic.”
-poem from the artist’s book, Dear Ma | Ethic
