14 december 2016
three memories
In the summers my family would drive out to Colorado to visit family. I was around eleven.
Highway 70 between kansas and the mountains has a landscape of mainly corn and soy fields. It's
easy to get lost in your thoughts when staring out the window of a moving car.
We passed by a non franchised gas station and in the front of it I saw two girls arguing with each other. They looked
like identical twins. The girl on the left was wearing an angel costume - wings attached to the back
of a white dres. Her sister's costume was a devil - red dress, plastic pitchfork, and headband with horns.
~
When I was fourteen my grandfather took me to Perdue University for a tour. It was his alma mater, and I think
he was hoping I would take up vetrinary science and follow in his footsteps.
At one point in the tour we went into a building and there was a cow with a hole in it's side, standing there
eating hay. The hole had a rubber gasket. I got to put on a glove and stick my hand inside the cow. You could
feel the half digested hay in one of it's stomachs.
~
My last year of art school I studied in Rome. One night I was with five other students, sitting on the downstream tip of the
Tiber Island, talking quietly and watching the river. A man walked up, saying 'good evening' in an american accent as he continued walking
off the edge of the island into the water.
I could see his head and shoulders bob as the river carried him around the bend.
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04 october 2016
notes for a scifi story
It's a time machine, he explains. To the past, one way.
But, he smiles, you need a painting to lock the other end of the portal. And the painting has to have a non
trivial amount of cobalt blue pigment, and been completed within 4 days. We also know it must be located in
a room with 20 feet of free space, and be large enough for the traveller to crawl through.
We began sending volunteers and looking for changes or messages from history, but since nothing was found we
assumed traversal was not possible, or diverging our universe.
I can tell you with all confidence though, that it does work. I myself am living evidence of that.
Eight years ago I tumbled onto the floor in Alvero Contreras's studio while he finishing up the portrait of
his mother.
In my future that was his last, and greatest work.
After calming him down from my sudden appearence behind his back I admited that I had no belongings, family,
or freinds.
He offered me a place to sleep for the night, though we stayed up till the morning in conversation. Such a
simple thing, talking to someone, but such a simple thing can be what saves a life.
He's built a name for himself now, in the art world. Personally I think his newest series isn't as exciting as
those raw early works.
Then again, many artists are old masters, finding their work in the twilight of life.
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23 may 2016
OMG ttbp-beta is amazing!
"Cats do love milk" keeps popping into my head.
I ran accross it 12 years ago. I was studying painting abroad in Rome. It was a whirlwind year.
Someone had written it on the leg of the painting easels in the shared studio.
You can't argue with graffitti like that, it's a universal truth.
Cats do love milk.
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