Good Morning, New York, Good Bye

6 AM in Greenpoint a walk good bye

Interrupting the flesh

I've reached a point, I think, where I've mastered painterly "tricks" (how specific they are to my five-year-old-and-counting brushes remains to be seen, when I purchase myself a new set this summer...) and with that has returned a sort of amateurish phobia: that a signature style has developed into a stylistic dependence.

I drafted a manifesto once that outlined vague "rules" in painting, such as: do not use white pigment until the final layer (--I've since X'd out this one--); when blending turns to unconscious muddy-ing, hit it strike it and drip it (the gung-ho enthusiasm can take a back seat but I'll still share a ride with it); etc.

The manifesto served its purpose, but has become historical -- because I've moved on from essential rules, and believe more in a dynamic system: if I do this, then I need to do that (for example, if I use bright colors, then I should thin them out). And in a moment when you take your circulating system and drive a dagger right into its flesh, it hopefully can adapt, first by absorbing the shock, then assimilating it into a new web of functions. The hardest part is thrusting the dagger, and the second hardest part is sticking out the recovery.

vegan seepage

A silk-thin-skinned man sporting a sugary ensemble of peachy pinks and baby blues (fanny pack, visor, socks) assumes the role of MTA poetic missionary on slow Sunday afternoons, and last week as my train car approached 1st avenue he let out a, "Ladies and Gentlemen! We are approaching 1st avenue, enjoy your vegan blueberry cheesecake because your loved ones secretly hate the stench of meat that -- well, for some of you, anyway -- seeps out of those enlarged pores USE-SPF-AND-SAVE-YOUR-SKIN-LADIES-AND-GENTLEMEN!"

And for a second there, as the train steadied itself into a slow stop, were smiles and giggles and dead eyes that came alive.

I'm an uptown boy! Wednesday 6/16 opening

Just two of us this time (me + Leah Dixon) popping up for a night in a high rise apartment on the Upper East Side. Come join us for art, absinthe I mean champagne I mean wine yeah (no, I didn't say a thing, shhh) and secure a few positive points for your very own quality of life index.

Details for those who are blind to all but text:

THROUGH AND THROUGH

Winston Chmielinski and Leah Dixon

Cocktails: June 16 6-9

220 E. 72nd Street
Suite 14A

low-budget Narnia for little wasp children

I decided to scatter my trinkets in a public place frequented by little wasp children because I know how exciting "the discovery" can be as a kid... And I like to imagine stretched-face mothers scanning the hills and triangulating trees for kidnappers, 'cause only freaks leave frogs and conch shells and pewter people and troglodytes on the ground, right?












(... all the while avoiding poison ivy 'cause that shit's bad news)

car crash coincidence

Coincidence, a search for meaning, I'll tell you what I found.

Yesterday morning at breakfast I explained to my parents why I was throwing away grade school art projects (a fiery orange paper-mâché tiger, a Harry Potter puppet): "If I rid myself of personal ephemera, then when (if) I die you won't feel compelled to contain the memory of me in things, like a shrine."

They were confused, me talking about death over scrambled eggs, though I often speak detachedly and they're starting to take it upon themselves to infuse my words post-dialogue with emotion. They paint me pretty.

Anyway, I left a couple hours later on a kid's size bike (I'm 6'2"), redoubled immediately to switch from a handbag to a backpack, then glided down Pond St. to the rotary crossing, saw an opening in the traffic, crossed, wrongly gauged my speed (bike was in a high gear), didn't look to the left, went went straight straight rolling sluggishly and BEEP and BRAKE and FLIP head over handlebars right where the silver car going about 40 MPH had just barely brushed by my front tire. Hip knee ankle hit hard on the pavement, but I sprung up grabbed my bike and jumped onto the grassy knoll in between two opposite lanes of traffic; a few cars stopped rolled down windows and asked if I was OK, my seizing ankle shook "No" but I smiled "Yes" and off the world went.

Consider the post on Thursday (Boston, wipeout whiteout), the picture from that post, the next-morning conversation, the upcoming month of life changes (I'm done with school, I'm archiving the strewn around tangled past into bullet-point lists in Helvetica partitioned to the E: drive, I'm moving to Berlin, etc.) and any shock at the unexpected will quickly be absorbed by the plush padding of expectation.

It all fits; in retrospect I could've predicted it; I'm shaken humbled razed to the ground when I think how everything would've changed had I been hit -- and I was so fucking close to being hit. Another definition of Coincidence: justification for being stupid... I should steer clear of that ... And instead see myself sitting in front of my computer, typing this, with just a faint throbbing in my hip and a kink in my ankle, as pure luck, another chance to make the most of what I have, now, and to wait for the walk sign and look both ways the next time I try to cut my journey-time by a few minutes.

Fuck. I'm alive.

Boston, wipeout whiteout

My friend Jordan asked me whether it's better to lose everything in a fire or throw it away. I said I don't know, but that what I'm doing now -- purging my cream-carpeted doll-filled room of its lingering adolescence -- feels good. I'm lucky to be able to say good-bye, actually to make a week of saying good-bye, before I fly away on another six-month transplantation.

Dusty room, dusty paintings, dusty mind. I'd like to rip out the carpeting, throw away the furniture, and paint it all white; but I'll probably just donate books dolls and clothing and then buy some coconut ice cream and vegan cookies and play Wii for the rest of my time here. I hear Super Mario Galaxy 2 is mind blowing fun.