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i legit might be one of the top 100 richest trans poc in the world

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On leave

(A double entendre, because I was on leave, and this post will be about leave.)

Well I finally did what I had been meaning to do for the last 3 years. I left my job, though only a little, to focus on my art. I think I had gotten to the point where I felt so disengaged with the work, partially from WFH pandemic stuff, and also from having time to sit with myself, and having been sort of shocked out of my daily routine a la Ling Ma's "Severance". Did I learn anything?

I came into my leave as a sort of experiment in being on unpaid leave forever (quitting). I wanted to know if it could be financially viable, if it would make me happier, and if I would be able to be self motivated. Also I had gotten to the point where I was trying to do so much after work and on weekends, writing 2-4 musicals, short stories, songwriting, hacking together tech art projects for my portfolio, and taking classes on machine learning – well I won't claim that it didn't occur to me to start secretly doing some of this during work hours if there was a lull, but even with that I felt that I just didn't have enough time.

It turned out that even if spending work hours on personal projects felt ethical enough that I did it, it did not feel ethical enough for me to enjoy it. Often it felt more virtuous to commit that time to do the work that I was disengaged in but being paid for. But spending large chunks of time doing something you don't care about is not virtuous either, and since I have the option of restructuring my life to avoid this (quitting) it seemed obvious that the time had come.

So I told my manager I wanted to take three months off to focus on writing, music, creative tech, online classes, and maybe applying to grad school for Media Arts, another project that had entered my head around this time. I told him I was going to use the three months as a trial for leaving Google in a more permanent fashion (quitting) and that I would let him know how I felt when I came back.

Well now I'm back, so how do I feel?

I was really happy and really productive. I was self-motivated and able to commit time every day for deep work on my own projects. I made no money from my projects at all, but I did make around $400 from a few work shifts at the Farmer's Market selling bagels. I learned a ton. I started volunteering at Food Not Bombs.

In my first week off, Michela and I went on a trip to LA and Catalina Island, and the story of a disease which had affected the island's fox population had me so inspirired that I wrote the first draft of a musical about it over a month and a half. Having time to write for large chunks of time (well, usually only up to 2 hours in a chunk) was huge.

But even better that just having time was having the flexibility to follow sparks of inspiration at the moment that they arrived. If I had an idea for a new project, I didn't have to wait until after work or the weekend. I got to follow through right away, which I think is how I prefer to work.

I also looked into graduate programs to build my tech art skills and expand my network. What I found was that these programs look like a blast, but are expensive, and there are not that many scholarships for people who want to do art, compared to, say, get a graduate degree in machine learning.

So now I've had a week of my old job and I'm sure that I want a change. I'm looking at some other engineering teams at work (this would be a small but welcome change), and some creative roles at work. I discovered a career title, "Creative Technologist" which I think is my dream job – this is the role that makes the delightful non-products Google sometimes releases, like the doodle, or April Fools jokes, or the recent Freddiemeter, which uses machine learning to tell you how much you can sing like Freddie Mercury. It turns out that the people making these are not software engineers, they're in Marketing, which I guess makes sense because they're not making core products, and its a slightly different skill set that you're not really intereviewed for as an engineer. And of course I'm also still considering extending my leave.

Staying somewhere at Google is the most financially viable option. Staying in an engineering position but changing teams is the most easily accomplishable. It's hard to transfer to Marketing, but I have a lot more excitement for the Creative Technologist role. These roles are mostly hired based on portfolio, so I could continue building mine out on the side even if I stayed.

Leaving would mean losing my only source of income. I would have even more time to build out my portfolio, in music, writing, and tech art, and it actually doesn't scare me to be pulled in so many directions, because during my leave it meant that if I wasn't feeling music-y one day I almost certainly was feeling write-y or tech-y. Leaving might be temporary. I can always come back to the software engineering world with Google on my resume. If my portfolio becomes impressive I can also use it to apply to creative positions at Google but also at other digital media marketing agencies (where I've learned a lot of Creative Technologist roles are).

One big difference between engineering careers and creative careers is that you don't need to hustle as a salaried engineer. It might help you get promoted if you're very ambitious, but you'll have a pretty comfortable life either way, assuming you can stand the work. Whereas it seems like whether I choose music, writing, tech art, or even tech art for Marketing, a creative career will be closer to that of a contractor. I will be constantly seeking out new projects, because if I don't, I won't be getting work. I will have flexibility to choose my work, but also the responsibility to choose to work. I will probably have a more varied experience, and absolutely cannot just coast along being disengaged.

