{"id":865,"date":"2018-01-22T08:13:39","date_gmt":"2018-01-22T08:13:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/?p=865"},"modified":"2019-05-12T12:12:00","modified_gmt":"2019-05-12T12:12:00","slug":"a-forest-of-names-one-year-of-meditating-on-the-names-of-children-lost-in-the-2008-sichuan-earthquake-by-ian-boyden","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/2018\/01\/22\/a-forest-of-names-one-year-of-meditating-on-the-names-of-children-lost-in-the-2008-sichuan-earthquake-by-ian-boyden\/","title":{"rendered":"A Forest of Names (January) by Ian Boyden"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

[In our previous print issue of <\/em>basalt, we included a selection from Ian Boyden’s <\/em>A Forest of Names: One Year of Meditating on the Names of Children Lost in the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, his daily meditations on the names of 5,196 children who died in the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. This project began as a response to an exhibition Ian curated of Ai Weiwei’s work related to the earthquake. I recall Ian telling me at the time, as he hung the twenty-one scrolls, measuring over ten feet tall and forty-two feet long, that he literally pressed his hands against every name on the wall. Ian wondered if his physical experience hanging the scrolls wasn’t in fact part of the work’s conception. And so began <\/em>A Forest of Names. In honor of the memory of these children, in the coming months, we intend to bring readers monthly selections from the longer manuscript. Below is our first installment. –Ed.]<\/em><\/p>\n

\"Detail<\/a>

Detail from the installation of Ai Weiwei: Fault Line<\/em> at the San Juan Island Museum of Art, 2016. Photograph by Ian Boyden<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

JANUARY 23<\/p>\n

\u971c\u971c
\nFrost Frost<\/p>\n

In his language,
\neye and tree sound
\nthe same,
\none on the tongue,
\none in the ear,<\/p>\n

the single syllable:<\/p>\n

m\u00f9<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Rain falls
\nover an ancient forest
\nwhose roots have no allegiance
\nto states or provinces
\nor human governance.<\/p>\n

Roots know the earth
\nstone by stone,
\nwithout thought of light or dark,
\nfollowing the pull of gravity,<\/p>\n

the same gravity
\nthat holds the world
\nin a thin veil of ice
\nfilled with morning light.<\/p>\n

Must we shed this garment of night?<\/p>\n

m\u00f9<\/em><\/p>\n

And still the rain falls,
\neach droplet a lens
\nturning the trees upside down,
\nturning the eye upside down,
\nthe world,<\/p>\n

all the world falling there,
\nthe shaking,
\nthe torn roots clearing the air.<\/p>\n

Raw dust
\nand the smell of the dead.<\/p>\n

Our mouths fill with sounds
\nthat are not singing.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

JANUARY 25<\/p>\n

\u5b87\u822a
\nCosmic Boat<\/p>\n

He lit a match,
\nand in the universe
\nof the curling ember
\nhis name set sail.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

JANUARY 26<\/p>\n

\u82e5\u5b87
\nLike the Universe<\/p>\n

They ran their hands through her rubble-
\nstrewn hair.<\/p>\n

The gray dust there, a former distant starlight.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

JANUARY 27<\/p>\n

\u96ea\u84ee
\nSnow Lotus<\/p>\n

To the cicadas, mosquitoes,
\nand rattling wings of the humid air\u2014<\/p>\n

the mud offers
\npure white hands.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

JANUARY 28<\/p>\n

\u6613
\nChange<\/p>\n

He tried. He was a child.
\nNo one ever said
\njust as you are
\njust as you are.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

JANUARY 31<\/p>\n

\u946b
\nPile of Gold<\/p>\n

As if gifted a quarry,
\nhe took a shovel to the brushstrokes
\nof his name. The hole filled with ink.
\nHe dug deeper, until the shaft
\nwas inseparable from shadow,
\nuntil he realized
\nthe matrix was the ore itself.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read more from Ian Boyden’s “A Forest of Names” in the following links:<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Introduction to ‘A Forest of Names'”<\/a><\/p>\n

A Forest of Names \u2014 February selections<\/a><\/p>\n

A Forest of Names \u2014 March selections<\/a><\/p>\n

A Forest of Names \u2014 April selections<\/a><\/p>\n

A Forest of Names \u2014 May selections<\/a><\/p>\n

A Forest of Names \u2014 June selections<\/a><\/p>\n

A Forest of Names \u2014 July selections<\/a><\/p>\n

A Forest of Names \u2014 August selections<\/a><\/p>\n

A Forest of Names \u2014 September selections<\/a><\/p>\n

A Forest of Names \u2014 October selections<\/a><\/p>\n

A Forest of Names \u2014 November selections<\/a><\/p>\n

A Forest of Names \u2014 December selections<\/a><\/p>\n

“Fragile as an Urn: An Interview with Ian Boyden”<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  [In our previous print issue of basalt, we included a selection from Ian Boyden’s A Forest of Names: One Year of Meditating on the Names of Children Lost in the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake, his daily meditations on the names of 5,196 children who died in the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. This project began as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":164,"featured_media":1281,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[187,6,8],"tags":[173,188,172,174],"class_list":["post-865","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-forest-of-names","category-featured-articles","category-poem-of-the-month","tag-a-forest-of-names","tag-ai-weiwei","tag-ian-boyden","tag-sichuan-earthquake"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=865"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1291,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/865\/revisions\/1291"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eou.edu\/basalt\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}