The Self-same Power That Brought Me Here Brought You

Is Jumalon

Strokes scratch on the surface of charcoal and pastel, piled up on paper ground, all spread out on the brick wall.

Is Jumalon sits by her studio. But she’s not inside these four walls, she’s exploring. She’s walking, trudging on old cement, and plowing on parched grass.

She doesn’t hear the scratch, doesn’t hear the carbon breaking bit by bit. Her fingers have learned to hold, to grip, on the medium out of instinct. Then dust falls on the wooden floor, it will go unnoticed for a while. She is restless, pushed over the edge too often. With a sigh and a heavy breath, the outburst subsides before it crawls back again.

The images float up from the surface. Gradually at first, and then without warning, they sprout from the ground; there is a wilderness before her now. Exasperated, she plucks out as much as she can take, reaps as vehemently as her thoughts allow. Too stirred up, it almost tears the ground apart. She plants contours, outlines, varying tones on barren ground. She frees the form that creeps out of her—bit by bit and then in tides. Mowing the strokes that have overgrown, she pulls out and rakes back the block of medium with bare hands. In exhaustion, she persists.

The paper is still. She isn’t.

This is no longer charcoal, no longer pastel. It is almost an obsession—almost as if she’s clawing herself out, seething, but always in different strides, always in different places. She pays no regard to soiled fingers and blackened wrists. She remains suspended in her thoughts. A dialogue. A tortuous harvest.

Pigments crawl in and crawl out of her control.

Are the trees being blown by the wind? Are the leaves hanging loosely by their seams? Will they come falling off to the surface and dry up, and keep their limbs in silhouette?

In the middle of it all, everything comes together. Finally, light peeks through the thicket, underneath the view. She finds herself lost in the middle of the wilderness, but also, found.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once wrote about the rhodora. “If eyes were made for seeing, then beauty is its own excuse for Being.”

Is Jumalon did not lead herself into the wilderness to find the rhodora, the same way that it did not bring itself there. She has traveled this far and yet this flower isn’t there for anyone; it isn’t there for her, for she is only there to see. And in seeing this rhodora, she will continue to rake back the block of medium with bare hands. She will continue to mow the strokes that have overgrown. She will continue to plant contours on barren ground. She will continue to reap as vehemently as she will be allowed. She will continue—

• Taco Borja