A Hidden Lover

ED, A Woman and a Bull, acrylic on canvas, 48X40, 2012

Shut down the engine and put feet on the ground. Walk a parallel trail. It leads through the law land and up into the highland, along the fast stream, across the rolling fields and crawls under the thick, dark, tall, smelly spruces. Here it gets too late and time to rush back, to get feet off the ground and start up the engine again.

Today the smell is strong, the shadows are dark, the trunks are tall, the fur is thick and I step into the interior of the spring. Does this trail ever end? Distant highway rings reality, but the voice of a single bird rings louder.  Someone lures, beckons, wants me there and I jump over another puddle. Fresh spruce sap makes me drunk and feeble at knees.  The bleeding trees. The heads of four tallest spruces are broken and dropped on the branches of surrounding trees.  I scan the ground for a fallen aircraft but find no wracked wings in the deep purple of rhododendron blossom.

In the future I brought you there. “It’s going to get a little wet,” I warned, “ the path never quite dries around here.” Your sandals sank, and you jumped over a puddle splashing ankles with dirt. With you I felt, as always, a little lonely except for a hidden lover. The day was hot. With you I felt, as always, a little guilty, apologizing for a long hike, promising that we are almost there.

I dropped my sandals on the sandy bank; you kept yours on. We walked into the creek. The floor was slanting towards the deeper end. Stunned with a sudden chill I paused watching you going under, fishlike, then flipping over and floating in the fast current to the bent trunk of leaning tree.  I made a few steps towards the opposite bank and fell tripped by an underwater rock.  I caught the bump of precipitous bank and grabbed it letting the rapid rinse the rest of me.

You floated by looking in the sky and bumping into occasional rocks. “I float with the speed of clouds in the sky,” you said, “want to try?” I didn’t trust the stream, but followed you learning to enjoy. After a few bumps I turned over and got onto my knees. In this position I brought myself up to the bank. The clouds of silky-smooth clay rose in the water where I touched the floor.  I broke a small lamp from the wall of the bank and squeezed it in my fist. Pale worms slithered between my fingers. I soaped clay onto my skin and lifted legs to dry. 

You passed me walking up the stream. “Look,” I said. You asked, “What's that?” I pointed to the bump, “It’s clay. Help me with my back,” and took the bra off. “Sure,” you said, and spread the clay over my back missing spots. “Did you cover it all?” I asked. “Yes.” “Do I look like a Greek goddess?” “Yes. “  I picked another lump. “Your turn,” I said and began smoothing your shoulders slowly progressing down to make your back shine like a Greek sculpture. Coming to the waist I pulled your shorts down. 

My palms get used to the clay. I smoothed a dent in the bank for a seat, spread some on my stomach and breast and fell back to dry. 

Naked in the day’s light you were a little shy. “Good,” you mumbled and glanced around, “the road is too close…” “ Don’t worry, everyone’s at the shore on the Forth of July, and who would want to walk in such a heat, anyway?” I was sitting in the throne of clay submerged in shallow water; you knelt making your way towards me, but slipped. Supporting myself on elbows, I moved towards you to ease your access. Clouds of clay around us spread thicker polluting clear stream at our feet.  My balancing act and your getting hard in cold water was so possible compare to our togetherness. 

I arched and faced exposed roots of fallen trees like thousand penises above my head. Old plastic bags from many floods were glued to some of them like used condoms. An emerald growth squeezed thousands penises in chocking embraces and poisoned them with thousands kisses.  Lamenting our indissoluble separateness I let out a soft moan. You froze, “Someone’s coming here!” “What? I hear nothing…” Slowly I lifted my head and locked eyes with a blond wagging lab.

Hastily cleaned of clay I turned the river bend to face the company.  “Your dog loves water as much as we do,” I said cheerfully, and pat the dog’s head, “yes, you, sweet, little doggie!” They saw our shirts on the bank, but I could tell that the sight of my bikini threw the lady off a little: she definitely though that it was out of place in given circumstances. Her husband, on another hand, looked at me favorably.

