Gloriously Awash In Sin

Bits and Pieces (Real Bodies)

2012-01-18T20:35:00.000-08:00

In response to Full.

Bits and Pieces (Real Bodies), ink on paper, 5 1/2" x 8 1/2"

Full

2012-01-04T20:35:00.000-08:00

(In response to Army.)

The first girl slides off her shoes and puts her socked feet on the floor of the car. Empty bags of chips crumple around the mat. She grabs at a couple and drops them somewhere in the back.

The second girl, driving, doesn’t take her eyes off the road, curving around walls of forest. “We should clean this the next time we stop,” she says.

“Kay,” says the first girl, and reclines her seat back. The second girl sighs and rests her hand on the first girl’s thigh. The first girl squeezes the second girl’s hand, says, “Good night,” then tilts herself toward the door.

--

The second girl stops an hour later at an Arco station, the only thing she sees open off the highway. The first girl stirs and says, “Where we?”

“Shelton.”

“Wherezat.”

“Forty. Maybe forty-five minutes away from Coeur D’Alene. I think we should clean the car.”

“I’m sleeping.” The first girl sits up and looks around. They are parked next to a pump, and in the blaze of the overhead lights she can make out husky scattershot silhouettes of low-rise buildings. “We shouldn't be here," she says.

“We’re fine. We need gas and the car’s filthy,” says the second girl, taking her long, stocky frame out of the car.

“We can make it to Coeur D’Alene,” says the first girl, “The tank’s not that low. I really don’t think we should be here-“

“The car’s filthy,” says the second girl, “seeing as you’re up, could you fill the tank? Thanks.” She shuts the door and lopes toward the store, and the first girl fixates on the point of the second girl’s Adam’s Apple serenely obtruding into the store’s light as she pulls open a glass door.

--

A boy sits behind a counter on a fluorescent-orange stool, playing with one of the Zippos from a display. He yawns, glugs from a tall cup of cool coffee. A man with a grey coat on the other end of the store is by the fountain drinks, filling a 44 oz. cup with Mello Yello.

The second girl enters and the boy looks up. The second girl smiles and moves to the snacks. The boy watches her. The first girl likes cashews so the second girl takes two packages. They are out of Clorox wipes and Advil, and the second girl takes those as well. The second girl mulls coffee or soda before settling on soda, and passes the man in the grey coat. He accidentally bumps her and he does not spill his soda but one of the cashew packages slips out of the second girl’s hand. He bends down and says, “Pardon.” She nods, takes the cashews back, and squeaks, “Thanks.”

The man in the coat looks her up and down as he rises. His eyes takes in her legs, her boobs, her jaw, her eyes. He pauses and looks at her level and hard, his facial expression blank while the second girl tries very hard to do the same. Then he smiles, tips his Mariners cap, and heads for the counter. The boy puts down the Zippo and beeps in the man’s purchase. The second girl fills up a 64 oz cup with Mello Yello.

--

The first girl finishes fueling up and begins to clean the car. She throws away the empty bags of chips from the front and then the empty bags of cashews from the back. She takes the soda and coffee cups and throws them out too. She takes books on the back floor mats and neatly drops them into bags of luggage.

She can’t remember if they are out of Clorox wipes or not. She looks up and through the station windows sees the second girl with the yellow cylinder of wipes nestled under her armpit. The first girl smiles. The first girl then sees the boy, and the man with the grey coat, and she freezes for a second, then shuts the door, locks it, grabs the keys, and casually walks inside. The keys jingle inside her hoodie pocket, unzipped, banging against her jeans.

--

The man is showing the boy some sort of book and the second girl is deliberating on chips when the first girl comes inside. All three look up at the first girl. The second girl’s face pulls back in a bun of fear. The boy stares at the first girl, and the man looks from the first girl, to the second girl, to the first girl. The first girl says, “You got the wipes?” The second girl raises the yellow cylinder and nods. The first girl says, “Thanks.”

The man clears his throat, puts a hand in his pocket, and begins walking toward the second girl. The boy, not noticing the man or the second girl, begins walking toward the first girl. The second girl, rabbit-eyed, resolutely fixed to the floor, only moves once the man is a few feet away, and sprints through the unalarmed emergency exit in the back of the station. The first girl runs out and starts the car. The man and the boy look at each other. One shrugs, and the other takes a slurp from his drink.

