lives

I've gotten into the habit of drawing again. When I drew this I was staring at Virgin Mary candles lit up, eating fresh-baked pizza dripping with blue cheese and roasted apples, talking to many different people that night. I like how people get into very easy, rolling conversations here, no barriers. There were many life stories. It just takes so much less time to get to that point here.

There was a woman talking about her childhood in the South, about wandering through cypress trees with Spanish moss and pretty little towns disappearing under traffic lights and suburbs. There was a man after a big change speaking in exclamation points: "I'm still young! But the world is small. Everyone knows each other! Yes! I'm so happy I made this change!" and the bartender speaking in loud rollicking English accented with Russian recounting a bar fight the other night.

It was the night when everyone liked to tell me their hopes. I was especially jealous of a young man about to go travelling for the first time and move to another country; somehow, even though I am still touched by new things, nothing is quite the same as being really young and flying across an ocean for the first time. I wish I could forget a few of the things I have seen that are so wonderful, so that i could see them again for the first time.

Lately the weather has changed...the sky's gone out! The wildflowers blot out the sun and we're plunged into an ashen sky, something that the dinosaurs would feel. I like the mood though, to go from boiling heat into a nuclear winter. We went outside and drew on the chalkboard. It's infectious, this drawing. People called out to me on the street, harmless people, but quite strange. The colors were pale and rubbing on my fingers--I keep meaning to tear myself away from the computer and paint again, get my fingers wet with pigment, but it's never so.