I pulled up an hour before sunset. I burned driftwood. Sent a photo to Bo who had just arrived in the city. Rilke spent a lot of time writing letters. After ten years he wrote to a friend with excitement because he completed a work. The coastal light faded. The gradual decline was longer than I was used to. Through the phone Bo heard the fire crack. At the water’s edge, a photograph of me as a child standing by a pond.
My brother took a photograph of our mother as she was carried from the house. He showed it to me months later, after the film was developed. We made a fire. To forgive the past. To stop time. It rained the morning our mother died. No lights were lit. Thunder tore like pages.
When I returned to the city the lines for things had gotten longer. I walked along the shoulder. Headlights aimed towards me grew brighter. I saw the light fold as we sat on her porch. My mother and I. It was difficult to make eye contact. Gravel beneath my feet gave way before feeling my weight shift. A cloud of birds murmured. A plane ascended. The chemtrail retained its diagonal form and the birds dissolved. The end is not as I imagined. Trees stood bare. Leaves had fallen.
Stopping at the water’s edge on a bank formed by incoming waves. Horizon, ocean, surface of the earth. Chance builds the landscape. Overlapping ridges, pushing, pulling, smearing. Flatness and its natural breaks.
Photographs made while traveling from South Dakota to Arizona in 2024.
Written, designed, and printed in New York City.
Chris Rypkema, 2025.
Edit: May 3, 2025