subtraction, by the numbers

The Illustration-Friday theme this week is subtract; this is a photo of the back room of my dad's pool hall, where accounting was done with a deck of cards.

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Painting on books -- hell, it's just like any painting, only varnished to protect it, and then you've got art to carry around and write in. Mysteriously. And if we're not here to make our co-workers jealous, to have just one more neat thing than they do, to make them twinge and twist in their seats, then what are we doing here?

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Yesterday was my birthday. I awoke with a sore throat. My tongue felt clotted, my voice felt scraped away. I went downstairs to my dark, cold kitchen and started a fire in the stove. Standing there, in those shadows winking darkly, I became aware of what a lump I was, how little I was aware of, how little I was thinking, how I was becoming used to not thinking, to living in this city of the non-thinking, the unthinking, and how, while this allowed me to go about my business, it made all the more painful those random moments of clarity, where the brain dot blinks insistently, becoming almost visible, like the sun behind thick cloud, life’s ambitions pulsing bleakly. Mixed media on hard cover (inside pages are lined); 7 x 9 inches.

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Almost nightly I had the same dream, this dream that has invited itself in throughout my life, arriving in clusters, as long as I can remember, and in this dream, this nightmare really, I am stuck in some kind of between-place, some vast apartment or series of rooms, shabby ones with white walls and cheap red carpeting, but mostly the place is fashioned in shadows, leading to those extra spaces of anterooms and closets that in turn open into secret areas, like playrooms for children, only empty and dingy and thick with cold, oppressive air, and I wander throughout the whole place, wondering why it has only a few sticks of furniture, and aware that for some reason I’m staying there even though I no longer live there, and I’m stuck, waiting for something to tell me to leave, while rain continually washes down the windows, which are covered with grime, and looking through them I see only forest, and darkness. Mixed media on leather book cover (inside pages are lined), 4.5 x 6.5 inches.

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Meanwhile, me and C have been busy with music (and addition).