Regardless of which I end up choosing, there are things from leave that I hope to keep. I intend to keep volunteering at 3:30 on Wednesdays, and I will make my work schedule fit around this. I am more confident in my skills and have a clearer sense of what interests me than I did when I joined Google out of undergrad. And last of all, I have come back to work more sure than ever that I don't want to spend my life being disengaged with my work, whether its engineering work or creative work. The scarcest resource is excitement, so I'm not going to throw mine away.

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The parts of a doorway, ranked by order of importance

5. The escutcheon

This is a decorative plate that fits around the knob or handle and key cylinders. Escutcheon is also a generic term that is used to describe cover plates for other things, like fire sprinklers, faucets and pipes, and some ceiling lights. To be honest you don’t need one of these.

4. The door itself

I know right, Jord must be crazy to have the actual physical door so far down in the rankings. But the truth is almost any rectangular piece of wood can be a door, and believe me once you read the rest of this list you’ll be like oh okay I get why the door piece is so far down. The only non-negotiable part of a door is the hinge holes, where the screws go in which attach the door to the hinge. The “bore hole” where the door knob or handle goes, is nice-to-have, but you would still have a fully operational door even without a handle.

3. The door frame

There’s a joke I remember hearing as a kid: “How does Batman go through walls? With the door.” But even without a door itself, the frame plays the important role of marking an entrance. When a house is being constructed, the frame is ready long before the door, and they get on just fine. The dividing piece at the bottom of the door frame is called the threshold.

2. The dead bolt

Now we’re getting somewhere. The dead bolt fits into a hole above the bore hole. It comes in two pieces, an exterior side and an interior side, which are screwed together through the hole. The bolt itself usually fits into a dead bolt plate which is screwed into the door jamb, the inner part of the frame. It’s called a “dead” bolt instead of a “live” bolt because when it’s fully extended it locks into place. If your door opens outward and your bolt is “live” then a trespasser can use a pocket knife to “walk” the bolt open.

1. The latch bolt

The latch bolt, or just latch (or in Scotland, the sneck), is the piece that comes in and out of the door. It fits into a strike plate, which is screwed into the door jamb. The latch is controlled by the inside and outside knobs or handles, which retract the latch when turned, and are generally spring loaded so as to turn back when released.

“Privacy knobs” or handles, sometimes used on inside doors, have a button which stops the outer knob or handle from turning. They don’t have keys, and can be opened from the outside with a needle or bobby pin. Outside knobs and handles have a push or turn lock, which achieves a similar functionality, except that they can be opened from the outside with a key.

Latch bolts are usually curved on one side to allow the door to slide into the frame when pushed and then latch closed, even when the handle is not being turned.

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You come into MY house, into my ROOM, into my very own BED, in MY town, the one I GREW UP in, back before my BRAIN was fully developed, back before I had PERSONHOOD and AGENCY, before I LEARNED I could do ANYTHING, before I REALIZED how much of the FUCKING WORLD is a goddamn sham, a fake glass wall that you just THINK is there but when you reach out to TOUCH it there’s NOTHING, nothing but the emptiness of a broken promise and a little NOTE from GOD saying “it was all a lie. everything except for this. make the best of it,” do you?

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Instructions for making scrambled eggs

when i wake up, after instagram and peeing, in that order, and cleaning up after last night’s drunk people in the kitchen, myself included, I think a lot about leucotomies.

a leucotomy, more commonly known as a lobotomy, is when a doctor takes a stake and smashes it through the space between your eyebrows, stirring to scramble your prefrontal cortex. there are two methods of doing this: transorbital, and low-and-slow. in a transorbital lobotomy you turn the heat to high, seasoning the pan with any neutral oil (I prefer evoo) and toss in pan, for just one minute. the brain continues to cook off heat. in a low-and-slow lobotomy, creaminess is the name of the game — it’s closer to a custard than anything. use low heat and constantly stir to avoid curdling. you can add milk and butter if you want.

people who have these procedures done go on living their lives, but their personhood is severed. they don’t laugh at the jokes they used to. they don’t listen to the same music. they don’t even like, follow, and share the same grams (though thankfully they are able to continue posting). a lobotomized person is worth 60% less in revenue to an advertiser. they spend less money because they don’t have desires for products. they don’t have insecurities. they don’t have gaping holes that they try to fill with consumerism. its just them and the flavor of the day. them and sitting around, just sitting. them and going on walks. them and how-do-i-cook-my-next-meal.

if I got a lobotomy I would want it to be low-and-slow. i like to imagine the doctor gently severing the connections in my brain. the fear of rejection, of failure, everywhere society has disagreed with me, the rash of strange alienation, all melting away as I cook. and then we eat.

