We've got it all right here, folks! Everything that's ever been written up, photographed, and discussed on the Sad Mag website. Enjoy browsing our archives!
Hot Art Wet City proves determined not to bore exhibition-goers: they could not see wordy artwork descriptions there even if they wanted to. At the 12th annual Hot One Inch Action last weekend, organizers Chris Bentzen and Jim Hoehnle proved yet again that art can be interactive, fun, and “buttonized”.
The show took place on a busy night full of events spread all over the city. The gallery’s iconic pink furry draw box stood in a corner of the main room, containing mysterious plastic bags of buttons. Inside each bag were five buttons—each printed with work by one of fifty local artists—ready to be mingled and adored.
I got to the event at its end. The smokers sat outside on the bench, while just under a dozen people remained inside the gallery—the last ones standing at what must have been a bustling party. The buttons hung on the walls, single-file: paintings and illustrations hemmed in tiny, circular borders. The curators had not attempted to make the works appear larger or more sophisticated than what they were, and this unconventional setup encouraged artists to fully express their creativity. The gallery looked comically empty by then, a stark contrast to the typical grandiose aesthetic of larger art exhibitions. I often put my face close to paintings at other galleries, to get a closer look at the details, the brush strokes, or the texture of the paint. This time, however, I did so simply to look at the illustrations printed on the buttons at face value. By reducing the physical distance between art and viewer, Hot One Inch Action made me question traditional art practices of display and possession.
When I came across Chelsea O’Byrne’s piece, I regretted not having purchased any buttons, or attending the show earlier when the trading happened. Her emphasis on eyes, so present in her illustrations, transferred powerfully onto this white button: above thin black outlines of a nose and a mouth, without a frame of a face, a pair of hands covered the spaces where two eyes would have been. Instead, two circles of iridescence shone through the hands, the celebrated focal point of the minuscule presentation.
I felt even more remorse in not having obtained a set of buttons when I discovered that this might be the last Hot One Inch Action. Thankfully, some remaining buttons may be sold at the gallery in the weeks to come. And, if we’re lucky, there may even be another round of hot action next year.
Architects from the Swiss design firm Herzog & de Meuron unveiled their concept for a new Vancouver Art Gallery to a sold-out audience at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre last night. The presentation started with statements from individuals invested in the project. The lieutenant governor of British Columbia Judith Guichon spoke about Canada’s emerging national identity, a “coming of age” that will require a respect for Canadian artists and a desire to see them flourish. The aspiration to do justice to Vancouver’s contemporary art scene was a recurring theme among the speakers. Jeff Wall took the stage to voice what he claimed was “a point of view typical of artists in Vancouver.” Wall praised the new building’s capacity to host exhibitions that would be impossible at the gallery’s current site, as well as applauding the decision to overlay the building with wood, something he saw as a nod to Vancouver’s vanishing cityscape.
By the time the architects began their slide show presentation, there was little doubt that Vancouver is in desperate need of a new art gallery, somewhere for a new generation of artists to glean inspiration and for people from every strata of the city to gather. Gallery Director Kathleen Bartels described the current building as “literally bursting at the seams.” The proposed new structure will double the exhibition space of the gallery.
Christine Binswanger (left) and Simon Demeuse, photo by Pardeep Singh
Herzog & de Meuron senior partner Christine Binswanger and project director Simon Demeuse, who are both based in Switzerland, provided an outsider’s perspective of Vancouver. It was lovely to be reminded of the things that make our cityscape unique, as Vancouver often fades to grey for those of us who live here. But Binswanger and Demeuse did not sugarcoat the problems with our city’s urban landscape, addressing such issues as underutilized public space and homogeneous glass towers in the downtown core. Before unveiling the concept design for the new art gallery, every facet of the project was explained, often in response to the perceived issues with Vancouver’s urban planning. A publicly accessible courtyard protected from rain, stacked floors that maximize natural light, and a flexible exhibition space that can used by curators in a variety of layouts.
