I fell in love with a drawing today. Walking to work I stumbled upon a gallery rue Paradis, and something made me push through the front door. I probably looked a bit rapscallion, dirty cutoff jeans and whatnot, for the gallery staff left me completely alone. Luckily, really, as I was feeling taciturn anyway, the morning was off to a particularly sour start. The drawing calmed me and levelled off the emotional craters and canyons that were spinning the air of my day into whirlpools void of patience. Firstly, the two large columns that take up most of the length of the drawing – symbols of strength, columns hold things up: they reach skyward, the spines + spokes of all strong, useful things. I needed these columns this morning. There is a portal in the top corner of the drawing – at first glance one might think it is the sun coming through the clouds, quite simply another column of light, reaching earthward. However, It seems to have an otherworldly aspect, a celestial & divine opening to the heavens, a gateway to ascension rather. I am aching for such an egress and I love that I can almost reach out and touch it here. Below the portal, low and fluffy clouds, certainly pregnant with the afternoon showers that soothe the spongy heaviness of tropical afternoons, are pictured behind strong diagonal lines drawn towards what looks to be the top of an old volcano – there seems to be shadows cast in this line so as to suggest blazing sunshine streaming down, causing the figure in the bottom right-hand corner to shield themselves using their elegant bamboo umbrella. The columns are holding up a brownish-red roof – ah this color. A burnt red, a clay red, a Mediterranean-floor red. My entire apartment is this color. This cursed apartment. Women used to call this same color that emptied from their wombs every cycle « the curse ». Maybe some still do. Cont’d in comments