You entered the scene carried by the soft current with the speed of the clouds in the sky.  “My husband,” I explained. “He loves water!” “This is too creepy!” the lady cried. “Ah-ha-ha,” echoed her husband, “the water must be refreshing!”

You walked in front of me crossing the sandy bank. “Wait,” I plead, “ these shells hurt my soles!” “Put on your sandals,” you suggested. “I can’t,” I said, “I like to feel the ground with bare feet.”

The trees had lost their heads. I pointed at them to you, “What do you think has happened here?” I asked. “I don’t know,” you answered.

M-I-S-T

ED, Portrait of Mochtar, detail,  acrylic on Mylar, 2014

Behind the vinyl curtain, my bare ass pressed tight against the cool smooth bottom of the basin, the basin gradually filling with hot, hot… 

I definitely am alone here, and the grid of old ceramic tiles cages the misty automatic breath of ventilation. Running water always brings the feeling indescribable in adjectives but so undeniably mine that it makes me believe that it was the first registered awareness of experienced personhood. I hold it before letting run in-between full thighs mixing bubbling amber with clear water. The goose bumps on my shoulders are dissolving, too. 

Silver yearning of the full bladder contains my hidden identity intertwined with gender, and maybe gender first, but what a bliss of beastly freedom to let it stream without changing position without shame or hygienic concern, because it spells, it spills the return to my beginning! 

I am… a diaphanous curtain that hides and reveals

I am a grid of logic, simple and flat: it measures all the shapeless entities and fixes them with points of reference 

I am a mist, and here, especially here in the short, sweet sound formed with four letters, m-i-s-t, I feel my skin again, ah, crawling with delight and a little leftover releases without an effort and overflows the tub 

I am a clear drop of mist on ceramic tabula rasa

I am  a mechanical breath of ventilator as long as the switch is on

I am a white basin containing my body submerged in my own pee diluted in H2O to the point of insignificance 

I am a basin containing something submerged in the pure water, but more importantly - 

I am a drain.          

Death of You

 ED, "Underground Bull Sheet", digital photo 2014

Now, that I opened clear page, what is stopping me from shitting on it?

Your judgment!

Every thought passing my mind is subjected to it and none is strong enough to stand its ground. How do I even move my finger or turn my head without sensing your gaze? More than a century passed after the Death of God, but I still tremble, for now it is your turn to accuse me in shallowness, platitudes and plagiarisms. Who are you, my critic, curator, hypothetical reader, common sense, public opinion, estimate sum of everything? Tell me how to count calories, gain points, improve my smile, write “LOL”, stop on red, vote for democrats, benefit those less fortunate, and have better sex.

Who will proclaim the Death of You and if someone does, will it help anyone to shit on clear page? 

Blood on Her Panties

ED, 2008, Crouching, acrylic on canvas, 48X54

When the first smear of blood showed on my panties I had been waiting for it forever. I felt guilty that it came too late. I had great expectations of sex. I was disgusted with my reflection in the mirror. I had huge sexual desires. I had terrible fear of sex. I stained my bottoms. I had jolts in the abdomen every time I accidentally touched a man. I was sickened with adult men. The present was unbearable. The future was great. My face was blushing with acne. My periods were irregular. My PMSs were torturous. My body was long and skinny. My heir was greasy. My chest was flat. I wore my brother’s clothes. People took me for a boy. Boys didn’t take me seriously. I didn’t know who I was.

When the postpartum bleeding gave way to the long periods of menstrual interruption I felt stupid.  I felt overweight. I was consumed with my baby. I was not interested in sex. My breasts were heavy and bursting with milk. My nipples were leaky and sore. I stained my tops. I missed sexual desire. I felt unattractive. I was deprived of sleep. I compensated by eating. I didn’t have time for myself. The present was forever. The future never came. I had bliss from my baby’s physical presence. I craved a moment away from my baby. I reacted to any “ma” sound in the universe. I heard every stir coming from my baby’s cradle. My home was my castle. My home was my prison. My home was my workplace. I got complemented on my children. I didn’t know who I was.

