Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Flying Girl Remembers Nights of Grass and Sky, or Markings

Flying Girl Remembers Nights of Grass and Sky, or Markings
022/100 in 100 Creative Challenge, 6/23/09
Golden Fluid Acrylic, watercolor pencil, pitt artist pen on watercolor paper, 5"x8"

Where are you and your crazy stories from, anyway? asks my friend Marta.

Such a long story.

I am from a city of cement and flame. The Bronx is burning in abandoned tenements and poetry.

I am from the pictures that won't stay in my head, won't stay in my father's head and need to come out on the page.

I am from hard times and walk up flats in soon to be condemned buildings. I am from slums where cats scream in the alley and empty lots grow forests off cool breath. Where grandmothers cook rice and beans and read cards for people who don't pay.

I am from reading at night under the covers and behind curtains and in cars and at the dinner table and beneath the school lockers. From dragons and magic, from universes untold. I am from painting and singing, and the smooth feel of an empty page beneath my fingers.

I am from chanting in Japanese. And rooms full of sound and incense, like blood pulsing through everyone.

I am from summers on the farm and cool hills dusted with buttercups and indian paintbrush and snap dragons. Forests of mint leaves and blackberries and fairy rings.

I am from the crocheted beret my mother wore, and her long long hair, cut short in independence when she finally left my father for his madness.

I am from the subways taking me away and bringing me back and the finding of lessons in the way the tree branches shadowed the hilly street.

I am from still looking for meaning.

I am from penstrokes and brushstrokes like train tracks and ancient calligraphy.

I am from the layers of what has past and from and the destruction of gentrification. The possibility. The dreams.

I am from the words. And the paint. The sound and the dust.

4 comments:

Umā said...

Oh this is beautiful indeed and inspires me to think about where I'm from too.

mapelba said...

Thank you for writing this. Where you're from is fascinating and that picture is beautiful. We come from so many things.

septembermom said...

Your words are poetic. Your pictures are mesmerizing.

Jul said...

I love all the images this post conjures up!

I can't believe we are a quarter of the way into 100 in 100 already. I'm looking forward to what the next 75 days will bring.

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