Elyse Defoor: X. U. M E

(continued from home page featured exhibit)
I was struck by the huge Xs grimly painted on buildings everywhere. A vast sea of Xs swept out before us. The vision seared into my memory as if by heated swords. I began to see Xs everywhere.

There in New Orleans, no one we asked knew exactly what the Xs stood for. So as soon as we returned home, I found out. Instead of being macabre symbols x-ing out all presence, the Xs were in fact a coding system used by the search and rescue teams. I learned that before a search began, the team sprayed one stroke of a large X on the side of the building best seen from the street. They wrote the team's initials on the left and the date at the top. It was only when the search was over that the X was completed. On the right, they numbered the hazards, and at the bottom, the number of corpses found.

While I was stunned that the Xs marked the dead, I was comforted that they also protected the living. If a team of searchers went missing, volunteers would look for the building marked with only one stroke of the X and know that they were trapped inside.

The discovery that what I had perceived to be marks of annihilation were in fact useful tools did not diminish the visceral experience of seeing those Xs scrawled across my beloved city. For me, they will always be stigmatas of immense loss and unexpected death.

Haunted. Inspired. I became obsessed. The Xs marked the beginning of my new quest.

Haunted by the signs of death and
Destruction, heralded me in Spring,
Everywhere I started seeing Xs,
Waking and in dream.

Shadows crossed high above my bed,
Malcolm, multiply, on Manson's head.
Railroad crossings, deleted at will,
X'd out, x-rated, cautions us still.

Sweet kisses written and sent,
Upside-down crucifixions of history past,
Chromosomes beginning,
Sign your name here to last.

"Sous rature" questions being,
Jet whites X in the sky,
The darkness in my soul
Crosses my heart and hopes to die.

Exploring emotion through the
Language of X; how X is to U and ME,
Enlightened from crossed swords and
Ancient Sun, unfolding inner mysteries.