After the last drop of blood faded from my underwear I lost my lust.  Sweat stained my sweaters. I acquired the past. The future became the present. I was liberated from the threat of next pregnancy. Sexual fantasies, awareness of glances in my direction, and glances in my direction never distracting me again. I stopped feeling like my daughter, talking like my daughter, thinking like my daughter, acting like my daughter, and got rid of immortality, negligence towards achievements, and irritation with my family.  I knew who I was. I didn’t know what the shit it meant.

Recycle!

ED, 2012, A Bull, Acrylic on Mylar, 48X30

Bacteria are the source of disease.  Or, rather, bacteria are the carrier of disease, because we know how to kill bacteria, but we cannot kill disease. Disease reappears and mutates in form of other carriers. We may imagine that there is a source of disease like some reproductive code that makes diseases reproduce and mutate in form of bacteria.

The same goes to consciousness, oddly adjacent to the syndrome of self-reflection. Humans are only the carriers of consciousness although for the reason of self-reflection, we associate our death with the death of consciousness. The sight of human corpse makes us forget about more primitive organisms, arresting our ability to realize that consciousness, like disease, reappears in the form of other carriers.

As species, we are ludicrously self-centered. We cannot take eyes away from the mirror to notice that the world doesn’t exist exclusively for us. Even if by now we are logically or scientifically ready for such realization, we act like we never are.

It is evident in our avoidance of death, for instance. Only because we don’t believe in the reproductive code do we marinate the precious quantum of consciousness in deteriorated brains by suspending death like the worst of evils. Whereas if we considered our consciousness as simply one of the manifestations of nature, or one of the forms of universal existence, we would, no doubt, embrace the idea of recycling.   
With our very limited consciousness we foolishly engage in fighting death. 
Why we are so buried in our infinitely limited self-image?  Why cannot we see a bigger picture? Why don’t we want our shit to decompose naturally?

Adam's Misunderstanding

ED. 2008, Point Is, acrylic on canvas, 58X30

Jesus came to lift stigma form old good Serpent, an innocent victim of Adam’s misunderstanding.

Serpent came to visit Eve, when she was alone. It was those times when Eve and Adam lived together still unconsciously and felt like in paradise. Serpent looked like a snake. He showed Eve the tree of knowledge; she bit from the fruit and aroused in consciousness. Still naïve, Eve shared it with Adam. When Adam saw reality he thought it was a punishment. Naturally, he blamed Eve.  Adam’s misunderstanding led him to use consciousness to seek ways to the lost paradise.

Jesus was a revolutionary, who didn’t keep a journal. He liked women’s company and asked disciples to be wise like serpents. He learned it from the Heathens.

Heathens to this day consider Serpents the source of life, but Adam continues to insist on power and logic. Adam uses his freedom to create systems. Serpent, who moves like water, easily escapes labyrinths of any system, and this is what Adam hates. He keeps calling Serpent the devil and every woman the devil’s tool.

Good Taste

ED, 2010, Siblings, acrylic on polymer, 11X9

Art is in losing it. I noticed how effortlessly the guys at the counter were brewing coffee. When I do an operation like that in my kitchen I don’t like to be watched. I always spill coffee grains on the counter spooning it from a grinder to a pot. My guests might think it's cool. I am the only one in town cooking turkish coffee at home.

I leaned over the table and whispered, “ I like it when they are not aware of their style…” Phil smiled and said, “It is a style, ma.”

Shit, nothing is perfect!

One of them popped up at our table and asked. “May I clean these cups for you?” “We are still working on it,” Philip replied. Anna came back with more  pour-over style coffee. She showed us the list of natural flavors like they do for wines. “You might like to know that I heard about your place in Miami,” I said to barista. He cocked his head to the left and shifted his right leg, “Really?” and his eyebrows flew up. Shit! Phil was right. Everything is style.

Style is the language we use when we dig one other. Every day American culture tills new acres of style by commercializing idiosyncratic tastes.

