If Mom & Dad's House Were Underwater

You ponder your rubber belly as the kids arrive, screaming. It’s hot inside the suit, and it still smells like Davy : a sort of a burning bottle of medicine smell, you always thought. You were next in line for this position after Davy, and now that you have it you are at once confused and proud. The eyeholes aren’t quite big enough.
You jump up. “Hey kids!” you yell, “Who likes Go-Go Gorilla’s ?”
In unison they fill the tiny restaurant with twenty-four shrill “I do!!”s. You wonder how it’s gotten to this point: you feel like an amnesiac wondering who you are and what series of events led up to this moment, and surprisingly are contented by telling yourself that life has its little twists. It seems like you were going to art school in Boston last time you checked, and now you’re here and you’re wrapped in furry rubber. You remember your last job, the one you were promoted from: human drive-through-speaker. You liked the people, but the rain and snow were a bit taxing. The standing had caused you to suffer shin splints. What in the world you’re doing in a gorilla suit sweating like a pig is actually beside the point, and also a completely unanswerable question. The tragedy of Davy’s untimely death ended in your promotion, but you don’t care too much, he stank. But then again, if only Davy were here to. . . be here. . . in the suit--specifically. Every time you gaze at the frialator you can’t help but see his face, sort of like Jack’s from the blockbuster movie “Titanic,” sinking down into the bubbling grease to the bottom of the ocean.
The kids are done with their kids-happy-time-fun-meal and it’s your cue to bring in the band. “It’s time for the happy birthday song!” You say, thoroughly irritated by having to humor children. Maybe this isn’t the job for you either. The brass band files into the “party area” squeezing the children into the room. The packets of ketchup that the children were throwing around are squirting into the air as the tuba section receives new red pinstripes on their white wooly uniforms. Angela comes in with the birthday cake, and the kids, ever screaming, run at her and throw her to the ground. They beat her with their little fists and break her glasses, and then start gnawing on her flesh. She’s screaming and there’s something eerie about the blood on the birthday boy’s face. His mother stands adoringly watching on. Why can’t parents control their kids? You are annoyed as the children dig into the band and in a barrage of red and white stripes and little tassels, and of course, brass—“damned irritating bloodbaths” you snarl, and jump into a tube to wake up.
The dream instantly pours down your spine as you open your eyes. You get to the coffee maker on your sleepy weak feet and pour the water, and grind the beans, and wait watching as it percolates. In the car on the way to the bank you pass Go-Go Gorilla’s and think ‘what a disgusting idea,” picturing a variety of dishes, all black and furry. What were the owners thinking?

Descartes' Dream

These hands; I'm watching them hop up and down on the keyboard. They seem real to me; that is, I believe in them and rely on them and would feel sorely unfortunate if I found that they had left me. I see them in my dreams as well. In my deepest sleep they appear before me, much as they are now, and I believe in them during this time. Upon waking, however, I see that they have, in fact, been snuggled under covers for hours, and not actually holding the reins of a rainbow horse. I am tricked over and over, every night. The dream world seems as real as waking life, until it's over--though I imagine the same thing can be said of waking life.
How do I know what's happening in my dream? I see it. I feel it. I hear it and sometimes I even taste and smell it. I use what I might call my senses to perceive it. And yet my senses deceive me, for surely I wake to a lack of evidence of that dream life, just as much as I come into that dream world to find no evidence of what we call "awake".
I rely on my senses to navigate me through this life. If my senses can be so misled, to think I am walking across a tundra holding a chickadee when in fact I lie here breathing, then everything-- I mean everything-- can be called into doubt. We think what we see and perceive is true, but is it only really true in our minds? Rene Descartes wondered about this over four hundred years ago. He said, "it is a mark of prudence never to trust wholly in those things which have once deceived us" (Descartes 13). How can we ever trust our senses again after such shenanigans as dreaming?!
As far as my consciousness goes, Descartes never existed at all. I know he did because I've been told, and I've read his work and seen drawings of his face. I have never encountered him with my own senses, but am compelled to disregard his absence in my perceptions. My senses are useless in proving the existence of Descartes, and thus my senses are not comprehensive.
Things are not always as they appear to be. This is a universal human idea that manifests in religion and spirituality, but how far can this idea be taken? It does seem unlikely that there is nothing outside of mind, but things, as I have said, are not always what they seem. When I put a paintbrush into a jar of water, though I believe in its essential straightness and solidity, it appears to be broken and the top half is levitating on the surface of the water while the bottom half, magnified, rests not unusually on the bottom.
What about real things that are perceived only by myself? Pain, for example, exists urgently in my shin right now, as I tripped up the stairs in the dark a few moments ago. I think it's real, but I cannot see it, touch it, or express it to anyone else accurately. Where is the pain anyway? I may think it's in my leg, but science has explained that electric signals make their way to my brain where they are decoded and register somehow as a very negative perception. The pain exists only in my mind, and if that weren't there, there would be no perception, whereas if my body didn't exist, but only my mind, I might still know pain because that is its true residence.
Descartes also discusses the fallibility of perception when it comes to insane people. I think his discourse is quite humorous. "Insane people. . . continually insist that they are kings when they are in utter poverty, or that they are wearing purple robes when they are naked, or that they have a head made of clay, or that they are gourds, or that they are made of glass". I believe in his concluding statement in this paragraph: "But they are all demented, and I would appear no less demented if I were to take their conduct as a model for myself"(Descartes 14). In other words, he cannot assume that he is sane and grounded in reality enough to draw valid conclusions when this is exactly the same reasoning and feeling that the insane have when they assert that they are gourds. Crazy people have the same amount of, and sometimes more, conviction in that which we see as their delusions.
Our minds, Descartes relates, are much more clearly and distinctly known to us than our bodies are. The concept of the evil genius allows him to disregard the world outside of his mind without the bias religious idea that a supremely good god created all that appears before him. He supposes that everything he perceives is the malicious trick of an evil genius. This part of his argument seems half baked in that he is recognizing personified evil and good. He just couldn't quite dismiss god, so he made an equal opposition to be the devil's advocate. Things are not as they seem, however, and I will take his word for it for the purposes of this argument. All things come into question except the fact that I think therefore I am. Cogito ergo sum. Whether or not anything exists is up for debate, but the fact that I am thinking, reasons Descartes, this, and this alone, not even the evil genius can negate.
The very fact that we can use this world to our advantage is incredible. This is a waking dream over which we have every power. The rules-- laws, physics, structure-- are superfluous and the only real rebellion is the individual taking place in the higher reaches of the mind.
How can we assume that our perceptions are so rock solid that we may use them as the foundation for all other knowledge? An illusive posteriori supposition is not an honorable foundation to stand on, and yet so many minds go through their whole lives blindly building up, at best, a house of cards.