The presenters leaned heavily on the idea of accessibility, citing free exhibition galleries and a courtyard that can be entered from all the surrounding streets. The new gallery’s role as a public space is rooted in the history of the site. Larwill Park, now a somewhat derelict parking lot, has a long history as a sporting field and gathering place, often for political demonstrations.
Although many in the audience had already seen images of the proposed building online that morning, applause broke out when Binswanger and Demeuse revealed the design; a wooden, stacked building, like a West Coast pagoda. The architects praised the softness and luminosity of the material, especially in contrast with the concrete and glass of the surrounding buildings.
After the presentation, the audience was invited to the nearby building site to have a drink and mingle. Discussions ranged from the gap between the secured funds and what is required to actualize the building to the high-maintenance reputation of wooden structures. The courtyard and sunken garden were the most talked about aspects of the building; most people were impressed with the design’s commitment to green spaces in and around the structure. The distinctive shape of the design caused many to reflect on the Vancouver Art Gallery’s increasing commitment to showcasing Asian art. In her opening remarks, VAG director Kathleen Bartels called Vancouver “a gateway to and from Asia,” something that seemed to inform the design of the new building. Not everyone I spoke to loved the design, although I personally did. One thing everyone could agree on, however, was that there is nothing like it in Vancouver today.
Make Gallery is presenting their first ever hip-hop poster show, D.R.E.A.M. (Design Rules Everything Around Me). It’s a celebration of two of their favourite things: design, and hip-hop. Great design gives a visual representation to its subject, and Make has invited 15 illustrators and designers to create original posters influenced by a hip-hop song.
From plays on typography to graphic interpretations of lyrics, these posters hit on every aspect of hip-hop and design. Supported by Dominion Blue Reprographics and Framehouse, Make will be producing a run of limited edition prints of the posters. These will be available for purchase, with all sales benefiting the Community Arts Council of Vancouver.
Boom. A take on Wu-Tang’s classic song C.R.E.A.M., D.R.E.A.M. aims to open up the visually rich culture of hip-hop into a platform that we can all take part in. The opening reception takes place on Thursday, October 1st from 7pm – 10pm, and it’s FREE.
Make sure to check out contributions by SAD Maggers Pam Rounis (our fabulous Lead Designer), Camille Segur (the incredible Cat Issue Illustrator + Designer), and Tierney Milne (a lovely Movement Issue Contributing Artist) .
Please RSVP to helen@makeisawesome.com or via the Facebook event (and check to see the list of songs that influenced each artist to give you a glimpse of what’s in store! #drake #wu-tang #laurynhill).
I fell down the hole. It happens. You go in with the intention of sending a quick Facebook message, then forty-five minutes later you’re still on the internet and you’ve ordered all eleven seasons of M*A*S*H on VHS from Amazon and you don’t even have a VCR. This time I was catching up on the news when I read about Harper’s Fair Elections Act. That naturally lead me to Googling assisted suicide and funeral chapels––you want to have all of your bases covered.
Eventually I found my way to the website of a funeral chapel in Prince George, BC. It was under the umbrella of Dignity Memorial, who, with over 2,000 locations, dole out franchises like McDonalds but with livelier atmospheres. The name of this particular franchise was Assman’s Funeral Chapel, because you can’t spell Dignity without A-S-S.
Immature delight aside, I’m all for the name. If when I die my family decides to have a memorial service instead of taking my ashes to Disneyland and throwing them into the air on the final descent of Splash Mountain like my will dictates, then take my body up north. The only person I want embalming me is Assman.
Katie So is bent over her iPad when I meet her for coffee on a rainy Monday morning. So is answering emails (“like always,” she sighs) which doesn’t surprise me, because the illustrator-cum-tattoo artist has already inked two of my friends and seems to be fielding more tattoo requests than she can handle. “I’m just learning about the tattoo business,” she says, “And I can’t say no to anybody, which I think I have to start doing soon!”