“I dig your style,” I heard on the street. I wore tight dress tied in the nut at the knee length. He wore bare muscles disguised under a purple tank. We may dig each others style without sharing tastes.

Unlike styles, describable and categorized, tastes remain a mystery.

Cutting-edge artists of all countries, please, use safety ropes! Your occupation is dangerous! You conquer inches of undiscovered taste every day!

Style belongs to human culture; taste is in the realm of the universe. Taste is like a thought; no one knows where it  comes from.

How do we now if the taste is good when it is new, when no one taught it in college? How do we know if idea is palpable, if we didn’t try it? People say, “O, but there are those who know… those who can tell.” Maybe, but still…
  
People of all countries, let go! Art is in losing it. We will never find a new expression unless we take a risk to dare. I know a secret. Ideas come from elsewhere, when we lose guard. Loosen up, friends! Art is in loosing shit.

How About a Hike?

Friederike Bear, 2014, Devil's Pool at Wissahickon Park, Philadelphia, PA, Digital Photo

Today I was planning on going on a hike, but decided to check my emails first. The news was bad on unemployment. I got anxious. What if my agency gets closed? No one is protected after all! I almost closed my computer when ads in the right column captured my attention. Meet a Catholic bachelor, buy sexy runway boots, go on a diet, get a new you!

If my company gets out of business how can I afford that?

I was ready to go on a hike but on the bottom of the page I saw an ad on penis enlargement. I am a woman, but what if my man unconsciously suffers? Penis enlargement is a multimillion industry, I heard. Indirectly it keeps people employed, directly it makes them happy, or other way around. The feeling is mutual. We are all in it together.

If I go on a hike, who am I helping?

On the outdoors trail I might lose a few pounds of my precious weight, and feel better about my selfish self without buying a pair of sexy runway boots, or meeting a Catholic bachelor.  I might meet a few dogs with their antisocial owners, but where would we order drinks? I might see a stork flying low in a narrow corridor over a misty creak, but who would I pay for the spectacle? I might work out my muscles without hiring a personal trainer.

We are all in it together. A hike on a trail may be helping anxieties, but not economy.

I get up on my feet and drove to CVS. There, at the drive-through window I picked up an anti-anxiety drug, the remedy for all problems. It would keep me calm and our jobs secure. Millions of people all over the country would wake up tomorrow to go to their work places at doctors’ offices, universities, science labs, pharmaceutical companies, drug warehouses and retail pharmacies locations. Good morning, America! Good shit to keep you running!

Seven Years

ED. 2013, Sad Books, acrylic on Mylar, 48X30

A woman across the table squeezes Elmer’s glue on the grid and picks one colored square from a plate. She stretches it out into my face, “Elena, what color is it? It’s purple, a-a-a-a,” and presses it onto the paper missing the grid, then leaks extra glue from her fingers. “Good job,” I echo.

For years her mom makes her follow the grid employing me to assist her, but I am poorly fit for the job. I question the reasonability of the task and admire the capriciousness of voluntary results. She misses the grid but hits my definition of art. What her mom envisions her doing may also be art. In fact, I would totally look at it as art have I not known her mother. O, my god! What am I saying? I don’t know… Is it not art?

I like this plate on the table. Elmer’s glue smeared over the replicated 19^th century design makes it look like a mistake.

At night, before falling asleep, I see ever-changing images floating in the cups of my eyelids. Mark once said called them hallucinations. I was surprised that he didn’t have them, too, but not all artists do.

To help me, he searches Internet to show me works of portrait painters who have made it. I eagerly examine their work and try to imitate, the exercise inevitably making me feel empty. I cannot be shaped like that. We have very different ways of approaching art. Could it be that we have married by mistake? It only can be bad for him because I like mistakes.

