oh erin, sister! we speak the same language, breathe the same dust, dream the same dream - oh, some day, to finally experience the glory of painting .......... let's share more often : )
hugs, mandyj

By 'your love', you mean me right? Just checking.

love as nebulous concept and feeling in general. i.e. sitting with a much-loved friend, sitting by myself and reveling in the comfort and solitude, or entwined in the arms of a lover. in all cases, variations on the fish, pickles, and tea theme are perfect accompaniments to a sunny afternoon and conducive to feelings of love.

in the editing stages, love went from love to Love to love to Love to love to Love and back again in anticipation of potential interpretations, and my own uncertainty as to what the hell i meant in the first place.

And Amanda...let's sit on my couch and look at the lions and consider investing in places that only require Lipstick. or consider selling our manses and being able to afford to pay people to do all of this dirty work for us so we can get on with the concept albums, already. and surfing.

"hot steel, loud and fast"

I'm totally stealing that line.

i'd be lying if i said you hadn't crossed my mind when i wrote it...

Not to interrupt what in all likelihood looks like it's gonna spin into unf-unf, but that's some fine fibreglassin' there, sister.

Now, I'm off to meditate on the existential implications of Dap. Why do we believe we must fill in the gaps? Are we really just yearning to fill the unfillable cracks and seams in our own soul's fascia? In looking negatively upon the negative space at an imperfect joining of boards, are we in fact trying to compensate for the unfinishedness of our own life's business, our own mortality? Is our fanatical drive to keep moisture from penetrating the skin of our houses driven slavishly onward by our fear of The Other, the external, that which we fight in our own psyches to protect our fragile and ephemeral imagined Selves from the insistent, crumbling rot of time? Perhaps we are trapped in this cycle of home (self?) improvement, of moisture barriers (in our hearts), when what we truly to do is put down the caulking gun of our own self-judgment.

Fuck yeah.

I don't know who this Tony guy is, but he is a pretty brilliant writer. "when what we truly to do is put down the caulking gun of our own self-judgment." Just to add to that, it's only relatively new things that we need to make perfect, because we can still imagine what they "should" look like. I adore things that hit an age where we love, and actually seek out their imperfections and those imperfections add value. Old fir floors, exposed brick, huge fir beams, rough hewn country kitchen tables and my old metal Nikon with the black paint worn though so the brass on the corners shows. Moisture barriers of the heart and the caulking gun of our own self judgement indeed! Although, when I've just finished caulking something around the house, and the caulk is still sitting on the counter, I do love saying to visitors "oh, sorry about that, I seem to have left my cock out for everyone to see". Come on, how often does one get to say THAT?

Why thank you! I also swing a mean hammer and can put fires out just by staring at them.

Hmm... I'm drawn to the notion that we love old things (fir floors, Nikons, Grandpa) because they have stories to tell, and that those imperfections (scratches, chipped paint, misogyny) are the (hi)stories writ in the material sense. Perfection, on the other hand, speaks of material boredom. Or, as Grandpa would say, "Don't take advice from anyone who doesn't have scars."*

However, if we take this perfect/imperfect dualism to its logical ends, we find that inauthentic imperfection (overly-earnest Goths) and inauthentic perfection (Botox) ring with an equally hollow tone.

But then, policing authenticity (itself the most contrived and judgmental, and therein inauthentic of acts) is boring. Better to let the caulk/cock (or lack thereof) speak for itself.

*Grandpa didn't say this. I made it up. But it makes for a better story.