We Are Water

We are like water, aren’t we? We can be fluid, flexible when we have to be. But strong and destructive, too.” And something else, I think to myself. Like water, we mostly follow the path of least resistance.

Maybe that's what love is. Having someone who guides you through different experiences, coaxes you to try news things but still makes you feel safe.

a life we didn't choose, chose us

One thing I’ve learned in my program is that guilt is a wasted emotion, you know? Look back on the past but don’t stare.

A life I didn't choose chose me.

So maybe that’s what love means. Having the capacity to forgive the one who wronged you, no matter how deep the hurt was.

That’s often the case, of course—that creation and madness begin to dance with each other.

The “what-ifs”: they’ll do a number on you.

Il destino mischia le carte, ma siamo noi a giocare la partita. Destiny shuffles the cards, but we are the ones who must play the game.

Sometimes we want something to be true so badly that we convince ourselves that it is true.

All I’m saying, Dad, is that I accept that I don’t know. But I have faith that my Lord and Savior does, so I’m putting myself in His hands. Humbling myself to a wisdom that’s above and beyond me and praying for His guidance.

comforts the disturbed and disturbs the comfortable:

So maybe that’s what love means. Having the capacity to forgive the one who wronged you, no matter how deep the hurt was. At any rate, I’m glad she doesn’t know about the corpse that’s down there in that well. I’ve spared her that much.

That coincidence is God’s way of staying invisible?

It’s as if the work on your canvas has a will of its own. When that happens, it can be quite exciting. But disturbing, too, when, as the painter, you are not in control of your painting.

Of course, all of the coolest icons overdosed and died years ago, which is just as well. How depressing would it be to see a gray-haired Jimi Hendrix wearing a cardigan sweater and reminiscing about the soundtrack of the Summer of Love?

Change what you can, accept what you can't, and be smart enough to know the difference.

This is where the pot is strongest now: at the place where it had been broken.

Change what you can, accept what you can’t, and be smart enough to know the difference. Viveca comes downstairs first and heads into the

This was a career, not an emotional disorder.

Motherless children have a hard time when the mother is gone. That

Motherless children have a hard time when the mother is gone.

and yet she continues to skip rope in my mind and on my canvases, raising her dark, hopeful face to the sky, innocent of the depth of people’s cruelty toward “the other”—those who, for whatever reason, must swim against the tide instead of letting it carry them. . . .

It lands halfway down the skirt. The red wine against the green silk makes it look like Gaia, the primordial earth mother, is having her period. I know I should feel guilty. Contrite. I should be rushing to the fridge and grabbing a bottle of club soda before the stain sets, or rushing Viveca’s dress down the street to that dry cleaning place. But I’m not contrite. I’m a little giddy, in fact. I pour another mug of wine and throw it at the other three dresses. In some places the wine seeps in and it dribbles down to the hems in others. I do it again: pour, splash. I feel like Jackson Pollock must have felt, except I’m not dribbling paint; I’m staining beauty with blood.

I understand there was some controversy about the coroner’s ruling concerning Josephus Jones’s

Too bad I didn't know you back then, I would have come and rescued you." Like he was Prince Charming or something. Which he is, in a way, because he rescued me from the simple, uncomplicated life I thought I liked until I realized how much I was missing. How lonely that life had been: going to work, going home, and watching TV, going places by myself on weekends.

If you want people to flock to art, lure them with pancakes.

Maybe that’s what love is. Having someone who guides you through different experiences, coaxes you to try new things but still makes you feel safe.

When a painting I’m working on becomes my singular focus—when I am “in the zone,” as I’ve heard people put it—a trancelike state will sometimes overtake me.