The Doorway: a panfandom game

( Cut, not filtered. )


In the attempt to cede as little ground as possible regarding my views, I decided to attempt something that could either be very poor taste or ... something. If - instead of placing a flower in the barrel of a gun - you were to instead replace the gun with a flower, what would that suggest?

This is what I asked myself in the midst of creating a piece whose feel is categorically different. While the photo was never purely historical record (for there is a perspective in the pilot's smirk and the jagged teeth of the planes behind him), it becomes a statement that suggests it is possible to re-adjoin oneself. To re-convene again with the purest, most essential nature of mankind.

Or, perhaps, it merely suggests that one ought to look to one's ammunition for war comes from all sources. I haven't entirely decided yet.

What do you think?










[OOC NOTE: I didn't make these. Wish I did, in fact, but one must give credit where credit is due. Aren't they intriguing? I wish I'd have thought of it!]

I would argue that this is a far sight better than 10 years hard labour.

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life; which grows
higher than soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

(What's the secret?) I know it. I'll tell you. But you have to guess first.

I haven't got anything to say, I haven't got anything to account for. So, I went on a walk and I found the Black-eyed Susans growing in Grand Army Plaza.

( Photo cut, not filtered. )

[Dorian Gray]

I don’t want to earn my living; I want to live.
That's it, isn't it? That's what you're on about. He's very nice, by the bye. A bit too nice, a bit too seeped in Kant but I like him. I took him out for gyros.

This is the year which people will talk about
This is the year which people will be silent about.

I am quite glad, now, that I am no longer a teacher.

I suppose it was my intention to leave England and shut myself up for six months until I finished the picture I had in my head.

Of course, I had meant to rent a studio in Paris a century ago. But I suppose an apartment in New York city a hundred years too late will have to do.

[TONY
STEVE
...OTHER STEVE
SHERLOCK
DEADPOOL

SEPTIMUS SMITH]

[message is blank]

In the spirit of sharing since there are quite a lot of new faces here who do not perhaps know what I spend most of my time at (when not at the art store), I thought I'd share a collage of some of my favourite recent work.

1. Union Square
2. Prospect Park
3. My darling sweetheart and editor-at-large of the Locative Press, Miss Isabel Pole
4. A rather curious reflection in Park Slope
5. The subway at 7th Avenue

"Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so slightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners. Often the attachment is scarcely perceptible."

- Virginia Woolf

That is what I remind myself when I feel especially fictive - or all too real. The thin line we tread between what is and what isn't can't particularly be identified. So when I say that I did not commemorate the ninety-seventh anniversary of the Battle of the Somme, it wasn't because I didn't stop to think about the way that this world and my world line up in all the ways that matter.

It was because I was living. I was living well.

HAPPY CANADA DAY

And may this day, like all your others, be brilliant.

And I gave my heart to know wisdom, and to know madness and folly: I perceived that this also is vexation of spirit.
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow.

I've got one of these 'creatures' cornered in the bar with a bottle of scotch. He isn't talking (I mean, he's chattering a lot) at least it's not a hal and every time his glass gets low, he bares his teeth but as long as he's drunk, I think it's okay.

Be careful out there. And if someone has the opportunity, won't you bring me my camera?

I am fond of this city the way I could be fond of a strange creature -- genuine affection, but knowing so few of its faces that one might as well not know it at all. But how very close it is today; my colleagues tell me that this is nothing at all, and I certainly do not dispute it, but I would give a great deal for a cool, crisp morning walk in the wind or a summer downpour to go and stand barefoot beneath. (I am not sure I shall ever be a New Yorker.)

& a belated thank you to those who celebrated Locative with us on Wednesday, it was a delight to have you and I do hope an enjoyable evening.

TEXT TO SEPTIMUS SMITH:

» Good God
» I don't
» [Blank]

Who: Walter Blythe & Septimus Smith
When: Saturday Evening
Where: ... Their dreams.
What: Septimus is, once again, dreaming about death and the war. Walter, prone to visions and premonitions, witnesses and engages with Smith's dream. Together, the two of them face their deaths and realise that what they both need -- is to live.
Rating: PG-13, violent death, suicide, graphic wound descriptions, war trauma, nightmares.


Because I could not stop for Death,
He kindly stopped for me;
The carriage held but just ourselves
And Immortality.....

( Yet Still the Piper Piped and the Dance of Death went on. )

Who: Septimus Smith
When: Tonight
Where: The studio/office that used to be Isabel's place before she moved in with him.
What: It's June. June has never been entirely kind to Septimus.
Rating: Difficult. Triggery for mental illness.

( He knew how to read Greek in the tracks of sparrows and could recite the truths found in tire treads and upon the backs of his hands. )

I've made my morning of it, and I think I've decided that my favourite Winsor & Newton is Indanthrene Blue, ... the ocean... and thrown against a canvas next to Winsor Green, Venetian Red and Manganese Blue, you'd have the earth, ocean and sky of my dear Prince Edward Island.

I believe I'm homesick.

[Septimus Smith]

What is it, what's happened?

[Septimus Smith]

What sort of friend would I be if I didn't attempt to torture you to death on occasion? I need you for something extraordinary, and to watch a movie made in 1967 and based on Ulysses. I'd call it an adaptation, but ...you know? It was nominated for best screenplay -- because any poor sap who thinks it's worth his time to tackle Joyce deserves at least a nod, at least a nomination.

We'll even play a Bloom drinking game until you can't walk anymore. Grantaire as well.

Hello?

HELLO?

Do these computers use dust to work, then? Only the one I've used before was a lot bulkier. Where are the rooms that store all the thinking components?

New York summers are always so hazy; the air's thick with water and pollution and the concrete makes for a pizza stone under your feet. I'd be lying if I said I didn't love it, but it gets a little same-samey after a while. I've already pulled a vacation with Sara earlier in the summer so stuck I am until the weather decides to back off.

The ennui with my current employment doesn't help. Art restoration in the wake of an alien attack sounds Very Important, but I've been on the same tapestry for three weeks now - the same panel of the same tapestry, point of fact, and while unicorns are lovely creatures, I'm going to hang myself with my needle if this doesn't start to progress any faster. Where are the simple crimes of yesteryear? I realize we've got more superheroes in Potts Tower than the Forces of Good know what to do with, but c'mon. Those with a philosophical bent can argue over whether good guys are even necessary when in such abundance. I'm bored. Do you know what happens when I'm bored? Peter worries more, first of all, and then a lot of circumstantial evidence piles up and I'm wearing orange again.