Clearly, if anyone looked close enough, I have not acclimated myself back into the rhythm of college life. My strange, sad weight drags along with me like a malignant tumor. The reality of this new life has refused to sink in. It is too buoyant, impossibly floating in mid air, stubbornly resisting the gravitational pull to be grounded. I’ve come full circle, back into the hostile despondency of indifference, mass hysteria, and more indifference. Seattle, the safety net, the enticing solitude and all tears are lost in the rain but no neighbors would open their doors to a crying man in the street. We’re all too involved in our little self-contained screens, headphones blocking out the noise of the wind, that pestilent whipping and cursing. Leading lines, pull the eyes toward the central figure of a 2 dimensional piece, though these lines tangle like a crawling vine labyrinth and I’m left out of the health of the prospect. Engrossed in my studies, though easily distracted by existential self-analysis, watching the reflection of the underside of trees by looking down at accumulated water on the sidewalks, the shiny, glistering exterior of the architectural forest, these installations and buildings with tall plate windows… nature is a soiled sponge. our actions are the grime caught in its gills.
I spy passionfruit tea, orange flame tipped hair, a coffee stain on the carpet, patchy aqua and purple, foot traffic faded the designs out until just dust. Sat in the courtyard, the red square, watching people as if they were cars or neighborhoods, the migratory patterns of birds, eyes upturned toward the ideas though these people are stripped of humanity and isolated as images or photographs, the shadows of personalities laughing like a frown on your face but a smile in the mirror, your reflections chastise you and point out flaws, poking impossible fun at those deepest, darkest grievances, like a cruel kid and a magnifying glass metaphor. Watching these strangers filter through my sensibilities lead me into a cave. Here there was inviting fire light and a lower back supportive seat laid out for me. Fingerpaint for murals to explain the actions of my day. Oh you invented the wheel, yeah? I invented paint. and then the sabretooth tiger shadow appears, as in legend, to consume our youngest kin with terrific teeth and extinct pity.
Bricks and mortar formed into three tall pillars. Philosophical implications of these tall installations are diverse and fascinating. Bruce Lee apparently scaled them somehow, once. Sheer, flat faces of smoke stack like fingers pointing up at the sky, or highest ambitions. The horizontal blocks could represent each of us students, adding to the structure and the stability, reaching for the highest ambitions at the top, the full panoramic view of the cascades and mt. rainier, all foot hills, evergreen wilderness, lake union and washington, the puget sound, unfathomable beauty at this vast expanse, some view assumed from that tall perspective that we cannot achieve. A glorious assumption.
Dwellings 