2000 microns
up two flights of stairs and through a locked door: our long-awaited lab emerges. a temporary home, an in-between solution, a sink and a collection of surfaces. we won't be here long: we make ourselves small, cramming collection jars and sample splitter and sieves and rinse bottles and beakers and bags of woodstraw and tape and pens and notebooks and gloves and masks and tweezers and ourselves into a corner of this street-long room.
the work is even slower going than expected: little splinters of wood cling to each sieve; there is endless space between rinse and repeat, space that we fill with filter and shake and tweeze and agonize and the constant reminder that we are already weeks behind.
and yet in bits and pieces the work is rewarded—we extract little flying things from cold mesh— we split a sample without spilling— we watch the bodies float up and up in the jars, surfacing as we close lids over them
and I think a little invertebrate prayer for them, unsure if I can speak my honoring into this sanitized space, but holding a moment for them in my heart, even as I tip the beaker and pour every last lifeless drop into a sample jar, sealing countless little many-legged beings into their final resting place: A24 - Bottom, 6/29/2020 - SS1.
500 microns
our long-awaited lab a collection of surfaces: cramming jars and bottles and beakers and ourselves into work: splinters cling endless rinse and repeat weeks behind. rewarded with bodies surfacing invertebrate prayer, sanitized moment I tip the beaker and pour: 6/29/2020 - SS1.
125 microns
a lab a sink we cram into work weeks behind in bits and pieces little bodies lifeless SS1.
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