BibimMaum

"It's surveillance," he said

Gap toothed grin

Wide as a broken bridge

My mum surprised me with a visit

She brought whole wheat raisin date bread she'd made, a small tower of oatmeal, two gorgeous bell peppers from Winco, one red one green, and concord grapes.

I ate the grapes and drove. I miss driving. I take corners really hard.

We went for groceries. I told her I was going to get eggnog. She looked at me like I was crazy but said alright. I didn't get the eggnog. There was a little kid crying on the tarmac. We lol'd.

On the drive back, I started eating the skins of the grapes.

In the parking lot, she gave me the oatmeal, the peppers, the grapes, the groceries, and some winter clothes saran-wrapped together. Hugged me twice. Told me she was proud. She doesn't tell me how long we'll be able to keep the house. I didn't take my coat off. I didn't take the little jar of kimchi she offered.

Strange thing--despite it being filled to the brim with moving numbers, keeping it there, against me, there, I am not tempted to count. I stare at the numbers and they are like another language.

I am learning to move without counting, just as I had to learn how to draw people without first drawing sticks and knobs and structure. When first I drew torsos, I drew blind shapes--a concave, or else a convex, or else a straight drop through the legs to the feet (I had no conception of the complexity of legs and thighs). Later, I would structure the flesh around a cursory knowledge of bones--here is the ribcage, here are the hips, here are the shoulders--and mark them out, as if to go "look--this skin follows bones, and bones are real." But the arms looked so stiff and angular. I still draw angularly--there is a pleasure in it. But I only occasionally think of bones now--more often, I think of the flesh that pinches behind the legs and where muscles bunch when the hips are twisted away from the ribs or crunched up to the torso. I do not draw these things before I draw the skin layer--I just try and think about them as I draw the skin.

This is what I am learning to do with time and, more generally, numbers and shit.

I want to tell a story. Long. Chapters.

I want to draw. Bodies. Palimpsests.

Squash