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I am pretty good when it comes to
finding my way in and out of a New England woods, but there is one forested
stretch of unblazed madness in the Berkshires that never fails to get me lost. Any steps beyond
the first twenty and my native sense is boxed, with each additional step deepening my confusion.
It is a place of predicament where only a standing in stillness brings direction to the mind.
There is another place of predicament where, oppositely, you will lose your way by standing still. I became friends with Lee when we were both eighteen and attending the same school. One day I went to Lee's room and found him sitting cross legged on his bed holding a plastic bag. He picked up an aerosol can and directed the spray into the bag which he then fitted over his mouth and nose like a poisonous lung. Lee sampled a variety of accelerants, an instant icer used by bartenders to frost martini glasses, spray glue, something to kill static cling in laundry, hair dew for beauty pageant queens, aerosol paints, he would try almost anything that came in a spray can. The instant icer was the most potent and I imagined a pattern of blue frost on his skin similar to the red patterns left on the skins of people who have been struck by lightning. For someone like Lee, life got too complicated. He couldn't keep pace with a rumble tumble world so he shut down and attached himself to a bladder of fog. He lost his way by doping himself to one spot. |
| 8/21/01 | oil on linen | 15 1/2"w X 17 1/2"h |
