Sorry Cupid. Warm fog, October 2007 (Canon A560)
Closet Paintings
A mostly hidden blog by Mechanical Grace.
When I was 8 or 9 I did a messy, free-form painting, the type that starts with beautiful colors but ends up a brownish tragedy. Still, small flashes of color remained. When I looked at the abstract mess after it had dried, I noticed a tiny shape that looked remarkably, precisely, like a small house, perched on a ledge. Suddenly the chaotic whorls became a cliff face, balancing this little house, and the grayish yellow strip across the top of the page, an odd-colored sky. Looking more carefully I found people, other little buildings, a horse. I marveled at having created such an objective reality, not because it was an accident-- on the contrary, I tried to forget that-- but rather because it seemed such an accomplishment to have achieved that impossible magic, verisimilitude. I kept the painting in the closet and would look at it in private, feeling unreasonably proud, and engrossed in the story I'd hidden in my own painting. I never expected anyone else to see the things I saw, and I still don't, but I work more intentionally now, so you never know...
61. Sorry Cupid.
I’ve been using an online dating service. Well, I’ve used loads of them actually, but I finally found one that made sense to me, and it all seemed to be working. But I deleted my account today. My ego just can’t bear it anymore.
Freeze-out. Antarctica on globe, September 2007 (Canon A560)
60. Freeze-out.
I seem to have an invisible threshold between myself and men, one that’s scary or repulsive to cross, and so avoided. So despite my warm tendencies, here I stay, locked in ice. I can’t make the metaphor work, because I don’t understand the situation itself. Why be so positive about me and then summarily, almost violently drop me? What is it about me?
“I’m so bored of cowards…” Tony Curtis and Sidney Poitier (screen cap, The Defiant Ones, 1958.)
59. "I'm so bored of cowards..."
“…who say they want, then they can’t handle.”
I always turn to Bjork in times of heartache or sad bewilderment— the latter, in this case. I love almost everything she’s done, but Homogenic is probably the best of her records for this purpose. She never fails to make me feel happily in the right, stronger, and more hopeful. She also never fails to make me laugh, with her perfect cynicism, e.g., “I thought I could organize freedom— how Scandinavian of me!” or “I’m no fucking Buddhist, but this is enlightenment.” If I could pick any artist to befriend, it would be her; she has already befriended me, thank God.
Fear of heat. Oil and water in spaghetti pot, September 2007 (Canon A560)
58. Fear of heat.
Why should the warmth of a low flame be so threatening? Or is it just when that flame is me? Am I so dangerous?
Things appear as if from nowhere. Mushroom, Belmont, MA; September 2007 (Canon A560).
57. Things appear as if from nowhere.
Almost overnight, there was something new, someone new. I wanted to think it was a miracle of sorts, but of course it wasn’t. Some people are like that: there all of a sudden, and gone just as quickly. They say “easy come, easy go” but I’m not so sure.
Self-Determinacy. Model figure, September 2007 (Canon A560).
56. Self-determinacy
Today I’m wondering about limits of abilities, my own limits. Recently I had sudden and unexpected reason to hope I might get a new start in life. Sadly, as quickly as it had appeared that hope evaporated. On the same evening as the equally sudden and unexpected rejection described below, too. Never a dull moment.
I could write at length about why all of this is external, why none of it should impose hopelessness on me, but I feel I’ve extended myself in every way I know how, and there’s nothing in reach, no person, no opportunity, no source of understanding. Maybe the limits are self imposed, I can’t tell. I’m ranging around a silent room, in the dark. That doesn’t mean there’s nothing there, but what if the problem is my reach itself, my limits?
We choose our own focus. Bayberries, Long Branch, NJ, August 2007 (Canon A560).
55. We choose our own focus.
And I suppose we see different things altogether as a result.
Got the message now? Airplane Ad for Esperanza Living, Long Branch, NJ. August 2007 (Canon A560).