Army

2011-12-04T12:53:00.000-08:00

In response to Dependents.

Army, magazine on colored paper, approx. 9" x 9"

Dependents

2011-11-02T20:50:00.000-07:00

(In response to As Above So Below. While the writing for this project has been non-fiction up till now, the following post is fiction and all proceeding posts will be fiction too, unless otherwise noted.)

“He leans on her too much,” I heard my grandfather say through the vents, soon after my dad had left. “I can’t imagine she has much regard for that.”

I was shocked. I got out of bed and put my ear to the ceiling, trying to listen more but my grandmother only said “Mmm, well, only the Lord knows, I suppose,” before they started talking about some TV show. And then they left the kitchen and went to bed.

My dad had just left after visiting my grandparents and me on the coast. I didn’t think he leaned on me. I always thought I leaned on him. I’d lived with him for a few months after I dropped out of college, helping out by mowing the lawn and washing the floors and stuff, but I felt bad I was mooching so much so I asked my grandparents if I could stay at their place instead. They always seemed like they wanted company, and they were only an hour away from the city anyhow.

I didn’t know what my grandparents were talking about. I took out a bag of chips from the stash under my dresser and sat on the floor eating them while I texted him: Dad, do you feel like you lean on me for things? I got a call from him a second later but I knew he’d be driving so I didn’t answer it. Call me when you’re off the road, I don’t want you hurt, I texted. Sorry, I didn’t mean to make you worry, I added. Just think about it while you’re driving.

I was too wired over what my grandfather had said, so I decided to walk into town for coffee at the Sev. I had to get up early, my grandmother to take me to the dentist, so I thought maybe I’d just stay up all night. Maybe I’d be so tired I could sleep while they filled my cavities.

I put on my coat and went upstairs to the kitchen and put their dishes in the sink, then I washed the table. I tried not to make noise, but I must have been loud because soon my grandfather turned on the light, yawning and scratching his chest.

“What’re you doing up, Steph.”

“Oh,” I said. I couldn’t pretend I wasn’t about to leave, not with my coat on. “I was just going to go for a quick walk. I couldn’t sleep. Just washing the table before I go.”

“You don’t need to do that,” he said.

“It’s no trouble.”

“You don’t need to do that,” he said.

I looked at the table. There were crumbs and cat hair everywhere. I’m always a little bothered that my grandfather – and my grandmother, for that matter – can’t see all the grossness around here, but I don’t ask questions. “Okay,” I said. I could finish washing it later when he was asleep.

“Grandma’s on the phone with your father,” he continued.

“What?” I said. “He shouldn’t be driving and talking, tell him-“

“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “We’re taking care of it.”

“Make sure,” I insisted.

“We’ve taken care of it!” He said. “Don’t worry.”

Grandma came out of the bedroom on the cordless. “He says he’s gotta get home, Steph,” she said. “He says he’ll call you tomorrow and you should get some sleep.”

“It’s okay, I’m not going to sleep for a while,” I offered. “I’m here if he needs to talk when he gets home. Or if he wants to stay on the side of the road and talk, that’s okay too.”

“He says he’ll call you tomorrow,” she said. “He says go to bed.”

I knew they’d just worry if they knew I was out late, so I said okay and took off my coat and went into my room and turned off the light. I was still too wired, so I decided I’d wait till they were asleep and then wash the table and go for coffee. Then I heard somebody up there – probably Grandma – cracking ice cubes and clanking bottles. I made a note to check the upstairs bathroom for vomit when I got back, and get up early to take care of the hangover. We were out of ibuprofen. I’d have to pick some up at the Sev.

After forty, fifty minutes, I decided they'd be asleep, so I snuck upstairs in my coat. Walking through the kitchen I saw a couple bottles on the counter. I hung my head and leaned against the fridge. I could do the table when I got back. I put the bottles in the freezer, as quietly as I could, and left the house.

As Above So Below

2011-10-18T18:33:00.000-07:00

In response to Reversals.

