Something Old, Something New.
I wake to dream and take my waking slow; I learn by going where I have to go.
Two kids riding in circles on bikes in the parking lot just beyond my window. We used to have a detective agency in the attic and we'd read Nancy Drew novels, we were sure that at least one of us would be the first female pro ball player; later we liked to see the world through Picasso eyes and we'd sneak cigarettes out on the deck at midnight, we made tacit promises to each other and the moon that we'd never fall into normalcy, be beaten by the fear that safety propagates, let the robber baron blood completely exsanguinate.
Here I am, and I'm 25, and I'm drinking the first coffee of several in an office I have nightmares about, avoiding a boss whose gaze makes my stomach tighten.
Last night I stayed up until 2 a.m. finishing my first linoleum stamp. I carved it mostly with an xacto knife, which surprisingly didn't leave a blister in the palm of my hand. It's a 4x6" skull and crossbones; he's wearing an army helmet that, on the front, has an emblem of a heart locked behind bars. I started stamping them onto cut up matboard. I watched them as they dried, and miscellaneous Rimbaud quotes started coming into my head. After the first one dried I wrote my favorite of the quotes into the empty space, and I continued thusly on several of the others. I think I'll take my skull and crossbones cards everywhere I go, and leave them around like little sentinels over our need to derive some kind of meaning out of all of this. I dunno. Maybe that idea is over the top, but I can't just keep doing this drudgery much longer. I moved back to Ohio under the auspices that I would do art all day and write, and really have a chance to be creative. Then work got in the way, and here I am, back at square one.
A different location/job/financial situation isn't going to be the catalyst. I have to be the catalyst. Money is not the end all be all. We (this nation, where madness prowls) are so hung up on this idea of freedom, and most of us will never even fully realize what freedom actually is... to be unencumbered by wants/desires mistakenly representing themselves as needs. To have the freedom to give yourself completely to the unknown. To find release from the daily rat race. To live, to breathe, to create, to serve as an example to future generations that human life is not something already charted, that there is absolutely no limit to what's possible.
As Crow T. Robot would say, hummm ditty hee hee. Hooa Hooa.
Two kids riding in circles on bikes in the parking lot just beyond my window. We used to have a detective agency in the attic and we'd read Nancy Drew novels, we were sure that at least one of us would be the first female pro ball player; later we liked to see the world through Picasso eyes and we'd sneak cigarettes out on the deck at midnight, we made tacit promises to each other and the moon that we'd never fall into normalcy, be beaten by the fear that safety propagates, let the robber baron blood completely exsanguinate.
Here I am, and I'm 25, and I'm drinking the first coffee of several in an office I have nightmares about, avoiding a boss whose gaze makes my stomach tighten.
Last night I stayed up until 2 a.m. finishing my first linoleum stamp. I carved it mostly with an xacto knife, which surprisingly didn't leave a blister in the palm of my hand. It's a 4x6" skull and crossbones; he's wearing an army helmet that, on the front, has an emblem of a heart locked behind bars. I started stamping them onto cut up matboard. I watched them as they dried, and miscellaneous Rimbaud quotes started coming into my head. After the first one dried I wrote my favorite of the quotes into the empty space, and I continued thusly on several of the others. I think I'll take my skull and crossbones cards everywhere I go, and leave them around like little sentinels over our need to derive some kind of meaning out of all of this. I dunno. Maybe that idea is over the top, but I can't just keep doing this drudgery much longer. I moved back to Ohio under the auspices that I would do art all day and write, and really have a chance to be creative. Then work got in the way, and here I am, back at square one.
A different location/job/financial situation isn't going to be the catalyst. I have to be the catalyst. Money is not the end all be all. We (this nation, where madness prowls) are so hung up on this idea of freedom, and most of us will never even fully realize what freedom actually is... to be unencumbered by wants/desires mistakenly representing themselves as needs. To have the freedom to give yourself completely to the unknown. To find release from the daily rat race. To live, to breathe, to create, to serve as an example to future generations that human life is not something already charted, that there is absolutely no limit to what's possible.
As Crow T. Robot would say, hummm ditty hee hee. Hooa Hooa.
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