For seven years I have been applying to one established career development nonprofit, piling tons of art production each year. On the first year I showed my melted bottles. On the second year I submitted monochrome paintings marked by unfettered depression.  On the third year I offered genre paintings with moments in lives of people with intellectual disabilities. On the fourth year I applied with paintings based on the dreamt myth of a woman and a bull. On the fifth year I sent colorful portraits of elderly people with butterfly wings. By then my art production multiplied faster than I had chance to submit. I worked on a series of paintings on photo paper based on the snapshots and in the size of snapshots; I also started painting on bed sheets and old ornate scarfs, and at the time of submission I proposed my mixed media layered panels build with old domestic scrap like our kids’ bed sheets and my grandma’s wallpapers. In my project I made painted imitations of family photos once covering the walls of her bedroom. I didn’t even bother to check mail for rejection letters this time busy portraying homeless on the streets, and Jenkintowners in my studio. On the seventh year I submitted nothing. If they were sensitive to art, they might have written me a letter of acceptation since it was as good a shit as any other from the previous years, but seven years may be enough time for me to grow independent.  

      

The Nature of Life

E.D. 2012, A Woman and a Skull, mixed media32X23

One afternoon when I was eleven, I ironed my underwear in the grandma's room. I was simply following Russian rule imposed by people like my parents who lived through the hardships of the WW2. Ironing killed germs. While the stainless boat of electric iron cruised pale underwear, my thoughts sank in painful memory. The day before at school I leaned forward to a girl sitting in front of me and whispered in her ear, “I, too, was at the local theater last night with my parents…” She didn't react, and I tapped her on her shoulder. Her discerning gaze electrocuted me, and I was burning since. My mother entered the room. “At what age children usually stop being ashamed for what they have done yesterday?” I asked. “This is a very grown up question,” she answered.

“Don’t say, don’t look, don’t touch, don’t dare,” still keep me paralyzed. Do I really want them to like me so much? I see them like through a fog. Who are they? What do they care? What if they don’t? This is even a creepier thought. What if no one watches, no one judges, no one orders, no one commissions, no one expects, no one notices? What if I am all on my own doing what I want to do?

I am in a crowded café, and people around me don’t care. The letters I type on my laptop are illuminating on the wall over my head. No one reads. I am locking eyes with a woman, who gives me a polite smile. Others keep chewing. What if a bomb goes off?

When a bomb goes off, a stranger doesn’t smile while others keep chewing. When a though goes off people take away their gaze from the screens. But thinkers are covered better than bombers in healthy societies. For a thought to be noticed, it should be born within a field surveyed by coworkers. Outside professional fields random thoughts primitive like viruses may be contagious. They may circulate effortlessly for a short time to give a way to the next variation. In healthy immune systems viruses pass away within a few weeks, but we don’t risk waiting. We use injections to kill germs without electric irons. It saves us domestic labor and is good for economy since it creates numerous jobs. Domestic labor spreads inequality. A girl standing alone at an ironing board kills germs slowly and ineffectively with the side effect of unchecked thinking unless wearing earphones. A girl stepping out of her grandma’s room with an i-phone next to her ear enters a flow and experiences delirium of global belonging. She acquires a holistic point of view killing germs and circulating effortlessly, changing variations as a flow goes. Everything is interconnected, pain can be numbed, consciousness, too, and the only thing hurting remains unseen.

The nature of life.

Tell me a story, or offer me an explanation. A woman conceives immaculately, and a rich dad gives an education; six cups of water a day keep me healthy as does colonoscopy after fifty, and the only thing to fear is unpredictability. Everything is interconnected, a stationary bike and a heartbeat, the world economy and psychology, my thought process and the mass media. The only thing still out of the loop is the nature of life and we are stuck in a long line to the only exit guaranteed guarded by the end-of-life multibillion-shit industry that keeps us breathing. 

Free Will

E.D. 2008, A Portrait of a Young Woman, acrylic on canvas 24x36"

When it comes to the question of free will, people disagree with each other. Religious say that there is a free will, but skeptics argue. Mustn’t there be a free will to will this discussion? But many philosophers doubt the existence of the mind. It’s puzzling, right? It must be a mind to mind it, but the problem of the mind is that it escapes definitions…

Motivation is immediate when it comes to survival and procreation.