As Above So Below, ink on bristol paper, approx. 4" x 6"

Reversals

2010-01-26T18:55:00.001-08:00

If the literary critic Edmund Wilson is to be believed, San Diego was at one point in time the suicide capital of the United States. "On the West Coast today, the suicide rate is twice that of the Middle Atlantic coast, and the suicide rate of San Diego has become since 1911 the highest in the United States." He wrote in 1932.

"The Americans still tend to move westward, and many drift southward toward the sun. San Diego is situated in the extreme southwestern corner of the United States; and since our real westward expansion has come to a standstill, it has become a kind of jumping-off place." Wilson, in a fit of morbid fatalism, chalked some of this up to an attraction of both physically and mentally ill to San Diego. "The sufferers have a tendency to keep moving away from places, under the illusion that they are leaving the disease behind. And when they have moved to San Diego, they find they are finally cornered, there is nowhere farther to go."

Unsurprisingly, San Diego is no longer the suicide capital of the country, and California is ranks 43rd in the latest figures, so I think it's pretty safe to say Wilson might've been a little melodramatic.

But on a more curious note, the geographic grouping on a grander scale isn't entirely dissimilar. With the exception of South Dakota, the ten states with the highest suicide rates are all Western states. Las Vegas, perhaps understandably, is the city with the highest suicide rate, but Colorado Springs and Tucson, somewhat quizzically, are the second and third. I haven't been able to track down numbers beyond that.

"Here our people," Wilson says towards the end of his essay, "So long told to 'go West' to escape from ill health and poverty, maladjustment and industrial oppression, are discovering that, having come West, their problems and diseases remain and that the ocean bars further flight."

This is all, of course, a load of hooey. Factors like population density and urbanization are probably the real factors afoot. Then again, Arizona, which comes in at #6, has an urbanization rate of 88%.

As someone who spent his adolescence adjusting to coming West and his early adulthood generally exploring East, I've always thought "Go West" was less of a sensible ethos than "Just go, dammit". I suppose it might be a migration of youth thing. New York City - where I live now - has certainly long been a bastion of the American youthful escape, and it's only a Western destination if you live in New England.

Not that it's really financially possible for young people to escape to New York anymore, unless they happen to be feeding off either student loans or wealthy parents. But cities, of course, are perhaps used to role reversals.

Migrator I & II

2010-01-09T13:36:00.001-08:00

In response to Shut.

Migrator, watercolor on watercolor paper, approx. 5" x 3.5"

Migrator II, watercolor on watercolor paper, approx. 5" x 4"

Exposure

2009-12-16T03:07:00.000-08:00

Churches early and present talk of "purifying fires" but I always preferred the idea of a purifying cold, myself. Cold is, in many ways, a distiller, an equalizer, forcing on the same heavy coats, nullifying all individual smell, and making dance out of everybody's breath. When I say cold, of course, I mean cold as in a low temperature, and I do not mean rain or snow or wind. Those romantic symbols of winter are about as awesome as Christmas music: It's mildly exhilarating the first time it comes along, but even then the dread of the upcoming months is creeping through your skull.

I never thought the cold was quite as annoying as was the warmth that went into it. I put on four careful layers to head out into negative digit-weather, but soon I enter a warm store and it feels like Texas in July. I don't think it's a coincidence that frozen body parts don't really start hurting until they're unthawed. Cold is numbing, it's the warming up that's painful.

The revered White Christmas came early for a lot of the US this month, snowing as much as a couple feet in parts of the Midwest. People froze. A woman in Nebraska died when a snow plow accidentally backed over her. In Winnipeg, the Canadian city I was born in, the low tonight is 11 below zero, with a toasty high of ten above tomorrow (That's 24 and 12 below, respectively, for the metric folk). It's this cold every winter. Some people will hit black ice on the highway, skid off the road and die in these revered snowdrifts, as also happens every winter. The White Christmas kills a scattered few, as it does every year.

