As Above So Below

In response to Reversals.

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

Reversals

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.

Migrator I & II

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

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.

God Doesn't Believe in Miracles I & II

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

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.

Forever

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.