Girl is an Island

In response to The Beach.

Girl is an Island, detail
Girl is an Island, gouache and traces of pencil on bristol paper, 10 1/2" x 13 1/2"

The Beach

In response to Bits and Pieces (Real Bodies)

She is walking through downtown. It’s the kind of downtown with buildings that rarely go above two floors and never five. She hears a band playing in a parking lot and goes to watch. She is really, really high. A dog runs up to her. She scratches it behind the ears.

It is hot. It has been so, so hot. It’s getting hotter. She was wearing a very thin hooded sweatshirt but now she takes that off. She had a two-piece bathing suit on under her clothes but now she takes her pants off too. She is sweating. She hates sweating.

Nobody in the parking lot is really looking at her because some other people have already taken their clothes off too and by now it’s sort of old news.

Bits and Pieces (Real Bodies)

In response to Full.

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

Army

In response to Dependents.

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

Dependents

(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.

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.