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i’ve learned to record my voice

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How to hang a shelf

I purchased these shelves to mount on our bedroom wall so that we could put some plants there and clear up space on the desk.

The shelves came with triangular mounting pieces, screws, and drywall anchors. The screws are used to attach the shelf to the mount, and the mount to the wall. To attach the screws to the shelf you don’t need a drill, you can actually just use a screwdriver because the wood is soft enough. Then to attach the mount to the wall, you have a few options. You could:

a) Drill a small “pilot hole” just smaller than your drywall anchor. Then hammer the anchor into the hole, and screw the screws into the anchor. The anchor splits apart as the screw goes in, adding stability. This kind of anchor is called an “expansion anchor.”

b) If you want to create a pilot hole for the anchor but don’t have a drill or drill bit, you can just hammer a nail approximately the size of the hole you want into the wall, and then pull it back out. This is also a nice way to create pilot holes for screws going straight into the wall, and helps align the screw.

c) Skip the drywall anchor and just screw your screws right into the wall. This can be okay but it’s best practice to use the anchors, especially if you want to make sure the shelf won’t fall in the future.

d) Use a stud finder to find where the studs are, then drill or nail into the stud, which will be sturdier than drywall.

I initially went into this small project thinking it would be very simple, but once the pieces arrived I found myself questioning basic things, like “do I need to drill a hole before I insert screws?” “are studs made of wood or metal?” and “is there a standard width of screw?” So I think it’s probably smart to double back and revisit basic handy things to cement my understanding, because it is useful to be able to assemble shelves.

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first poems in a new house

(written with Bananagrams)

I. 

These ones were all fitted for the fray meant to whet their tongues on rust from corded headphones, sit unpaid and take it all. The law so goes that the good ones must all drone on banal while onlookers clap from above the whole maze. I get why the bad kids have found their way home they throw down their coats from lost audiences’ waned interest in justice and cool shit like this. Please hang on to what I’ve texted you.

II.

Shaven and nailed at the jowl the raven hung limp as a towel “devil’s squab” repeated the mob o’er the hoot of a bystander owl. Two pence in change for a quid to bet that the wing would turn rib, he witnessed the bird which twas said was a witch though the evidence hanged on a bid. “Coil around in the rink, be brisk, and come grab a drink,” The hangman wore plaid, though he was just a lad, and his rope had been tied with a kink. The murmuring started to grow. This bird, it would seem, was no foe, just a bird, kicking the can, and it turned out the man who’d first pointed the finger was Poe.

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You are the kombucha in the corner. You are the extra fridge. You are the terroir. You are the errant copy of Pachinko on the couch. You are the long-suffering and begrudgingly clean roommate. You fit in a hole not quite the size or shape of you, at least at first. The hole begins to change shape, as do you, in the parts that will give when you squeeze in.

You are the unused bike with the flat tire. You are the box of N95 masks, which are actually KN95. You are the bag of winter gear at the top of the closet. You are the smell of your cold car seats in the morning. You are the things you set aside time for, and the things you wish you could set aside time for.

You are a tattoo appointment in two months. You are a reminder to call your friends. You are a promise to yourself to quit your job. You are your job.

You are your untapped potential. You are what you choose to share and what you choose to keep. You are what makes you cry. You are laughter, you are light. You are a brief time with the self proclaimed authorities you will meet, the map you will draw despite them, the accidental drops of color from paint night, and the unfinished edges of the map.

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I don’t believe in politics

I have politics. I think we need to tax the rich and use that money to help the poor. I think that includes the ultra-rich but also working rich like me. I think we need to regulate industries which when unregulated are shown to have detrimental societal effects. And I think we need to fund research into what kinds of things have detrimental societal effects so that we’re not just strong-armed by major players in those industries. I think that whatever regulations we come up with shouldn’t be so strong that people are no longer motivated and excited to build businesses, and I think that it’s good for industrial people to be monetarily compensated for their industriousness, but that at a certain point they have been compensated enough and that money would be better spent helping those less well off.