Many years ago my high school girlfriend and I had a terrible New Year's Eve. We argued late, driving to her house, and went to bed unhappy. The next morning it had snowed a couple inches. If this had been forecast, we weren't aware of it. We played and kissed in the snow and ran around with her dog. The trouble of the night before didn't come up again. At some point my stepfather pulled into the driveway with an urgent mandate that I come home right away and learn how to drive in snow. I was lividly opposed but of course it happened and - as I reflect on auto maneuvers last winter when the city of Portland received a quizzical foot of snow - undoubtedly for the best.

I still see the pictures of us, melodramatic teenagers, playing in the snow, her dog running over the wings of our snow angels, and so I'm still not sure what to make of something so deadly and cruel that is also, at the same time, such a perfect miracle.

God Doesn't Believe in Miracles I & II

2009-12-08T10:42:00.000-08:00

In response to Forever.

God doesn't believe in miracles I, ink and watercolor on watercolor paper, approx. 5" x 5"

God doesn't believe in miracles II, ink and watercolor on watercolor paper, approx. 5" x 5"

Shut

2009-11-29T12:43:00.000-08:00

In response to Metaphor For An Urban Dwelling

In the last thirty-five years, the median square footage for new construction of one-family homes in the US have increased from 1,525 square feet in 1973 to 2,215 square feet in 2008. Meanwhile, the average household size dropped from 3.14 in 1970 to 2.59 in 2000.

I know. It's not a great shock that houses have gotten larger or that families have gotten smaller. And yet still lies this notion of not enough space. Before moving this summer, I carted some things down to my parents house, and went out to the garage to put them in storage tubs. I was only able to fit everything in by throwing away old objects I had seen fit to store for posterity when I graduated from high school. Only four years later, pretty much all if it got chucked in either the trash or the Goodwill bin. Perhaps I will come back in four years and repeat the process, to only be discontinued if someday I manage to buy a house of my own to store my useless junk in.

We have carefully built shelves in the garage, supporting an orderly system of these catalogued tubs which go to the ceiling, and yet our garage is still bursting with the accumulated weight of all of our things.

To give credit to my family, it is the home base for six people in a three-bedroom house that has no attic or basement. To give more credit to them, so much of this crap is mine,. I was the kind of child that gathered unremarkable rocks in boxes and refused to ever throw them out, and I admit I have only changed a little over the years. When I had finished my work in the garage, a cardboard box on another set of shelves caught my eye: "Casey's 10th grade school papers". I remember compiling that box's contents very well, and I look forward to going through it someday. Someday, of course, probably not today. Even if "today" I happen to actually be at my parents' house, with nothing to do.

The romance of an apartment building is an odd thing considering that, on a unit-by-unit scale, it is manufactured housing, cookie-cutter and identical. Trailer parks are trashy, apartments with creaky wooden floors are loving. I know there are reasons for this, but it's an odd nonetheless. Apartment buildings allow a person more solitude and anonymity, I suppose. It's a custom to welcome a couple into the neighborhood who moves onto your street, but a little odd to do the same when they move onto your floor.

I heard screaming in my apartment courtyard a week ago, through my window. A woman was yelling "Please leave!" "Please go!" half-hysterically, half-crying. A man was arguing with her but I couldn't make the sounds out. I looked around but I couldn't see or hear where these people were, I could tell they were coming from above my floor but that's about it. The screaming stopped very suddenly, and I raced up and down the floors of my building, hoping to make out which apartment this was happening in. I couldn't hear anything, so not knowing what to do, I called 311, who did know what to do and patched me to 911, and the police showed up and I told them what happened. They walked around and didn't hear anything, and then said they'd check outside. "We'll let you know if we hear anything." one of them tossed over his shoulder as they went out the front door. I realized I didn't know anybody who lived in this building. I had no clue who these people might be.

I don't wish to romanticize houses over apartments in turn. We know the people who live on our street, but it's probably safe to say we aren't friends, and we don't have barbeques or baby-sit each others kids or such things. And even in houses that are supposedly different and unique, an out-zoom doesn't reveal them as much different. From the right vantage point, they're all still cells, tiny as they grow, constricting as they liberate.

People came out of their apartments when they cops showed up. A couple of them asked what was going on, they thanked me for trying to take care of it, and then we snapped our doors shut again. We still don't know any of each other's names.

