It’s time for science.
It was less the feeling that the painter did not know what to paint than that he was housesitting in a fancy house whose floors were covered in persian rugs. Even the kitchen had its own knitted, potted plant growing in blue and maize onto a dried blood background on the floor. After inspection, the painter found no stains even on the kitchen rug, even on the off-white tassels that ended it on either side. Moving the rugs was out of the question–they were much too heavy and the painter had violent allergies. In ernest, the painter began an elaborate process of snipping garbage bags open and lashing them together into a crude covering with dental floss. Seeing that it would take him hours to cover the whole of the rug in a way that was precise enough to ease his anxiety, the painter put his forehead to the floor. Then he took out his sketchbook and a pen. He went into the living room, collapsed into a Louis XVI chair, and turned on the radio. After all, he thought, he could make do with a lesser art.
On the 4th of July this year, I drank 6 cups of coffee (5 french-pressed hot, one iced.) I read part of a book that was borrowed and part of one that I helped steal. I was wearing stripes but no stars when we stole it. There was an ornament hanging above the toilet in the house where I was staying that was a fat middle-aged mermaid wearing sunglasses. The people that surrounded me were all very amenable to trickery, mischief, and games– my favorite kind of people to be around during holidays. I rediscovered that my small Heart is actually large for an Apple. Today, on the 5th of July, I ate a banana for the first time in a long time. Shooting the moon is difficult. Below my eyes, some of the capillaries have inexplicably popped like red fireworks on a heat of white lighning.* The red car took us back to the grey house. In an hour, things will be lively again. Now August-bound darkness has just fallen.
*Heat lightning is a misnomer for the faint flashes of lightning on the horizon or other clouds from distant thunderstorms that do not have accompanying sounds of thunder.
