DIMITRA XIDOUS
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    • COLLECTION / ATTENTION >
      • A Favourite Tree
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  • About
  • Publications
    • Μηδέν | Oὐδέν
    • Keeping Bees
  • Projects
    • (S)worn State(s) >
      • Writing Sessions >
        • Session 1
        • Session 2
        • Session 3
    • Form Ever Follows Function (Exhibition)
    • Here is a Box
    • Film Poems
  • News
    • Letting the Fish Cast its Own Shadow!
    • COLLECTION / ATTENTION >
      • A Favourite Tree
    • Bring Back Dragana (Censorship & The Body)
  • Contact

Collection / Attention 

It is important, I think, to take stock of time, and one's use (or non-use) of it.  Whatever we make of it, time passes (one way or another; that’s the beauty of it).   It occurred to me a while ago, somewhere in the middle of one week after another after another, that I have been doing something very interesting (to me) and important (for me) with this time, week after week.  To understand it better, I had to call it something; to put a name to it, if only to make sense of it, for myself.  To see the act for what it was and is - and to foster it.  I don't mind being aimless sometimes; other times, it is good to take stock. 

I have written elsewhere about how I see the world, and how that seeing moves my hand, the labour involved in crafting a sentence.  I believe in the power of hands, and the power of the poetic eye.  The eye and the hand are connected (this is not something new; I am not saying anything new here).  I understand and value these things; they are tools for making. By the grace of my poetic eye, I think I have been (I am), in this time, collecting things.  To collect things, to be in the act of collecting these things, is, I think, a creative act (a making, in time).

When this time began, I started from a corner.  I explored the space I was in, in time (week after week after week, for a total of nine photos, over the span three weeks – this is the time it took to collect, to complete the first collection); from there, I found a way to cultivate a rhythm.  There is a rhythm in this, in collecting, for me - and it is a way to mark the weeks, as they pass by.  To collect them, these weeks, in passing.  In passing, it is also true that by taking stock, I am making record, a record of all the ways I am looking at the world.  It is an exercise in seeing – of stopping, for a moment, in the moment, to take a closer look.  I know this because I am (also) stopping, for a moment, to take a closer look at words. 

Take the word collect.  When I began to think about what I was doing, I thought it was important to look up the word, to see it for what it was.  Among its meanings, to collect is to:
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  • bring or gather together (a number of things)
  • accumulate over a period of time
  • concentrate (one's thoughts)

I had been, am doing, all these things.  What interested me most, though, as I spent time looking at the word, and its meanings, was in looking at the word in Greek – to find a meaning that resonated for me, in my mother tongue, for what it was I was and am doing.  I did not know, when I used the word collect, to describe what I was doing, that I was also giving myself a gift.  When I looked up the word in Greek, I found the word προσευχή – which is the Greek word for prayer.  My mind did not miss a beat; I made a connection – because the Greek word for prayer is one vowel sound off the Greek word for attention.  And, I see now, I have been paying attention.
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To collect is to stop and take stock of time; it is a creative act, a zeroing in.  To collect is to pay attention; it is to bring the eye and hand together, to pray. 
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FISH/VASE | SHADOW/LIGHT

SHADOW - LIGHT - MOVEMENT 

​A FAVOURITE TREE
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