Forever

2009-11-25T17:57:00.000-08:00

In response to Circuit

I feel like one of the standard questions children ask about God is "If God made everybody, who made God?" Nobody. "Well, than what came before God?" Nothing. "How does that work?" It just does/don't ask questions/etc are common and unhelpful answers, certainly. But also common are reasonable theological answers about the eternity of God, the lack of comprehension that humans have to understand God's true nature, etc. Which, of course, goes right over the head of a six-year-old. It did for me, anyway.

These days I find myself pretty okay with God's existence and what it means to me. But I find myself asking about the universe now. "How is the universe infinite?" "How can anything be infinite?" "What happened before the Big Bang?" I've heard and read a few reasonable scientific answers to these questions, none of which I could relay and explain to you, as they too go right over my head. And I wonder if as I grow older I've simply traded one set of trusted adults for another.

(On an unrelated note, "Ultimate fate of the universe" has its own Wikipedia page. There is, however, a disclaimer at the top that the article "needs additional citations for verification".)

In some Sunday school classes, a teacher demonstrates eternity by drawing a short chalk line to symbolize our lives on Earth. And then a long one which goes off the chalkboard "and goes on forever and ever!"

I don't think they have it right. I don't think the analogy works. I've never had a problem with the idea of God, but I've always been skeptical of the chalk line. Because if something doesn't have an ending, then it stands to reason it never had a beginning either.

Metaphor for an Urban Dwelling

2009-11-22T15:31:00.000-08:00

In response to Building.

Metaphor for an Urban Dwelling, watercolor on paper, approx. 6" x 6"

Circuit

2009-11-15T17:47:00.000-08:00

In response to Trains.

Circuit, ink and skim latte on paper, approx. 7" x 6"

Building

2009-11-03T15:33:00.000-08:00

This is in response to Home Is a Shifty Notion.

Last night I sat down on my bed in my apartment to do some reading, and I heard some music playing very faintly. It sounded like it was coming from outside, in my building’s courtyard, and it also sounded like a cappella music. I was almost able to make out the last shimmering chords of Biebl’s “Ave Maria”, after which it went into something more contemporary. I couldn’t hear the lyrics and I couldn’t make out the tune.

It's hard to underline how important that was, but I'll try: I fucking love a cappella music. I’ve loved it since middle school, and it used to be a huge part of my life. I’d sung in groups and attended concerts and all that bullshit. I left most of it behind when I moved to Portland years ago.

So when I heard it here in my New York City apartment building I opened my window to find out where it was coming from, and the music didn’t get any clearer. That’s when I realized it was coming through the wall from the building shoved up next to mine.

I’ve heard the person on the other side of the wall every now and then, just barely. Muffled thumps and the like. But then last night I heard their music that just happened to be music I love, and I imagined this person’s soul as it were, sharing a wall with mine. I imagined this person as a future friend/lover, I imagined this person’s quiet kitchen warming a quiet meal. I didn’t imagine this person as male or female, like I often do, I imagined this person as a person. I imagined the two of us in cutaway pictures of apartments where everyone lives together but everyone lives alone. I imagined the two of us knocking on walls to communicate. I imagined playing an a cappella song of my own as a signal back to this person. I imagined us being at least something like neighbors. I imagined us progressing, building towards home.

I would’ve imagined more, but that’s when I realized I had left my iPod on and the music was coming from the headphones on my dresser.

I looked outside my third floor window again, and I saw the walls of the courtyard stretching too high and dark to see where the building ended and the night sky began.

I later imagined a big glass of milk and an episode of Scrubs.

Home is a Shifty Notion

2009-10-31T13:28:00.000-07:00

In response to Dual(ing).

Home is a Shifty Notion, watercolor on watercolor paper, approx. 3.5" x 5.25"

Trains

2009-10-28T21:03:00.000-07:00

In response to Cell Study; Binding Study (I think I responded to both, really)

The Western United States was built on the railroad, but now nobody there takes the train.

There were 14.7 million Amtrak rides in the West last year, and 24.0 million in the Northeast. Those are figures don’t include regional rail, and that’s a region that has less people.

