These little green sprouting onions mean more to me than I ever imagined.
It’s like my grandfather is growing in them each day.
Raised bed, raised from the dead.
I spent hours on the phone with my mom yesterday, talking about family.
Aunts, uncles, siblings, grandparents, cousins.
What it means to be and have family. That you aren’t ever really alone in life.
My grandpa Jack, whose real name was John, would make this funny face with his cheek between his tongue.
He’d call me up as a kid and tell me jokes.
We watched wheel of fortune, and he taught me how to shuffle a deck of cards like I know what I’m doing.
He collected clown paintings from garage sales.
He loved garage sales.
I can never really understand. I can only guess at what might be at hand.
He used a jigsaw to cut a trotting horse out of a piece of plywood, when I was young and riding horses. Painted a subdued blue.
It was my favorite thing, but it’s gone now.
Like every other piece of physical history. And yet, I want to create things that people will cherish for life. Refuse to part with. Hang from their wall until their dying days. Pass to the next generations.
Aren’t we all a conspiracy of contradictions.
Not a single one of us can escape.
For now, I’m drawing weird shit and space cows.
paint GrandDads blue trotting horse