He was contacted online one night at one am. They spoke for a while and the boy tried to get her to come over but he couldn’t. He got a ride to the street she lived on and and after ten whole minutes she came outside and greeted him. He was listening to music and let his device continue playing when he put the phones around his neck. They embraced outside the house and they walked in together. She showed him pictures of her father as a young man while a voice played faintly in the background. There was a brass bed and a small desk with an am/fm stereo thing that was fashioned to look like an old wooden radio. His heart was beating so fast he could do nothing but thumb through the largest of her library books while he sat on the creaking bed. She gave him water in a teacup from the bathroom and sat next to him.

He took the train from San Bruno to San Jose and when it arrived she was waiting to exit by the door and they made eye contact. She passed by him and said nothing and did nothing but look at him the same way she always had. It was always in moments passing that the memories flashed and became vivid again. That odd glance through the library window that drew a bead to her profile like it was meant to be. Her picture and opinion in the student student newspaper he read. He felt the ultimate outsider, unable to express the man that he had become since the mistakes of childhood sought to overtake his psyche. He felt cold and thought quietly to himself as the groups of workers and long stretches of commercial buildings passed him by in a riot of progress more dynamic than he cared to comprehend.

He thought back to the time he helped her dye her hair. His fingers ran past the bald patch where her comatose head had worn the follicles to worthlessness. He thought of that deep red color and the picture of her as a child that could have been a century old. The toddler with the wild hair that rode the frozen lion from the staircase at the zoo. The room and the sunlight. Groups of older girls in photographs and that scent he could never lose. Then he went to the bathroom and when he returned he closed his eyes and went to sleep. 

THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD

D O P E S M O K E R

Ceramic roofing tile found at Cowell College, UCSC fall 2008. contractors usually mark a tile to show others where the new pieces will be tied in to replace broken ones. i thought it was interesting that whoever chose to mark this roofing tile did so with an entire word rather than an ‘X’

music: Babelfishh and Lewee Regal. 8th World Jamboree.

In what way would your world view affect the teacher that you would become?

“Eagle One”

80’s era conversion van

Dream House

Mixed Media on Linen

September, 2011