After my father, Anthony Constantino, died, I retained a carefully curated selection of his personal effects, taking note of my interest in and ways of interacting with each item. Brand-new-in-their-boxes as well as used handkerchiefs were included in this collection, and throughout the years I’ve used them to clear my nose just as my father had done. The textile component of C is for Clay began with one so-utilized and routinely laundered monogrammed handkerchief. Having embroidered the words is for clay beneath the pre-stitched C, I ironed the handkerchief into a straightforward presidential fold. I placed it then into the vest pocket of a formal suit jacket and photographed it. Maintaining the fold, I buried the handkerchief in my backyard and, after two months, exhumed it, opened the fold, and photographed it again. Those two photographic images are shown here, juxtaposed. 

          That I investigated that specific fold, the presidential fold, at this point in time was striking. This handkerchief fold is a common one and has been described on at least one site devoted to gentlemanly attire as conveying an air of simple elegance, a must for the ‘Don Drapers’ and ‘James Bonds’ of the world.(5) My project began and was carried out during the run-up to the 2024 United States presidential election, and this writing has continued since its results. Now only, I cannot separate the disparity of this political moment from the history and politics of humanity’s relationship with the earth’s ecosystems. That simple elegance of that alpha persona has the propensity to advance a class-divisive, vainglorious notion in relation to other living entities: that all others are of lesser bearing, without autonomous boundaries. From within that worldview, biased contaminations, depletions, and obliterations of other humans, species, and earthly elements, its waters, atmospheres, and lands, may be perpetrated and justified. In contrast to these insensibilities, there are legions of empathetic citizens across all social and cultural sectors, dedicated to the earth’s conservation, for whom cooperation is key. 

          As for agricultural and horticultural undertakings in clay soil country, our favorable results depend upon continual interventions by farmers and gardeners. One widespread practice involves blanketing the ground with either bark, manure, leafy mold, organic compost, or any combination thereof. This helps warm the soil and increase its aeration. It also encourages the growth of microflora and microfauna that transform the organic matter into soil nutrients through their metabolic activities. Such conservation efforts, however, must be measured, monitored, and cyclical in order to balance their effects. An excess of organic matter, for example, can drive the rampant proliferation of 

microorganisms that compete with plants for essential nutrients.(6) 

          The fierce winter rains of the region where I live tend to worsen the compaction of our clay soil. Concurrently, soil analysis indicates that it contains enough nutrients to accommodate substantial populations of microbes. And it is just this spirited microbial interaction with the variously aged and constituted secretions deposited by my father and me that recasts our handkerchief as the toadskin-like specimen that we now see. The hurdles and complexities of clay soil evidenced by this mottled remnant are indicative of our unpredictable partnership with beneficial and detrimental microbes. And it illustrates, too, the broad nature of all relationships, our desire to nurture and nudge, while restraining our inclination to control. The burying and exhumation of a textile allows me to—no, it insists that I read my relationship with soil and with cultural history writ globally. The process allegorizes the connection between finely interlaced, below-ground micro-communities and the vast and convoluted socio-economic networks of those who dwell above.

Soils defy modern dualisms… There is no final material erasure 

of the past in the sedimented fabrics of their recycling bodies.(7)

          So, C is for the clay that is present in greater or lesser percentages in the soils of myriad geologic environments around the world. Coincidentally, C is also the initial for Cosentino, the original patronymic of my Sicilian forebears, who worked and ultimately gave mortal way to their indigenous land—a clayey flysch, or type of rock that alternates clay with denser layers of sand and silt.(8) C is for our common earthly ground and for the ceaseless conservation efforts that require global cooperation and a collaborative mindset towards all beings and substances. As the earth’s uppermost stratum is a multiplex of weathered minerals and live and inert particulate matter, this clay is the swathe and mire that holds it all together. And it is as well, of what we are made and of what we shall become.​​