Motherhood

Why would it be trendy to have babies? Is it just that I am that age and noticing? Not so much. Did you hear about the 17 girls in their teens who made a “pregnancy pact”? No? Oh well they’re 16 years old, or 15, and decided they wanted someone to love them unconditionally. What a load—no, a baby when you’re a baby will almost certainly not make your dreams come true. Who’s non-parenting these kids into thinking they don’t have to find themselves and be responsible before duplicating? I’m almost 27 and not quite there yet myself. Hence, no babies. They are mighty cute though. The outlaw says rednecks like babies and puppies, not kids and dogs.
As interesting as pregnancy is, sometimes I just want to steal a baby from some idiot who has no business rearing a child.
I might blow this up larger, it’s simple but complete somehow.
I did read somewhere that it is trendy for upper-class bitches to be having 4 and 5 kids for some reason, and tabloids seem to exalt on high such Hollywood babies as the infamous Shilo, who’s probably already started smoking, and using the occasional ambian, and I just walk by that shit and think, are we all rednecks? (A parlance of our time loosely based on farmers tans that I think has come to mean idiot, so no offense to farmers) It’s a baby, not a god. It takes babies a long time to get up to speed and they’re all permanent and stuff. They aren’t cute all the time, and whenever I get the urge, I replace the baby image in my mind with a real teenager that I have to manage. Not so cute, extremely ungrateful. Pubescently ugly, raw and insecure. That pretty much turns the urge off.

I want one. Later.

Le dejeuner sur l'herb in wonderland

Such a strange piece, I mean, this, yes, I guess it’s weird in an unliberated way, but the original—why is she not dressed? Why is he in a tux? Ooh, it was just so controversial at the time. The way the model was easily recognizable as the subject of other Manet works—highly irregular, and pssst, I heard she’s a prostitute. Only a harlot would pose for such blasphemy. I personally think, ah, those were the days when men were men and women were beauty. She looks intelligent though—piercingly so, actually. . . anyway, that was before all this feminist equalization, and all this current feminine divine stuff. Let’s go have a picnic! And, oh, I know, you can make the sandwiches and then be nude! Male ego. Geesh. Fun to recreate though.

Edge of Knife

This is only a work in progress at the moment. Having poured over the shades and shadows, I had neglected to conceive of a tableau to house this strange piercing gaze. I'm considering triangles now. TRIAN GLES.

For Your Consideration

I guess I just like it how mares eat oats, and does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy, but if you say it a little faster it sounds like marseydotedanddoseydotesanlittleamseativey, oh and a kiddleetiveeytoo, wouldn't you?

Physiology

After you cut up a few cats, anatomy becomes shapes and designs and mechanisms, not gore. I was surprised, when I had my hand mutilating accident, that I was so thoroughly disgusted. The former student of anatomy and physiology me would have touched and watched and learned, but the current me could no longer hold that appreciation. Maybe I took it too personally. This piece explores the incredibly functional and elegant structures of the body. If you don’t know what your inner ear looks like, look it up. Possibly the most valuable lesson I learned at school was that although our bodies seem to magically work, their mechanics are completely explainable. You may, if you wish, know this profound secret, and there is so much god in it your cranium nearly bursts.