49 days: Blanket # 72: games

FAIR GAME

Director: Doug Liman

Screenplay: Jez Butterworth

With: Naomi Watts and Sean Penn

Blanket # 72:

• Sean Penn
• Naomi Watts
• Doug Liman
• Jez Butterworth

60 days: Blanket # 61: medicine words

Bear Grass (Xerophyllum tenax)

Native to Western US | grows from just above sea level to alpine | resembles a bunchgrass | flowering creamy white | up to 5 feet tall | Native basket and hat making material | both decorative and watertight | used in Native American medicine | the pounded roots poulticed on wounds to stop bleeding and thus heal | perennial | fire-resistant | hardy to -20° F | prefers rocky fast-draining soil | part shade to full sun | open coniferous forest habitat

Blanket # 61:

• words are magical, powerful, invisible
• words are a way of knowing self
  
• words are a way of knowing the wider world
  
• words are medicine

61 days: Blanket # 60: sacred

"Like many people, Native Americans believe that cemeteries are sacred ground... Native Americans abhor the destruction of burial sites and the exhumation of human remains, for any reason."

Native Universe: Voices of Indian America

Editors: Gerald McMaster and Clifford E. Trafzer

(NGS/NMAI: Washington D.C., 2004)

Blanket # 60:

• sacred burial ground
• the body
• the bones

62 days: Blanket # 59: native universe

Tsimshian Face Mask

Polychromed wood | 7.75" x 7" x 4.75" | Dundas Collection | © Southeby's | New York

Blanket # 59:

• the Native universe
  
• the objects have power
• totem poles: three-dimensional family histories
• journeys from distant places
• marriages, births and deaths
• transformations
• heroic deeds
• identity: tribal, clan, family, individual
• the expression of: values, traditions, beliefs
• the sacred: the connection between human world and spirit world
• law, songs, dances, poems, stories, ceremonies, rituals
• the sacred relationship with the land: the seen and unseen forces around
• sacred places: mountains, oceans, rivers, lakes, valleys, plains
• the earth: flesh, blood and bones
• cemeteries: sacred ground
• earth, sun, stars and moon
• creativity: spirit, imagination, design
• a dream trail: of circles: of languages, stories, medicine, arts and teachings

63 days: Blanket # 58: rest

THE ROCK

Fragment of a Ritual | Omaha

unmoved

from time without

end

you rest

there in the midst of the paths

in the midst of the winds

you rest

covered with the droppings of birds

grass growing from your feet

your head decked with the down of birds

you rest

in the midst of the winds

you wait

Aged one

Adapted from Alice C. Fletcher and Francis La Flesche, "The Omaha Tribe", in Twenty-seventh Annual BAE Report, Washington, D.C., 1911

Blanket # 58:

• time
• rocks
• rest

64 days: Blanket # 57: planting

today we planted the godot tree

it took a couple of hours

it was never a prop a piece of the set but a tree

and we planted it

[we didn't send it back to the garden centre]

a côtil in grouville because i have no garden

it was beautiful it is beautiful

the first tree i have planted in my life

a himalayan birch

 

why have waited so long...

Blanket # 57:

• planting trees
• waiting
• earth

69 days: Blanket # 52: roots

A country road. A tree. Evening.

I bought the GODOT tree... but I have no garden...

Betula Utilis Door | Jacquemontii

THE HIMALAYAN BIRCH

Deciduous | elegant | the Audrey Hepburn of Trees | apparently | relation of the native Silver Birch | oval serrated mid-green leaves turn yellow in autumn | requires full sun and well drained soil | height: 12 metres

Blanket # 52:

• a tree
• roots
• gardens