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Showing posts from August, 2006

for illustration friday ... {run}

Pizarro -- like all the conquistadors -- arrived like a disaster. His little army of less than two hundred adventurers plundered an Inca empire of over five million. Those who didn't run (the Inca king Atahuallpa was captured and imprisoned, tried to buy his freedom with rooms filled with gold; in the end the Spaniards strangled him) died in heaps from a smallpox epidemic. When I look at Pizarro's picture, all I can think is: danger .

Victory is mine!

Jean-Paul Sartre, the original Mr.Happy, said: Once you hear the details of victory, it is hard to distinguish it from a defeat. I guess he was talking about all the blood and the horror and the heyheyhey, after which nobody gets a good night's sleep. Still, I'll take my chances with the side doing the celebratory looting. With that in mind, I'm happy to report that my own one-man, one-sided war with McSweeney's (see my first few cracks at it , and then this and this and this and even this for the proper background in this most righteous of fights) is finally over, their surrender coming in the form of publishing one of my lists . You can see it ... here . ;}

for illustration friday ... {play}

I went to see my niece Stella in Montreal this weekend, where we tried our best to fly a kite. I bought this particular kite because it had princesses on it (Disney pimps them out together like some kind of all-star act) but it seemed too small, while the wind was too gusty and wild and uncivilized. Still, she had great fun running up and down the field, kite bouncing along behind.

a do-over ... {capture} again

I wasn't happy with this (my latest contribution to Illustration Friday , entry below) so I worked it over. I can be fearless when something is fucked. 5x7 inches, canvas, about a dozen layers of paint. It's done now, beaten just enough, I hope.

for illustration friday ... {capture}

The caption/poem, which runs along the side of our heroine's pink dress, goes like this: to wear your wings like broken things and put my heart in a cage.

for illustration friday: {clean}

Is it clean? she asked. Not very, he said. But he wasn't looking, not really. You couldn't wash a heart with just a bucket. Anyway they needed more water, and the clouds were coming in.

a note for sugarbones

Still trying, in my intermittent way, to put up bits of writing, here and there. This poem appeared in the Volume 19 Number 2, Spring 1999 edition of the Pottersfield Portfolio , out of Sydney, Nova Scotia. a note for sugarbones I took down the Arbus clipping from the fridge. I used to press my palm to it in a drunken Saturday night prayer but now it just leers and I want it out of my mornings. Saturday night can stay where it is it's consumption made all the more conspicuous now that the furnace is cold filled with old letters and the resentment of discarded guests the boxes of guilty presents and bundles of cunning hope it all made beautiful blue flames for ahile but now the wires are burned black and none of that works anymore I want to walk through my week like a gentleman, enlightened by the grace of your trembling lips your sweetness your taste.