100 Days And Nights 1000 Years Ago

July 12th 2011

Everybody wants to live in a town now. It didn’t used to be this way, I think. Once everybody lived on the land. Then someone built a fence around his and his friends’ houses and locked the gate at night against wild animals, demons and strangers. Later, the fence turned into a wall. Uncle Thomas once told me about his first night behind city walls, when he was still a young boy. He said he felt caged. In town, you could only hear neighbors groan and married couples fart in unison. He said: “when you sleep outside the walls you can hear dragon wings flap in the wind. It’s true,” he said. Uncle Thomas lives in the forest now. He builds furniture that is bought by town folk. “City dwellers will think you’re thick if you’re not from there,” he said. “They even bury their dead within their walls, so that the soul can’t escape into the wild even after death. Isn’t that crazy?” I nodded. I want to be buried under an elm tree on a hill so that I can look out across a bit of land and see some city, too, because perhaps one day everyone will live behind walls. One must think of these things while there’s time, while there still are dragons in the air.

#53/100 Days 2011. Drawing by Taffimai: ”City — Party Time”.

Posted at 11:12pm and tagged with: 100days2011, 53, city, drawing, gisela, lucia, thomas, Taffimai,.

Everybody wants to live in a town now. It didn’t used to be this way, I think. Once everybody lived on the land. Then someone built a fence around his and his friends’ houses and locked the gate at night against wild animals, demons and strangers. Later, the fence turned into a wall. Uncle Thomas once told me about his first night behind city walls, when he was still a young boy. He said he felt caged. In town, you could only hear neighbors groan and married couples fart in unison. He said: “when you sleep outside the walls you can hear dragon wings flap in the wind. It’s true,” he said. Uncle Thomas lives in the forest now. He builds furniture that is bought by town folk. “City dwellers will think you’re thick if you’re not from there,” he said. “They even bury their dead within their walls, so that the soul can’t escape into the wild even after death. Isn’t that crazy?” I nodded. I want to be buried under an elm tree on a hill so that I can look out across a bit of land and see some city, too, because perhaps one day everyone will live behind walls. One must think of these things while there’s time, while there still are dragons in the air.
#53/100 Days 2011. Drawing by Taffimai: ”City — Party Time”.

June 13th 2011

7 notes |#

« Clusters of Angels Dangle (Cuelgan Racimos De Angeles) » (2005) - click on picture for larger, sharper version.

#24/100 Days 2011 [The title, which inspired this drawing, is a line from the poem ‘A la Decensión de Nuestra Señora‘ written by Lope de Vega. This was one of my earliest collaborations with my daughter - then five years old - on the page. We’ve worked together on the same page since she could hold a pen: perhaps because we’re both fiercely competitive and this was the best way to stay on top of what the other one was doing? This hung in our kitchen until yesterday. Feels like an era is over: she’s 10 now - but we’re still working together.]

Posted at 9:57am and tagged with: drawing, lope de vega, angels, clusters, father, daughter, lucia, speh,.

« Clusters of Angels Dangle (Cuelgan Racimos De Angeles) » (2005) - click on picture for larger, sharper version.
#24/100 Days 2011 [The title, which inspired this drawing, is a line from the poem ‘A la Decensión de Nuestra Señora‘ written by Lope de Vega. This was one of my earliest collaborations with my daughter - then five years old - on the page. We’ve worked together on the same page since she could hold a pen: perhaps because we’re both fiercely competitive and this was the best way to stay on top of what the other one was doing? This hung in our kitchen until yesterday. Feels like an era is over: she’s 10 now - but we’re still working together.]