But here’s the truth. I have never really believed in politics. I have never felt like it matters to my day-to-day who the president is. I have never felt like either of the two large parties represent my interests. I have never felt like any political movements outside of the two large parties have any realistic chance of affecting large scale change. I have been told that local politics is the only real politics and yet I have never been to a city council meeting. I am supportive of protesters but I don’t expect their success.

When Trump was president I maintained that he for the most part was enacting normal Republican policies, and the most pervasive criticism of him, though it was not put this way, was that he doesn’t think before saying things. And I still believe this. Every accusation that Trump is a racist or sexist more or less breaks down into a) he said some racist or sexist stuff without thinking about it and b) he simultaneously supports some normal Republican policy which is argued to lead to regressive outcomes.

Even when Trump supporters attempted to impede the final confirmation of Biden’s election victory, it still didn’t seem real. Even as every news outlet, all of my friends, all of my social media was talking about it, whether or not to call it a riot, a protest, or a coup, what it said about the double standard of police, the double standard of progressives, or the double standard of conservatives – even then, it didn’t seem real. On the contrary, it felt like the series finale of Game of Thrones was on: it was an exciting, public, cultural moment, which was also fictional and conceptually distant from anything actually affecting me. Even a friend in DC told me it was remarkable how little disturbance there was to anything not near the actual Capitol building. In fact, “thousands” of protesters is not very many people. Even the upper bound of ten thousand is not very many people. The US is not literally on fire. And whether or not you call it a “coup” does not change the ineptitude of the operation through the lens of actual revolution, to the point where it begins to make more sense to view it as something closer to a sporting event / renaissance fair.

To be fair, I do think Trump’s inciting of this event was totally unprecedented, not at all a normal Republican tactic, and also as people have been saying, absolutely predictable given the last four years. Though maybe I differ from the Twitter armchair experts in that my armchair analysis is that this is more about class war and the partisan divide than the white power movement.

But now that Biden’s term has started it has reminded me again that I really still don’t believe in politics. That the president has changed, and the biggest shift in my life is that I no longer get to be the contrarian pointing out the president sucks but not for the reasons you think he does, and now have to revert back to just pointing out that the president sucks.

And you’re saying, hey, if you feel like the policies set by our government don’t affect you, maybe that’s because they don’t. And maybe they don’t because you have the privilege of being well educated, well off, having a strong safety net, being raised in a safe place, having your health, and facing more or less no oppression. And if you cared about other people who are experiencing this oppression, maybe then you would care about politics. Maybe then you would do something about it. There’s a goddamn pandemic. Trump dropped the ball. Who knows if a Democrat president would have done a better job and avoided 400,000 deaths. Maybe even a more normal Republican president would have done a better job. Three times as many Americans are out of a job than in the 2008 recession. They’re waiting for stimulus money to come in. Most Americans have less than $5000 saved up. This $2000 is going to feed people. It’s going to save lives. I mean not literally, because our welfare services are good enough that very few people literally starve in the US. But improving lots of people’s lives is also an objectively good thing to do, you don’t have to go all the way to literal life-saving. And stimulus money and COVID response are just a few examples of real life change that depends on politics. Lives are at stake.

Well okay. Sometimes I do think I’m better than other people on social media because I’m not getting as worked up about politics. Sometimes I do vaguely feel that smart people who understand what’s really going on and aren’t just getting swept up in trendy politics are less angry about the scandal of the week and What It Says About Society. That those who can get over initial tribalistic emotional responses to things end up having a more Pinker-esque optimistic view. That in the grand scheme of things, short term political movements mean a lot less than scientific achievements gradually raising the water line. That getting worried about them is a waste of energy insofar as it’s just worry, and even if you are the 1 in 50 people who actually translates that worry into action, even the action tends to be a fairly ineffective use of your time.

But I do also think it’s important for me to remember that policies affect the real world. And to the credit of people who get worked up about politics, I think a major strength you have over me is that you remember this all the time. You’re absolutely right that a lot of policies don’t impact me because I’m not very oppressed. Even almost all of my social circle (queer children of immigrants who are minorities) is not very oppressed. But I know oppression exists. Maybe it’s not enough to just vote in elections. Maybe we should be in the streets and on the phones. Maybe the US is sort of on fire and having a measured response isn’t all that valuable.

