Marina met Ulay in 1976, after moving to Amsterdam.  Their collaboration was meant, above all, to explore artistic identity and the ego.

To create 'Breathing In/Breathing Out' the two artists devised a piece in which they connected their mouths and took each other's exhaled breaths until they had used up all of the available oxygen.  Seventeen minutes after the beginning of the performance they both fell to the floor unconscious, their lungs having filled with carbon dioxide.  This personal piece explore the idea of an individual's ability to absorb the life of another person, exchanging and destroying it.  In 'Imponderabilia' two performers, both completely nude, stand in a doorway.  The public must squeeze between them in order to pass, and in doing so choose which one of them to face.

Things eventually began to fall apart and in 1998 the two ended their relationship by walking the Great Wall of China.  They started from opposite ends, Ulay from the desert of Shanhaiguan in the east and Marina from the western waters of Jiayuguan.  They walked toward each other for three months and met in the middle for a final embrace.  

Each of us walked two and a half thousand kilometers to meet in the middle and depart from each other and continue working as a single artist.  It was very dramatic and a very painful ending.  

The journey and reunion were originally purposed to unite them in marriage.  Instead they broke-up and his appearance at her exhibit in 2010 was a surprise.

[What kills me is that I actually saw this exhibit.  Well more like happened upon it -- I was at the MoMA for something else.  I remember being confused and brushing it off as something ridiculous, stopping for a minute and quickly walking by. This video helped me to understand it better and I wish I had taken the time to do so then.]

snow storm

Do you remember that storm in 2006?  The one where we decided it was a good idea to drive down to the casino in the middle of the night.  It was a Saturday and church had been called off for Sunday.  We laid in my Clinton Street bed tossing the idea around: I said I had never been, you said we should go.  I was nervous, you were eager.  These days, I've been reading stories by Wells Tower.  In Leopard he describes one woman as an "exciting girl" and in Door in Your Eye, "wild."  Those words – they belong to you as well.

We left the house past midnight and inched our way to Connecticut, your little black manual shifting this way and that, sliding on roads barely visible through frozen glass.  I clenched my fingers nervously and kept silent, worrying if we would make it and praying for safety.  At moments I thought it a stupid idea and wondered why I let you talk me into it.  But that's what I loved about you – you in your big down coat that crumpled comfortably in at the touch.  I squeezed you in that coat many times, reaching my arms around and nuzzling my face into your warm chest.  There was also the time you took that coat off so we could sled on it down the campus hills.  I didn't mind the cold then. 

The casino felt like an old dream I stepped into.  But as we walked those grand fabricated halls, flourescent and vacant, my imagination became stale.  What was there to do here?  Should we play games or gamble?  Did we play games or gamble?  I don't quite recall.  The restaurants and other attractions were closed (it was, after all, 2:00AM in the middle of a blizzard) and after some time we made the slippery journey home and crawled back into bed, happy and accomplished.

other heros

rory stewart, who 11 years ago walked across Afghanistan in a straight line through the central mountains, from Herat to Kabul, following the footsteps of the first Mughal emperor Zahiruddin Muhammad Babur.

Babur the dog, in the heart of the blizzard, stopped to savor the bouquet of a wet grass hummock.  As we moved on the weather shifted, as did the sharp angles of the slopes, revealing new valleys on each side.  My mind flitted from half-remembered poetry to things I had done of which I was ashamed.  I stumbled on the uneven path.  I lifted my eyes to the sky behind the peaks and felt the silence.  This was what I had imagined a wilderness to be.

and paul salopek, who recently began his 7-year walk to retrace the migration path of early humans 'out of eden,' from Ethiopia across the middle east through Asia via Alaska down the western edge of the americas to the southern tip of chile.

zadie/joni

Just before our love got lost you said

"I am as constant as a northern star"

And I said "Constantly in the darkness

Where's that at?

If you want me I'll be in the bar"