the seeker of honey...

great 1920s RPPC from eastern europe of a beekeeper and a bee house.

i can't help but think about the scale relationship to the man and the little house, and how he could probably just about compress himself into a small enough form to fit inside of it. i keep thinking how it might feel to build such a small thing and get inside of it for a long period of time, not so much as a kind of endurance (think chris burden in a school locker), but as kind of strangely comforting darkness, like lying inside a sleeping bag with your head buried where your feet would usually go. lately when i've had trouble doing something with my hands, i've found myself closing my eyes and instead of directing the action through my eyes, i work with the activity of touch in a much more direct way, and my hands respond with a kind of agility i've never known.

looking at the photo, i also began to think about a conversation i had with someone in marfa last week, who goes to a kind of meditational retreat every few years for 10 days, where one is not allowed to talk or read (as well as a gaggle of other more obvious no no's). he mentioned that it usually took about 3 days to get everything out of you, before a deeper kind of conscious thought could begin. so i wonder about a space this small and being inside it in darkness and what thoughts might eventually fall away, as well as what might bubble to the surface, and how, like my hands, one would begin to feel and control one's body. based upon the smile on the face of the beekeeper here, he seems to be focused on only one thing, and that would have to be honey... or perhaps he's smiling because he's already spent some time in the little house himself.

"been there, done that" his smile seems to say to us, who he knows are thinkers instead of doers. he already knows quite well the painful feeling in his knees and his back from being so compressed and still; and he also knows the darkness inside the wooden structure as well as within himself. he knows the feeling that after two or three days began to fill his body with a tingling and desire, as the residue of bees and honey began to permeate his skin and as well as being breathed into his insides - a feeling of both resting and spreading, a kind of deeply felt longing in its absolute purest form, like a spider web slowly evolving as it is being woven within him.