Motivation is strong when it comes to social acceptance and power.

Motivation is rotten when it comes to arbitrary decision-making.

We always question the shit.

Repetition helps. When we do thing repetitively the sensibility of the thing doesn’t bother us too much. We doubt even less when a group is involved in repetitive activities. We feel well at peace when we belong to the group involved in repetition.

If we received no orders, demands or requests, we are in all sorts of doubts whether we should initiate a thing. We tend to comply when we get an assignment unless we are teenagers, whose human brain is rapidly developing at the moment and defies assignments.

Here is an evolutional pattern that happens inside human sculls: first, a reptile brain grows, second, a brain of a herd animal, and finally, a human brain.  The first two are very old and work automatically. The third brain is wrought with doubt.

What is a human brain, anyway? Isn’t it the zone in the pre-frontal lobe, which is said to be responsible for setting arbitrary goals and making independent decisions, taking stupid risks against instinctive fears and braking away from the herd against all odds? Isn't it the latest step in natural evolution? Aren't we, as a part of nature and the brain's carriers suffering from the growth pains along with the whole nature? Doesn't it manifest itself in discomfort of doubts, guilt, madness, intellectual disabilities, harm to the others and ourselves, environmental destruction, and shit like that?

Religions has been developing all along with the human brain to take care of gross discrepancies. Their rules and prohibitions mean to deal with the harms and suffering associated with brain functions. If we take a careful look, we may even notice that the younger, more developed religions worship of all things the brain itself, or rather the indefinable phenomenon we call intellect and somehow link to it. Christianity calls it Logos as oppose to Chaos, and God-our-Father as oppose to Mother Nature. It makes it responsible for creation but separates it from nature and human consciousness. This separation leads to contradictions. Some religions overcome it by including mind of all sorts as well as Mother Nature in the overall holistic picture. 

Historically, religion was the first PR tool used to manipulate masses by provoking and comforting guilt and doubt. Guilt and doubt that people experience when they suddenly get an idea of doing something new, unconventional, something maybe unreasonable, or totally unsolicited. Religion calls this function of human brain a free will, sometimes praising it but mostly reproaching.

The development of human brain, aka free will, is a very young phenomenon in natural evolution so some people tired of social and individual controversies it creates suggest to deny its existence.

I, personally  don’t deny the freewillshit and struggle for social acceptence while producing unsolicited art.

From the Head of a Russian Woman

 

E.D. 2012, A Woman and a Bull, acrylic on Russian babushka, 30x30"

 

I am the Bull born from the head of Russian woman. She is spun of chromosomes of primitive slavery. Barrenness is in her blood; bleakness is in her cortex. Her thoughts are the unclean boggy soil, inseminated by weird folklore. They leak through the scull staining archaic head-cover. Grandmother wore it on her head, as did her grandmother’s grandmother, each generation passing the old custom to their daughters, each daughter striving to shake it off. Grandmother folds babushka neatly and hangs it on the back of the chair next to her bed to stare at the recurrence of pattern. Floral clusters oozes into her corpus callosum, and then discards into her granddaughter’s thoughts where shit is born.

Overproduction

 E.D. 2011, Butterfly Portraits 7, acrylic on canvas, 46x56"

Like anything else in the world the visual art shit is overproduced. There is no more sense in producing new visual art shit than in any other shit production. The only sense to produce more visual art shit is that the visual art is the only shit production that consciously attempts to overcome sense.

Teeth

  the shady creek bed

I found teeth in the bed of a dry creek on the way to the cliff.  I was not looking for teeth there, and when I spotted them among the pebbles and broken pieces of melted bottles, I crouched to take a better look. At the beginning, covered in mud they looked unrecognizable, and only when I picked them up with my two fingers and brought them closer to my eyes the picture gradually became clear: I was holding a lower jaw of unknown human with my bare hand. But instead of dropping it on the floor, I dropped it into my pocketbook.

