These are all the things that happen in my life in a week or two.
I paint more on my denim jacket. A hermaphroditic goat-wolf deity presides over a field of bodies, holding a world-resonating bell that rings beyond distant mountains, over which floats a giant iron machine, that is the wheels of gnosis and a floating city and an invisible hypnosis that hangs behind the sky everywhere but that almost no one sees:
Before this I have printed out dozens of pictures from last spring and hung them on my wall in a loose narrative order. During this, I embellish this chronological story arc with drawings and all the old photos I can dig up, which is disappointingly now not many, from college and earlier. These comprise a machine to help me fucking focus on the book I am trying to write, which is essentially a memoir aimed forward, which in one way or another, I’ve been trying to write for 4 years. This time it’s personal and its on a typewriter and I’m sticking to it.
Meanwhile Dawn learns how to bake bread without kneading it from the internets and we cook it in our dutch oven, that we found for $8. Dissolve a quarter teaspoon yeast in 1&1/2 cups hot tap water, stir up well (dissolve). Add three level cups flour (we use unbleached white with germ), 1&1/2 teaspoons salt, mix until it’s blending (meaning a wet ball of mess. Leave it in a bowl for 8 hours, in a situation where it can be 55-70 degrees F. It makes it’s own gluten. Take it out, fold it in on itself into a tighter ball (but don’t knead it, it doesn’t want kneading and the more you work it, the less it will want to rise) and leave it on a floured cloth or board for 90 minutes / 2 hours, or until it doubles in size. When this is almost complete, put your dutch oven in the oven and pre-heat it all to 475 (yep, 475). I recommend Safflower oil for its high smoke point. Bake it covered for 20-30 minutes, then uncovered for 10-20. Browning happens quickly, so your bottom may get dark before you know it. If it smells like bread, it’s done. Turn it out onto a rack and let it cool. Eat.
Also, every Thursday I drive up to Turner in my friends’ (Sherwin and Emily’s, jointly) Volvo to pick up Sherwin, so he can get back down to Portland for work Friday morning. I plan on hitting some hiking spots along the way throughout the winter, as well as making music while there. And making shadow music on this haunted property.
We dog sat our friend’s deaf albino pit bull for a long weekend to help pay for a computer for Dawn. His name is Truck. In a bout of sadness and exhaustion, he slept in a curl on my lap and inspired me to make some images about the sons and daughters of Lilith, the usually unacknowledged first wife of Adam, who was her own entity not of his rib, and who went out into the universe and made her own love and economy with it and whose children are not exactly the race of men, nor demons, nor beasts, but somehow all. I wanted an image of us sleeping in opposite directions, spooning, dressed only in skin. Yes, it’s already been brought to my attention that this is doggy porn. But its not, I’m just an art-fag. Beasts sleeping with people in curly shapes, in community / economy. Sons of Lilith.
I failed at my first attempt pretty totally, mostly because Truck refused to cooperate the night that I finally made the time to do it and had a somewhat willing photographer.
These are the shards.
