cellini's Diaryland Diary

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And Raccoon Teeth And She Would Understand

I make art. Did you know that? Probably not.

Usually I start with a bottle or a small jar. I have an artistic obsession with the stuff that builds up in little jars and drawers and baskets in a household. The coins and the beads and pearls from broken necklaces. Ticket stubs and pages of old books and seashells and the tiny things that are little shards of MEMORY that we cannot bear to throw away and so we put it in jars and drawers and con ourselves into thinking that we will do something with these things.

This is what goes into my work. I take these bottles and I fill them with this debris. With the coins from foreign countries that we hope to return to and use the remaining money. With the scattered pearls and beads and extra Monopoly board pieces. The dead ladybugs in the bottoms of the jars and the tiny flashlight light bulb and "the pieces of yarn too short to save and too beautiful to throw away," as Tony Fitzpatrick put it.

I make these little bottles and sometimes I glue a pair of g00gly eyes to them and then its done. A discrete work of art that I put away somewhere and then there it is. Defeating the purpose. Because the whole point is that these memories are being drowned in the places where we put them. I need to get them out and away and give them to people but I don't know what to do with them. I don't know who I would give them to that wouldn't laugh at it all.

I wish that I had someone who understood. Someone who I could give these things to. These little glass capsules. That's what I'm really waiting for. A woman whom I can look at and desire and I could thrust one of these glass vials full of foreign subway passes and raccoon teeth into her hands and know that she would understand.

2:06 a.m. - 2011-01-30

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