So helped open Black Medicine Tattoo last May with owners Joel Rich and Daniel Giantomaso, in exchange for mentorship from Rich. Vancouver born and bred, So has been practicing art since she can remember. “I always grew up in a really creative home,” she recalls, “So it was always like, everything, all creative materials were at my disposal.” Her move to tattoo work was motivated by her desire to progress her career as an illustrator. “I guess I was in a spot where I was just doing art and I wanted to…get it out there any way I could, and make money doing it,” So explains. “I met Joel [Rich] and he tattooed me. I asked if he wanted and apprentice but he [said] ‘Not really, but I’ll help you!’”
Bronchitis by Katie So
So says that attending an arts high school put her off the idea of pursuing visual art, but that she rediscovered her love of drawing during a gap year. She then registered in the Capilano IDEA Program where she realized that illustration, rather than graphic design, was what she was passionate about practicing. So was attracted to comics because they allowed her to combine her habit of creative writing with her drawings. She has since put out three print compilations of her work: Destined for Misery, Bad Boyfriend, and Attempts at Positivity. So’s work––narrative driven and punchline-heavy––is both hilarious and honest, and her ability to capture awkward moments, pathetic self-pity, and heartbreak is so accurate, it’s uncanny.“The comics kind of started almost as a way to laugh off my problems,” she says.
The magic of So’s work is that she manages to create scenes that are deeply personal but touchingly universal. Panels from Destined for Misery show a tired girl hunched over in identical positions eating dinner, sitting on a toilet, at a drawing table, and laying in bed. The cheeky caption reads “Slouch Life.” “I hated autobio comics, like: ‘I feel that way, too, but it’s just making me feel worse,’” she says, “So I guess I just wanted to approach it with an air of humour, and that was my reaction to the way I was feeling, and thats how I worked [my feelings] out. The problems are real but you should be able to step back and laugh at it a little bit and realize how ridiculous things are sometimes.” (See her panels in Bad Boyfriend to laugh out loud, and cry internally).
Eat Your Heart Out by Katie So
What makes So’s tattoo work so interesting is the dark edge that is present in her illustrations and comics. Shaggy vampire bats and dark haired ladies with cold eyes dominate her online portfolio. She can be both cutesy and gruesome in one drawing. Her somber aesthetic translates beautifully to blackwork tattoo. “I wanted to keep drawing for illustration rather than drawing for tattooing,” she explains. “It took me a while to get the effect that I’ve got in my illustration and bring it across tattooing. I definitely had to learn how to adapt designs for tattoos, because sometimes shapes of things aren’t going to work on somebody’s body. I still really wanna maintain my illustration style throughout tattooing.”
“Tattooing was one of those things I was like ‘I want to learn how to do this,’ and I just did it every day. I still have so much to learn but if you wanna get shit done you just gotta do it,” she says of her learning process. The transition to tattooing was creatively and financially necessary; it allowed So the freedom to pursue her art and make ends meet. “I’m proud that this last year was kind of when I took the plunge, like ‘Ok I’m gonna be an artist full time.’ I think I could have done it a long time ago if I had just done it but I was too scared that I wouldn’t have any money or anything. If you just do it, you figure it out and you force yourself to make money.”
I ask So what it feels like to put her hard work on someone else’s body. “I’m always scared when I finish a tattoo and I’m letting it go,” she laughs, “I hope they take care of it and I hope it heals well because it’s my art walking around. It’s nerve wracking, but also super exciting [to] see someone walking on the street…I’m like, ‘Oh I did that!’”
So’s wisdom to artists looking to take the leap into self-employment is to “just go hang out with people you think are cool and talk to them and tell them that you think they’re cool. Chances are they already think you’re cool, too.” Her final nugget of knowledge before we bundle ourselves up against the relentless downpour: “Please, get tattooed on a full stomach!”