The thought that the jaw might have been made of gold occurred later, and prompted me to wash it with soap and sponge.  Yellow metal was shiny and without rust.  Like anyone else I was looking for the meaning, especially in the situation like that, when dressed in tight summer dress and high-heeled sandals I started on the perilous path to a cliff and got distracted by unusual deposit on the polluted bed of a dry shadowy creek. The meaning in this case was: look where others don’t and you will find gold!

I had other reasons to use 20 odd minutes in my schedule between two compensated job assignments to take a walk on the cliff. The cliff precipitated over the intersection of Belmont Avenue and Rock Hill Road, and gave a feel of desolation to everyone who ventured there from the surrounding streets of cheerful suburban community. To pause on it’s edge some sixty feet above the blight industrial park relieved the stress of senselessness. The gold found on this path had a double potential to make sense: as an overall philosophical justification of unconventional ways, and as an extra buck.  

That evening I showed teeth to my family at the dinner table. It freaked everyone out; they laughed, but my husband said that it would be a hard sale.

A week later I had an orthodontist appointment in Ambler. At the end I took the jaw out of my pocketbook and showed it to the hygienist. The dental artistry of the porcelain teeth on the golden plate delighted her. She called the doctor, and together they estimated it in about four to five hundred dollars. The receptionist who peaked in the doorway suggested taking it to Sam. Sam had a gold-buying business on Butler Pike only couple blocks down the street. They knew him because their patient, a nice old lady, carried homemade cookies down to his store every time she came for an appointment. Sam was a high-school buddy of her late son.

Pale blue gems of Sam’s eyes set in the copper of thin eyelids made me realize that I didn’t even know the current price of gold. He took out his cell phone and theatrically pinched a number to find out the exact exchange rate, but no one answered. “According to yesterday’s rate,” he said, “this much gold would cost ninety-seven dollars,” and he took out the money, which I accepted.

I was driving away when at the sight of obese water tower on the intersection of Butler Pike and Church Road I heard a call from the teeth, “You sold us unfairly!” I turned my car back with the squeak in the wheels. Now driving towards Sam’s bulletproof door I imagined his freckled face. I couldn’t think of a single argument. I forgot my cellphone at home, I didn’t know the exchange rate, and I was at risk to be late for work. At the red light at Ambler train station I made a careful U-turn. Passed obese water tower the pressure started building up again. Who cares what the argument, I must face the scoundrel!

Sam rendered surprise on his inert face. He stood me up at the door while looking for keys. “I changed my mind,” I said putting money on the counter, “give me back my teeth.” “But I cannot,” he argued, “it’s already in the truck!” “What truck?” I wondered. “The truck, which takes my gold to the smith.” “Where is the truck?” “In the back of the office.” “Go there and get my teeth!” “But I cant. They are mixed with all other teeth there.” “How often people bring you teeth for sale?” “You would be surprised.” “I remember my teeth very well. I will recognize them.” “But I cannot leave you here alone, when I go looking for them.” “I will wait outside.” “Give me fifteen minutes.” And I found myself outwitted again.

Fifteen minutes later, fingers jitter, he opened a plastic sandwich bag with a few miniscule remnants of golden plate buried under the dust of crushed teeth. “So,” I said, “that’s what worth ninety seven dollars? Thank you for honesty. I am just coming from the orthodontist office up the street. They recommended you as an honest man. They have seen the teeth.  I can call them as witnesses to verify that it cannot be all the gold I brought here.” With a little more copper in his face he took out a hundred dollar bill from his wallet. “I can give you another hundred dollars and that’s to my disadvantage.”  “It is not what the gold was worth!” “Two hundred and fifty dollars altogether. I am losing money on this deal because I don’t want you to spread a bad word about me.” The jitter spread to my fingers when I stuck money in my pocketbook.

melted jars in the creek bed

 The debris that made me wonder up the bed of the dry creek contained melted glass bottles. In the past I did a project where I stained used jars and bottles, broke them and arranged the pieces to restore the original shape the best I could. I fired them in the kiln to the melting point to see if their brokenness could be mended. The melting temperature for glass is over 1000 degrees. 