And at this point I would just like to say, congratulations on ALMOST understanding our place in the world as Americans. Because the truth is that the US is sort of on fire. In fact, the whole world is sort of on fire, and the US is one of the least on fire places to be. US residents estimate that the global median income is $20,000 a year. In fact, it’s $2100 a year. The US is the out-of-touch 1% of the world.

Here’s my thought process when I encounter US political angst on social media. First: this is a dumb thing to get upset about. Second: But I guess it’s good that you care about the wellbeing of others. Third: Except if you care about the wellbeing of others, then in the grand scheme of things, this is not the thing you should be getting upset about.

Sure, sometimes I forget that US politics matters. But then when I see people acting like the reason it matters is because they care about other people, I start to become more confused. I do think people care about other people, but I also think they are extremely prone to just reacting to whatever media is beamed into their eyes, and so unless they work really hard to curate those beams, they end up saying and writing things which hit this weird inconsistent type of caring that looks like virtue-signaling to outsiders, but which I try to understand as being just a non-rigorous, emotional, plea for connection -- a sort of “I’m hurting, do other people feel this way?”

And then at the same time, these people know in the back of their heads that there’s a lot of people in the world who have it really bad, whose lives could be improved if they donated small amounts of their wealth to effective causes. And I start to think, these people don’t think global poverty is real! I mean, they don’t think it doesn’t exist, it’s just not real to them the way US politics are. It doesn’t take them on an emotional journey. It’s not beamed directly into their eyeballs. And it’s not chic to care about. 400,000 deaths? So one year of global Malaria? $2000 stimulus? So one year of median global income? I’m not saying that greater pain invalidates lesser pain, I’m just asking you to have some perspective before you come telling me to have some perspective.

So what do we do? Well, there’s the Giving What We Can Pledge. I took this when I first got a job outside college and have since donated over 10% of my income every year to effective global charities. Peter Singer advocates for a sliding scale which makes sense to me -- 10% means a lot more to people with less than me. And that money can save literal lives (at a much higher rate than it can in the US). It’s not popular because it’s not easy. I mean it is functionally very easy to do, but it’s not easy to walk yourself to a place where you want to. I mean it’s your money, and you probably already help the less fortunate in other ways.

But it is political in a way that is very real. It’s political in the way that investing in education is political. Deworming children (for about 30 cents each) so they can attend school and to avoid organ damage has been shown to dramatically increase their life outcomes. Delivering Vitamin A supplements (for about 1 dollar each) substantially reduces child mortality. It is an apolitical good.

I wrote this because I was frustrated. The thing that improves the world is never the thing that people are talking about. If everyone took the GWWC pledge, we would have enough money to solve global poverty, eliminate all treatable diseases, fund research into the untreatable ones for approximately the next forever, educate anybody who needs educating, feed anybody who needs feeding, fund an unparalleled renaissance in the arts, permanently save every rainforest in the world, and have enough left over to launch five or six different manned missions to Mars. And that’s using just 1 year’s donations. Yet people, global one-percenters nonetheless, seem to continue getting angry about things that matter less.

I wrote this because in real life I would only ever be supportive of someone wanting to get involved politically. I am a firm believer that the war is not to be fought between people who both want to help but in different ways, but between those who want to do something and the apathetic. If you want to get on social media and harness political rage as a way to enact eventual policy change to help people, then in theory I’d like to support it.

I wrote this because I wanted to express the tiring thing about your politics to me. That it’s all lies. It’s all half-true stories being published and publicized. News which is sold because it’s what people are buying. It matters, it doesn’t matter. And none of it’s real, except it’s all real, it’s just not happening to you. But in the end there are still other people, and they are still our neighbors, and we do still want the best for them. So it is good to keep trying. Maybe even consider adopting radical politics like me. Take matters into your own hands and seize the power to do good by recognizing that we the one-percenters of the world already have it.

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poems for a new year

(written with Bananagrams)

I. Journal Entry

A scant joy of this bored world – Dozed off with the back-row jock who coifs his hair with gatorade. And this served to alleviate the laissez-faire the rooster feels waking up each morning To watch the beaver slave away against the restless flow of leaves like ships bound for the creek.

II.