When I was in college in the middle part of this decade, I took the train up and down the Pacific Northwest corridor quite a bit, and I never saw a train car even half full. There’s an odd loneliness to taking the train, where you can walk through the station and into the car and sit down and look out the window without ever having to talk to someone, so long as you purchased your ticket beforehand. As opposed to, say, an airport, where you have to get checked by twelve people just to get in the goddamn thing that’s going to take you somewhere. Even on a bus, you have to get your ticket checked and wade through dozens of people to get to your seat (And maybe it’s just me, but every Greyhound I’ve been on is still packed to the gills).

On a train, you just sit.

I took the train to New York when I left Oregon this summer. There are so many towns built on the railroad that are now languishing. Train platforms have an almost ghostly feel in the West, abandoned not only in the sense that the people who used them are gone, but also in the sense that the prosperity brought by the platforms allowed the people to move away, buy cars, and let the weeds grow. The little platform just a tiny cell that always dies, sooner or later.

This is changing, of course. The green movement rightfully jizzes rainbows over rail. Ridership’s going up as the recession and gas price gyration causes people to sell their cars. California voters approved a multi-billion dollar initiative to install high-speed rail through their state. And there’s the stimulus money. Yes.

The cells of platforms might get to start up again. (The rockin’ thing about machines, it turns out, is that they don’t have to die.) The weeds will probably be mowed again soon. I wonder if they’ll spring up again around the highways? It’s doubtful yeah, but I can only imagine how doubtful the obsoletion of the railroad was in 1909, how unforeseen that the strength of the pumping arteries of track and rail would, in decades, be more visible from museums than from open sky.

Cell Study; Binding Study

2009-10-24T15:10:00.000-07:00

In response to How Not To Be A Smoker
(You can choose one, or both; I did them one right after the other.)

Cell Study, watercolor on bristol paper, approx. 3.25" x 3"

Binding Study, watercolor on bristol paper, approx 5" x 4.75"

Dual(ing)

2009-10-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

This is in response to Boulder + Bloodfruit

When I was ten years old, in 1998, my mom and stepdad and I moved from Morden, Manitoba, Canada, to Eugene, Oregon, USA. I’ve gone back to Canada several times a year since, as my entire family’s still there, excepting my stepsiblings who joined us in Oregon years later.

There’ve been certain times since 1998, while in either country, that I've felt homeless, lost, a half-citizen of two countries, neither of which quite fit. This is, of course, unadulterated bullshit.

A closer reality is the opposite: I actually have two homes, and two countries I can fit into my identity and claim privilege to, and most of the time, “homeless” is not as adequate as a description of my nationalistic feelings as is, “this is fucking sweet”.

As long as I’m a nomad, I’m fine. If America ever elects Bush III and reinstates the draft, I can jaunt back up to Canada. If Stephen Harper ever guts the social health system, I can merrily tear up my Social Insurance Number card and set up shop in Massachusetts. And if global warming nukes the planet and turns Oregon into Waterworld, I can make a new home in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, where real estate prices, by the way, are marvelously low. And I can vote in both countries. It’s a good life.

Perceptions of countries are marvelously simplistic. Canada is cold, America is warm. Canada is safe, America is dangerous. Canada is full of nice people who will offer you freshly-tapped maple syrup, America is full of douchebags who will tell you to go fuck yourself. America has unparalleled military might, Canada has unparalleled canoes. To the Americans, Canada is a big Minnesota, to the Canadians, America is a big Calgary (or Toronto, depending).

The list goes on and ranges from half-truths to complete lies, and both countries can take on the same traits if you get ambiguous enough. For example, one country is full of tough pioneers who could beat up grizzly bears with their bare hands, while the other country is full of dough-bellied cowards.

One perception seems to be consistent: Canada is unchanging, America is dynamic. America is always the leaking, splitting, throbbing entity that reinvents itself. The world hears of its elections, riots, crimes, discoveries, and falls in love and hate with the country over and over again, with its successes, its disasters. While Canada is static, stoic. Hard, unchanging. Unrevolutionary. The small boulder pressing on the gigantic blood fruit.

"Boulder + Bloodfruit"

2009-10-20T10:31:00.000-07:00

Boulder + Bloodfruit, pastel pencil on bristol, approx. 4.5" x 6.5 "