SandScript 2020

Eva Kamenetski
Those Squeaky Floors
Photograph, Gelatin Silver Print 8”x8.1”
VISUAL ART
diverse array of life forms, and you’ll also
find death everywhere; trees with some live
branches and some dead ones, every kind of
cactus with both living specimens as well
as dead cactus bodies lying casually on the
desert floor. Death seems to be a part of life
here, and the desert doesn’t let us forget it.
There are plenty of dead plant carcasses in
wetter, more temperate climes, of course,
but in those places, they tend to be covered
up with climbing vines, moss, grasses,
bushes, and sprouting trees greedy for the
additional light that the absence of the
fallen trees allows in. The dead are hidden
by the living.
There is no hiding death in this
desert. Indeed, the dead form a part of the
structure of the desert itself, they are as
much a feature of the desert as are the
living. When the big plants of the desert die,
the first thing that happens is that their
green, watery skin shrivels and falls off.
Then their moist innards dry up and blow
away, and ultimately what is left is their
secret, inner structure. Their backbones,
their skeletons; the spirit that let them live
for so long in this place somehow remains.
A hidden beauty is revealed; the complex
weavings of cholla wood, the long, straight
spinal columns of saguaros, their spindly,
fragile ribs ordered together to form a
powerful tower.
In life, these plants were hardworking,
their green skins harvesting the
energy of the sun. They busily stored up
water to fight the arid heat; your basic,
journeyman plant, doing its thing.
In death, at last we see the true
power of what was holding them up the
whole time.
*
“Holly had her place here,” I said,
“and before her, my parents, and my
grandparents, and their parents before
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