For a stretch of time, at eight years old, I had a hard time falling asleep. I couldn’t stop thinking about the universe and its seemingly incomprehensible vastness. I’d imagine traveling through and beyond our galaxy in an attempt to grasp its immense scale and scope.
Having just moved halfway across the country, and feeling quite lonely and isolated, the cosmos provided a beautiful internal landscape in which to explore. It gifted me a sense of richness and depth within the lean, gridded suburbs of the Midwest.
This inner world served as a salve for the loss of my cherished external landscape - the woods and rivers, the windy wilds of my Virginia - lush realms of exploration - the home to which I longed to return.
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In Irish Gaelic, the word for longing and the word for the elements are one in the same: dúil
The word dúil lends linguistic footing to my experience from so many years ago, and lends greater validation to sensations from this experience that have stayed with me ever since.
This project is a direct line to my longings. My longing to return to a feeling of home; one that is both tactile and spiritual, topographic and ephemeral.
