My Grandmother's Purse

When I was seven, sometime between the last gasping death of a Tyrannosaurus Rex and the Sputnik launch, my step-grandmother would occasionally drop by our house on a Sunday afternoon. Not all that exciting actually for a kid my age—I was busy setting a model of the Alamo on fire or searching desperately for an escaped hamster—except for one thing: she always brought her purse, black silk, ribbony folds and a mock turtle (I hope) top hinge that snapped so loud it could be heard in the basement (by the hamster who was nesting near the hot water heater).

Inside said purse, there were cough drops so strong that they made your head spin, and I was addicted to them as if they were some kind of necessary, but secret, serum—that is, if secret serum makes your head explode, your sinuses decongest for a fortnight and your eyes dilate like Cruella deVille tracking down a dalmatian. I'm not sure what they were, but when she offered me one, she did it with a knowing look like, "oh you little junkie, don't worry I won't let on.”

In fact, when she opened the purse it released the strangest amalgam of scents that to this day I would be able to recognize if there were some sort of bizarre Proustian contest. Chanel No. 5, talcum powder, lipstick, and the camphorous honey of the coughdrops.

I later determined that had we souls, they would smell exactly like this.

Lizard Juice

I wish you would go all woodsy like dive into the green octave of spring soy get to know the Mama, eat the mineral before she eats you, stead of letting death dine for you and binging on that oil, you heard me, that oil, that lizard juice

This Place

This is an odd place where anything goes. The weather changes in a second. Image and thought are relative only to the moment. They are SOSs, telegrams, discards from Joseph Cornell constructions, journal entries, a witnessing of the random, feathers in the tail of the Bird of Chaos, whistlings in the dark, prayers spoken into a cobwebbed well, folded indecipherable smudges of notes found in the corner of an old wallet dropped along the highway, things you would say alone to a newborn child or would confess to an stranger on a crosstown bus. It is about fractions, not whole numbers. Peeks, glimpses. Aperçus—not portraits, not full views.

This place is about knowing the house is on fire and knowing exactly what you would take if you could take only one thing.