I finished a small etching run last month, 24 prints, and the registration marks are still taped to the glass of my light table. Little crosses in marker, blue tape gone brittle at the edges. I keep saying I'll take them off before I start the next thing and then I don't, and now the new plates are just getting registered against the ghost marks of the old ones. There is something almost superstitious in it. Like if I pull them off the whole setup stops being mine and goes back to being furniture.

The thing nobody tells you about editioning is how much of it is just the same gesture over and over until your wrist learns it. Pull, lift, blot, dry, repeat. I think I like it too much. It's the one part of the work where I don't have to decide anything. And that's exactly the part I'm suspicious of, because repetition can be a place to hide from the actual question the work is asking.

I'm trying to notice when the routine is a rhythm and when it's an anesthetic. Right now I genuinely can't tell the difference and I don't think that's a problem I can think my way out of. Probably have to make the next plate and find out.