Find out more about Katie So from her website, or find her on Tumblr.
Jacob Wren is a writer and performance artist whose work often theorizes about the state of contemporary art. He is the co-artistic director of the interdisciplinary art group PME-ART, the members of which sometimes “believe in being naive on purpose.” He has been blogging for ten years at A Radical Cut in the Texture of Realityand his book, Polyamorous Love Song, was listed as one of The Globe and Mail’s top 100 books of 2014. In the final essay of his newest book, a hybrid of non- and short-fiction called If our wealth is criminal then let’s live with the criminal joy of pirates(BookThug, 2015), Wren writes: “Like many of us, I am in crisis (with one possible difference being that I have a compulsion to announce my sense of crisis as often as possible). I am in crisis about art and also about everything else.”
SAD Mag’s Shannon Tien interviewed Wren to discuss this crisis of artistic ambition, naïve activism, hope, cynicism, and animism, among other meaty ideas.
Shannon Tien: What are you doing in Calgary right now?
Jacob Wren: I’m co-leading a project organized by the New Gallery that’s an art writing residency. There’s me and Jean Randolph co-leading it. We have a few participants that we’re working with for one month in person and then another four months long distance around questions of art writing.
ST: Cool. So let’s start the official interview. In your essay “Like a Priest Who Has Lost Faith” from your most recent book, you write about artworks having their own agency to get us to think in ways we might not have previously considered. Are there any artworks that have made you feel this way in particular?
JW: There probably are. We were talking the other day about this well-known artwork, the name of which I don’t know, by General Idea, where they took the famous “LOVE” graphic and replaced it with the word “AIDS” and that image, I think it was called “The Image Virus”, and that work traveled an enormous degree on its own through various media and became one of the many iconic images in the AIDS movement. I think that’s an example of a work that traveled a great deal on its own.
Image Virus (1987) by General Idea
Maybe that’s a very literal idea of an artwork having agency. I could also use a cliché historical example: the Goethe novel The Sorrows of Young Werther. A young man kills himself for unrequited love, and then there was a rash of suicides in Germany by young romantic men who read this and imitated it, which was not Goethe’s intention.
But I also think there are less literal examples. In a way all artworks that have any impact on us or enter into our lives make us do things that we don’t know are coming from that artwork. Things we might not have done had we not encountered that project. They might change our thinking or actions or raise questions about our lives that we might not have had otherwise. And I feel with these things, there are no guarantees. Like, maybe you did something because of the artwork, but maybe there were a number of factors that influenced how you thought and acted.
ST: And what is the consequence of assigning the agency to the artwork instead of the artist or the viewer?
JW: I mean, there’s multiple agencies acting on any decision or thought or action. There’s never only one factor as to why something happens. So of course the artist has agency, the viewer has agency, the artwork has agency, and when the different agencies come together, maybe something happens? Or maybe nothing happens?
As a writer, one thing that becomes very clear is that people read your work in ways you never intended or never thought of and also that this is a beautiful and positive thing. And that as a writer, trying to control your work’s public reception is a recipe for insanity and also probably a recipe for very mediocre work. Knowing that you’re making something that has a life outside of you and changes in its interaction with different people and different contexts–I think that’s an essential thing for making anything.
ST: Was there a moment in your writing career when you realized this? That the work had a life of its own? Did it change things?
JW: I don’t remember a specific moment, but I feel like it happens all the time in little ways. For me I might be a control freak, but I’m definitely not a control freak in that way. So I’ve never had any problem letting go. I feel like when it’s ready, people can do with it what they will.
ST: What is art writing? Is this how you would describe the genre that your book falls into?
JW: Well, it’s two short stories and an essay. So, it’s a hybrid book that brings together fiction and non-fiction. And I think one of the reasons we wanted to do this was because for me–and Malcolm Sutton who was the editor–we would like there to be more back-and-forth, more fluidity between fiction and nonfiction. And we don’t see a strong boundary between them.