I climbed up that creek next day to look for answers. There were no signs of the body of unknown human whose teeth I just sold and I found only a few more pieces of melted glass. The climb ended at the open mouth of an underground pipe. I had no way of finding out where this shit originated.

 

jars and bottles from my kiln

At Her B(r)east

 

 E.D. A Family, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 54x54

Breastfeeding. Is it animal-like?  I craved it with each of three fruitful and abhorred pregnancies. The first draw. Deep pleasure underneath the pain surface. It starts at the abdomen's bottom filling me up and swirling around the breasts, then erupts inside the head and rushes out of the swollen nipples. The labor of the newborn at my labor's finale. The sweaty freeze.

 A woman outside  her job placement. Is she animal-like? All the fashions in the world cannot kill her everlasting natural nature. Male's torso in the back is the reference to the Bull, of cause. His head is out of picture. It is not time for thinking. The Nature whipshit.     

Money

Too bad, we don't appreciate money as an artifact.
A copper penny is more expensive to make than a dollar bill, which once was in gold.
When money go virtual, owning a dollar bill will be prestigious.
Money has always been in our heads rather then pockets or banks.
Coins were used for the lack of math skills, like children's fingers to count their age.
Soon we all will remember the forgotten fact, which will make bills unnecessary, that money represents relationships.
Virtual money will replace paper like facebook likes, and the truism about serving two lords now conveniently located under one umbrella will make the headacheshit unbearable.



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Love One Another

E.D. A Love Scene. 2009 Acrylic on canvas, 50x60"

I look at the familiar face to see unfamiliar. The person behind the face is unknown. Facial features, facial expressions don’t reveal anything about the person behind the face, but there is also no such thing as behind. The person is the face.

I look at my face in the mirror to see unfamiliar. Behind the face I am unknown. Facial features, facial expressions don’t reveal anything, but there is also no such thing as behind. I am the face.

Religion teaches that god knows me; teology teaches that god cannot be known. I cannot know the god who knows me. So what do I do? I fall in love. If I am too old to fall, I just love.

In love I desire to know and to be known. I desire to dissolve completely in the poor fellow I love.

Sex, of cause, is the most obvious way to pursue this desire, but I am ultimately unsuccessful in it. I am tempted to buy every magazine in supermarket promising to reveal the secret of successful sex. 


But recently I realized that successful sex is in the way of thinking. 

 
Leave the preoccupied consciousness behind to enter the realms of unconscious. There everything is the successful sex!

The greatest pleasure comes from the experience of oneness, like in a mother and a baby. Starting to engage in efforts of self-assertion, we have lost it forever. Blame the prefrontal lobe whose uncontrollable growth gives the mature consciousness superiority over poor infantile unconscious, like eating an apple from the tree, like the original sin.  Ovaries and testicles ripen at the same time giving an impression that sin is in the sex.


How confusing! Sex helps to overcome separateness and connect the mature human non-animals with the world, whereas consciousness triggers self-conscious, ambitious and egotistic, and prevents people from kissing each other. 

There is nothing left for poor non-beasts but to wait for the death's eternal kiss, the one that brings back the lost infantile experience of oneness. It comes in the aroma of final dissolution of our ever-unfamiliar faces, like paradise, like shit. 

Gender Relationships

ED. From "A Woman and a Bull" series, 2010 Acrylic on canvas 24x36"

Gender relationships can be complicated. Take this for instance, a woman being born from the bull’s carcass. The bull, no doubt, represents a man. Or should we look at it from a different angle? Say, every bull has a chick inside. To me it certainly looks like a woman’s sexy torso “dressed” in the armor of the bull’s ribs. The bull, no doubt, represents a man. Is she killing the dude? Or could it be that when she is wormed up and ready to be alive, the guy is already done? Or is she compelled to pry-open the cage, which by circumstance happened to be her husband’s ribs?

And what the heck? The shit is headless anyway!