Kat Lehmann

Residence

After I graduated from college, I spent months traveling the country and sleeping in a little blue tent. I quickly lost my ability to sleep in the cavern of a bedroom. Then the camping nightmares started, and I had difficulty sleeping in a tent too. In the middle of the night, I would believe the tent walls had become solid rock, as if I had been swallowed by one of the sandstone monoliths of southern Utah. Shaken awake, I would sit in the starlit dark and touch the sides of the tent to convince myself, again and again, that the tent walls were made of fabric, not stone. As the summer grew, it occurred to me that, both indoors or outdoors, what surrounds me at any time is merely a suggestion. The false stone of a tent. The cavern of a room. Whether manufactured by nature or by hand, everything is transient and can be placed somewhere on the cycle of disintegration and growth. It is more accurate to say that I always sleep beneath the stars, or at least the light of them that remains.

road trip
a blur of miles
finds me where I am