The presents were all phenomenally boxed The tree stood up tall and straight Trampling outside on California rocks we carried our pet past the cold, wet gate. Threw him in the back of the diesel truck to bleed our keyless fantasies dry – the windshield held dreams you can’t buy with the buck Grandma gave us when she would come by. The tires stayed stuck there in the loamy soil and we stomped back inside, lungs still fresh Point at the kitchen where Mom’s roux made with oil blew our minds, we sat down – we are blessed!

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spirals in the back

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Figure drawing

“I remember standing on a street corner with the black painter Beauford Delaney down in the Village waiting for the light to change, and he pointed down and said, “Look.” I looked and all I saw was the water. And he said, “Look again,” which I did, and I saw oil on the water and the city reflected in the puddle. It was a great revelation to me. I can’t explain it. He taught me how to see, and how to trust what I saw. Painters have often taught writers how to see. And once you’ve had that experience, you see differently.”

- James Baldwin

I’ve been practicing figure drawing using Michela’s charcoal pencils and extra sketch book, with the sketchbook that she bought for me on back order. Follow my progress here.

A beginner figure drawing regiment consists of equal parts three things: face and head drawing, full figure drawing, and quick sketch which means sketching a subject in less than 5 minutes to capture the “gesture.” The many available online instructional videos use words like gesture and rhythm to mean vague unexplainable things about the overall shape of the subject and the ways the lines you draw are related to each other. As unexplainable as these things are, I feel like I am gradually getting a sense of what they mean.

I use a circle (cranium) and wedge (jaw) for the head, and then use the Reilly method to draw the torso: the main line of action (spine to groin), a horizontal line for the top of the shoulders, then lines from each shoulder to the groin, and then from the neck to the hips, all the while looking back and forth between my work and the reference to get the proportions correct, which is especially important when drawing humans. I draw an oval for the volume of the ribcage, and another oval for the volume of the pelvic bowl. Then I draw CSI curves (lines which are either C, S, or I shaped) for the insides and outsides of the arms and legs, and that gives me the main gesture of the subject and I can fill in details and contour from there. In my first week my shading was mostly based on the value (darkness) of the general area in the reference, but now I try to look for specific shadow shapes on the body, which one instructional video described as being like clusters of islands. I enjoy 5 minute quick sketch the most, but as I’ve gotten more ambitious I will sometimes turn off the timer and just continue until I’ve done the whole body (the head for now remains a blank oval with a line for the eyes).

Michela got us a figure drawing reference book by Andrew Loomis which is full of diagrams. Diagrams on how to draw in perspective, from imagination, and from models, and hand drawn diagrams of all the bones and muscles in the human body. Andrew Loomis is also known for creating the Loomis head method. The essence of his method is that a head is a sphere with two flat side-planes chopped off, the bottom quarter of which is the ear and where the jaw starts, plus the jaw volume which is a sort of rounded wedge. I’m able to draw Loomis heads in most directions but am still quite bad at adding in the detailed facial features. But figure drawing as a hobby is special to me because it’s one of the only hobbies I’ve picked up despite not being naturally very good at it. Despite my middling consistency, and despite really hating some of the drawings I produce and wanting nobody to see them, I still find drawing invigorating and enjoyable.

In the middle of the day when we take walks Michela sees things I don’t, like decoration through second story apartment windows, license plates on vehicles and clothing on bikers passing by on the street, and dogs, and she wonders things like what kind of tree is that, whose names are etched into the side of this building, and where is the cat today. On weekends when we paint I’m impressed by her ability to put red and blue in a cup of coffee, and pink and brown in a white wicker basket, and just generally how she can use all the wrong colors with aplomb. I think she probably sees things like James Baldwin talked about.

One diagram in the Loomis book shows furrows all the way down the back. There is a furrow in the middle of the neck. Furrows on the waist. Furrows beneath the shoulder blades, and in the skin of the elbow. When I close my eyes before going to sleep I can picture furrows. They’re not part of any larger body part that I can make out, like the crook of an arm, or where the calf meets the thigh on a kneeling figure, they’re just sort of lines and tone, repeated curves and tilted shapes. They could be sections of hieroglyphics even, or Chinese calligraphy. They are like the wrinkles on my thumb, which alternate from the left and the right and harden when they dry out, or the even more imperceptible furrows down the back of my hand which form little cells lined up like bricks, packed together loosely like the medium grain of the paper in my sketch book.

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the colors of sept 4th