ST: Yeah I like that idea. In your other book, Polyamorous Love Song, I felt like the short stories presented a lot of nonfiction theoretical ideas, kind of.
JW: Yes, I mean, you know, my fiction is always a fiction of ideas, and ideas are often presented in a…well I try to present the ideas in a clear, non-fiction way. And, for me novels are essays and essays are novels. It’s all in the same swirl of writing and thinking and presenting.
ST: I noticed on your blog, A Radical Cut in the Texture of Reality, that you were celebrating your blog’s 10-year anniversary. How does blogging influence your art and writing?
JW: Doing A Radical Cut has an enormously positive effect on my writing in that it’s allowed me to share short paragraphs or short excerpts as I work on them and get some response–put them out there in the world before they’re finished. It’s kept me writing, in a way. Often it could take me four years to write a novel and it’s kind of a secretive, lonely time. Having this way to share little bits and pieces as I go has really given me the energy to continue at many different points.
Also, it goes without saying that we live in the age of the internet. In general, how I’ve shared my work on the internet, mixing things I’ve written with quotes from other people, with songs and videos and having it all mixed together in a kind of giant internet pastiche has very much changed how I see writing and how I see art.
As you probably know, though, this little book was done as a special edition for Author for Indies Day. This was like a desire to have something for independent bookstores similar to Record Store Day–where there’s special editions and special records you can only get on that day–to try and create some excitement about small bookstores in the same way Record Store Day created some excitement around record stores. And I was really unsure that it would work. I was curious. But when I showed up at Type Books at Authors for Indies Day, there was a line up of people wanting to get in to get the special editions. So that gave me a really strange and excited feeling, that people would line up in the morning at an independent bookstore to get these things. I think it gives me a bit of hope.
“Good luck.” It’s always “good luck.” Never has there been a wink and a “see you soon.” I get that that would probably be collusion or some shit, but how often do I have to come in here and buy stale potato chips and a $7.00 Quick Pick before “good luck” becomes “good job?”
Someone in Alberta is always winning. A $50 mil ticket was sold there this goddamn week––the CBC’s website made sure to rub that “news” in my face. I would do great things with my winnings. I’d rescue a shelter cat, neuter it (not myself, but with my winnings I could go to vet school and learn to neuter), buy it a really nice scratching post with three to four different levels for it to explore, then buy a house for myself so the cat doesn’t have to be trapped with me in my sweaty little bachelor suite with its three to four level scratching post blocking the way to the bathroom. I’d definitely put its litter box in the bathroom too. It’d be real cute to take a simultaneous shit with your cat.
Of course I’d donate to things if I won. Food banks. Hungry drives. My cousin’s app he’s working on that detects early onset halitosis. It wouldn’t be all about me. Sure, obviously some of it would. The authentic (and autographed) Bonnie “Prince” Billy face cast would cost a few pennies. The discovery and tapping of the aquifer on my new property would cost a few more. But winning the lottery for me is really a selfless act. Think of the cat, the hungry people, and my cousin. Deshi, come on.
For more Portraits of Brief Encounters, follow Cole Nowicki on Instagram or Twitter, or visit the POBE website.
I entered the Queer Arts Festival’s opening gala art show, Trigger: Drawing The Line in 2015, not knowing what to expect. I’d attended an all-girl Catholic school for 13 years, where topics of sexuality and DIY gender were rendered taboo and offensive. Though a socially-conscious liberal arts education later broadened my initial black and white worldview, I was still unsure how I’d react to an exhibit specifically aimed at ‘triggering” its visitors with challenging, explicit artwork.
Equal parts community education and artistic expressionism, it’s easy to see why this exhibit attracts a diverse audience of all sexual orientations. Personal narratives by local and international artists highlighted some of the Queer community’s trials and triumphs, both historic and contemporary. Many artists incorporated mixed media and found objects into their work, making their stories more tangible and connected to the community at large. Curated by SD Holman, the show drew from and contributed to a long history of powerful sociopolitical arts activism through interactive performance and visual art.
