they say life is a highway
and its milestones are the years
and now and then
there's a tollbooth
where you buy your way with tears

(anon)

untitled

When I was about eight years old my "imagination was launched" (R. Serra) the moment I looked down from the mountain overpass in Hong Kong, way down below to the valley where the downtown city was located. It was dusk and the skyscraper with the needle and the changing colors was purple...then changed to blue. The vast space surprised me. The buildings large and small, magnified and reduced. I wondered why we paid so much to go to amusement parks or to do touristy things that cost 80 HKD when this was better. But maybe that was better left unaddressed. I wanted to be left alone up there. Watching. Waiting to be enveloped into that space.

i would spend days
explaining
if i could
it's not as if i don't hurt too
or don't feel it
maybe i get numb
every (1) once in awhile
and have to fight it back
or fight for my
goodness back
earning it only when he's ready
i go to cleveland
to "find myself"
but i'm not here
go to nowhere,
go to everywhere
the place i aggrandize in my wildest
past dreams
but it's not here either
i'm not here either
perhaps i'm sick of individuality
the only times i feel me
are when i am effortless and part of not me
but a giant, amorphous we
and i am lost in the drawing
on the page
takes me so long just to make a couple marks
but four and a half hours are gone and i haven't noticed that my first model
girl moved out of the picture
and i can't draw her tshirt perfectly
anymore
but i lost myself
and found
and lost and found and lost and found
in the water and the branch of the tree
there is no me
only specific concentrated energy
built to last for a few decades then blow back up into smoke again
you want to know why i can't contain myself
but i'm fully aware that i'm not built to last and when im drawing i'm thinking of the silver light
the silver light i let myself feel thinking it couldn't
possibly be real
but it was and all of a sudden i am here alone and