Back in my childhood home.In my old bed room. A Chinese Dragon kite hangs the length of the ceiling. I can remember a tiny visitor crying uncontrollably when he looked up and saw the scaly green face and tongue sticking out. A tub of pistachio shells my mom draws faces on. A Max Beckman in Exile poster I stole out of the subway. A flyer for a radio show I did in college called: The Bottom 40. Art my mom made of her black cat. Piles of art books I love and don't have the space or time to look at. CDs I never listen to anymore. Marionettes I bought in Prague. A Mayan time calendar from 2005-6. Art from San Francisco. Regina Spector playing on the stereo, depressing me. More books. A tapestry I picked up in Hanoi. Dressers filled with clothes I never wear anymore. Memories of reading Popeye comics under my sheets with a flashlight. a photo of two of my closest friends when I lived in San Francisco, one of whom lives in Tokyo now, the other doesn't talk to me anymore, not even to tell me why she doesn't talk to me anymore. a water damaged drawing from Mithilla India that used to hang on our refrigerator for years, planting a seed for me to travel over there and collaborate with that community of artists (which has been my plan on hold for almost a year). Memories of being an unpopular high school student, listening to my classmate neighbor's pool party one summer night. Years of sitting at my desk, drawing comic books and video games, playing basketball alone in my driveway listening to Guns n Roses on my Walkman. Hot summer nights drinking gallons of milk at midnight. catching fireflies with neighborhood kids in jars with holes punched through the top by a screwdriver. Trying to set fire to ants with a magnifying glass. A pet hamster destroying Lego cities. obsolete technology. National geographics. Listening to the Hair record laying on the rug as a kid. Dancing to Jimmy Cliff with my cousins. Journals. crates of photographs. My first painting of the NY skyline set ablaze nuclear holocaust style. A box of sea shells. Gifts from ex-girlfriends. Akbar and Jeffs guide to life. And who knows what else buried under all the piles of paper and fabric....
Maybe its because I'm working on my grandfather's photo archive right now, but I can't help but thinking about the stuff we collect, make, and leave behind. I miss my grandmother. I feel left behind. One day I'll collect dust and disintegrate and leave stuff behind too. That thought is so scary to some people they distract themselves from it their whole life. I haven't mentioned on this blog yet, that when I was 24, in the year 2000, I bought a motorcycle in Vietnam and spent 6 weeks driving up the coast. Towards the end of the trip I got in a serious motorcycle accident, and walked away unharmed, and was convinced I was dead and had been shattered into another universe. The next 3 years I learned so much about life living as a ghost. Death is the answer to the question of life. Tick tock, the dreams replace the nightmares and vice versa ad infinium. mind heart, mind heart. The pulse of life. empty needs full to be empty. absence is presence. every subtle thing kisses every subtle thing.
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