I was especially impressed by Coral Short’s emotionally-laden opening performance art piece, Stop Beating Yourself Up, and Amy Dame’s thought provoking series, Fallen Heroes: Drawing the Line. As Short, armed with a pair of boxing gloves, (literally) beat herself up on stage, I was reminded of Fight Club’s unnamed protagonist, the Narrator, and his fight against his own inner demons. Meanwhile, Dame’s intricately sewn portraits invited the public to draw–or, rather, sew–their own lines across the faces of well-known Queer personalities using bright red thread. Dame’s “lines” examined the difference between shame and admiration: When can a person no longer be viewed as a role model? How far is too far?
By placing works by more than 15 radically different artists side by side, the exhibition explored some of the challenges continually faced by those who identify as Queer. From navigating identity politics to resisting ongoing violence and discrimination, the Queer community has always pushed boundaries in order to produce exciting, provocative and edgy art; Trigger: Drawing the Line in 2015 is no exception.
Trigger: Drawing The Line in 2015 (SD Holman) runs until August 7 at Yaletown Roundhouse Community Center, and is by donation. For a full listing of Queer Arts Festival events, visit the QAF website.
In 19th century France, Paris Salons were the predominant way in which the bourgeoisie could view art. The Salons were heavily censored, as they were juried by the Academy of Fine Art. Pieces that were rejected by the Academy–pieces that didn’t uphold the standards of what constituted as ‘traditional’ art–were displayed in the Salon des Refusés. As a result, the Salon des Refusés of 1863 housed the works of many important Impressionist and Realist painters.
With this at the forefront of my mind, I had certain assumptions about what I would find at the Queer Art Festival’s Salon des Refusés, co-presented by Little Sister’s Book and Art Emporium. I was surprised to discover that Little Sister’s was, in fact, a sex shop. The show itself consisted of a single line of photographs hung on a wall above some objects depicting male and female figures performing erotic and sensual acts–nothing like the Salon I had expected to visit.
When Little Sister’s Book and Art Emporium was established in 1983, it sold banned magazines and books to the gay, lesbian, and bisexual communities of Vancouver. Since then, Little Sister’s has become a landmark case for the Supreme Court of Canada in the fight against censorship and discrimination; the history of the shop itself can be seen as avant-garde. Once I realized this, it became increasingly obvious that the exhibition wasn’t meant to be a literal translation of the original Salon; instead, it represents the values and intellectual freedom associated with the Salon des Refusés. Salons–whether they take place in a sex shop or not–challenge the way in which viewers engage with art by placing it into an unexpected context.
Just as Impressionist painters began to observe the world using light and colour, Salons provide visitors with an opportunity to alter their perceptions of how art ‘should’ be viewed. The viewer’s gaze shifts from a pair of handcuffs to a black and white photograph of a man in bed, then back to a 16” double dong. In this way, looking at sex objects and looking at art become parallel acts, such that ‘art’ is translated into the vernacular. In this context, art becomes widely accessible in a way that the works displayed in the traditional Paris Salons never were.
Salon des Refusés runs until August 7 at Little Sister’s Book and Art Emporium. For a full listing of Queer Arts Festival events, check out the festival website.
Party Tricks by Elliat Albrecht. Press play and begin.
He lit up like a used car lot. Like an amusement park. Like a chandelier shop. Like an exit sign. Like an incoming call. Like a homecoming crowd. Like a fifty year smoker. Like a birthday cake. We had one week.
Wednesday. He collected other people’s letters from thrift stores and kept them in boxes by his bed where he read them when he couldn’t sleep. His insomnia depended not at all on the earth’s rotation or what he ate, but entirely on the content of the news on the radio on the way home from work. Each time a broadcaster announced a tragedy without really hearing what they were saying, he sighed and one more tiny wrinkle appeared above his brow.
