aquarelle

some days the fabric of my existence is like the surface of watercolor paper, it is rough, fibrous, dry and is tortured into thousands of little divots waiting forlornly for the moisture and pigment of color. when i cannot find my own words and hues to fill this pulpy desert, i turn to others. i turn to the thoughts, words and visions of others like a surrogate embryo looking for a host, looking for something that will nourish me in my moments of barrenness.

on days like these, i lose myself in the streams of images of others, wander through the labyrinths of words and sentences of long dead poets and writers, peer back at my scribbled drawings to see how i might have escaped this sort of black hole in times past. moments of comfort come and leave like tides, shifting the willing sand around my mind's ankles. i stare blankly for long expanses at the rippled sand the water leaves behind before i remember that this is normal, that this too, no matter how strange or uncomfortable, will pass, really.

so again i pick up the brush or the quill and start the cycle over, lay down the washes of pigment, scratch lines into cotton pulpy boards and find myself somewhere in the mix of colors – somewhere between burnt sienna and alizaron crimson. and when dusk comes i'll find bits of myself in the hues of the dying day.