Monday. He liked to go for breakfast in the middle of the night. I looked at him across the table. He took a sip of water.
“My mother though,” he said, finally, “is an interesting story. She had me late in life and worked until she was old.”
“Where?” I asked.
“Mostly in restaurants, basement bars and at a factory outside of Detroit. That’s where she met my dad.” He didn’t offer more on the subject.
The table was chipped and sticky with syrup. I watched him fold and unfold his hands.
“What kind of factory?”
“They produced a certain type of drainage system used on pleasure yachts. Something for the
plumbing in the galley I think. It was all shipped to the coast.”
I told him that my grandparents had a sailboat that slowly circled a different Great Lake each summer.
“We grew up across the border from one another,” I said. “In different decades though, I guess.
Maybe that explains why we speak so similarly.”
“Do we?” he asked. “I hadn’t noticed. It seems like the only place where you hear regional accents anymore are cable talk shows.”
Saturday. I met him at a dinner party for the employees of a sleep clinic. The hosts were friends of my parents to whom I was introduced by e-mail before I left home that summer. He sat next to me in the dining room. He wore a white shirt and told me that nightmares account for six percent of dreams for those with normal vision, but twenty-five percent of the dreams of the blind. I dropped my fork on the floor and he passed me his. The generation gap closed when our hands touched. I told him the story of the Russian royals in hiding. He had a sister named Anastasia. Someone turned up dance music on the stereo down the hall. The guests wanted to stay up all night.
Tuesday. We lay on my bed flipping through a teen magazine talking about pop-feminism.
“The problems of Miley Cyrus pale in comparison to those of the women who make her clothes,” I said. He nodded and said he was dismayed that young people had already forgotten the revolution.
“Which revolution?” I asked dumbly. He looked over at me and launched into a tirade about the inevitable failure of inflated regimes. Something about Rome. Something about America. He performed his monologue on self destruction with good rhythm. I swear some of it rhymed.
Sometimes his anger was almost a sonnet. I zoned out.
When he finished, I told him that failure was the most fertile circumstance for possibility. Just after the moment of collapse, I pointed out, new realities are forced to life.
“There’s no organization in that,” he said.
“Does there have to be?”
“Always,” he said. “Humankind is a collection of impulses and habits and requires systems of arrangement to sustain.”
“William Blake said he must create a system or be enslaved by another man’s,” I answered. “Don’t you think life without risk is boring?”
“Tomb follows womb,” he said, and flipped the page. “It’s all the same in the end.”
Friday. He had an audacious hobby of writing personal ads for other people whom he thought were lonely. Sometimes the descriptions were grossly exaggerated, sometimes slightly undersold and sometimes right on the money. Once in a while, he’d open the paragraph with a revealing factoid or trait that would ultimately prove to be the most important part of a relationship.
“Jean gives up an average of forty-two minutes into an argument. She retreats into the bedroom where she would prefer to be left alone while you microwave your dinner. Early forties, loves to hike and try new things.”
He sent them to the local paper with photos attached of his beloved lonely hearts (and he really did do it out of love, he cared for them like kids alone at recess) taken at New Years Eve parties where a heavy flash startled their features but evened complexions in a flattering way.
Thursday. Once before I fell asleep, I left the door unlocked. He arrived with Pop Rocks, put them on his tongue and kissed me. I thought that was what fireworks tasted like. Sugary, blue.
Saturday. He was probably a genius but had a limited repertoire of moves. After he invited me to the amusement park, he forgot and took someone else. I wasn’t jealous, just mildly surprised by his laziness. I forgave it for the time that he told me his party trick was sitting at the piano at the end of the night, very drunk, a cigarette dangling from his mouth but I can’t remember the rest. Maybe something about sliding the keys. He pointed out that the figs in the backyard were ripe the last time I saw him. I sent him home with a box of four or five juicy fruits wrapped in paper. He told me later that they burst on the way home.
