people just float

My childhood was a swift knowledge that I was going to die, perhaps tomorrow, possibly today, a high chance of mortality in the next six seconds. I closed windows to keep bus noises out, rapists and men with mask faces, women made of seashells, and foxes/wolves/wild dogs. Halloween in Portland was a house of dark rooms. Ten foot tall windows hidden behind white curtains and I, crouched underneath the sill, watched witches and Satan gambol past. There are eyes as murderous as tornadoes (another fear, related to basements and Nebraska and TV shows celebrating Natural Disasters). With demons on my mind and a Poe orangutan lurking up every chimney, Halloween was a certain cemetery.

Then, upon growing up in Reformation, Halloween turned into a scimitar triangle shaped like John Calvin's beard. A voice pitched through the nose and Luther booming somewhere Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott! I traipsed in Robin Hood green or skirts longer than my legs and a pearl on my forehead.

Now, Halloween is a brothel and I the Puritan stuck somewhere evil. The first year I moved to Eugene, I overcompensated, draped myself in sheets and a burka. The next year, I covered my hair with plastic snakes and my shoulders with a red dress. This year, my lip is kept decent with a plastic fibered mustache and my legs will go a-walking in jeans. Meanwhile, three blind mice are three 19 year old girls, waving white canes and twenty inches of thigh down 18th Avenue. And behind them lurk the hungry boys, head scarfed pirates, barefoot and boozy. And behind them is a crowd of tall boots connected to cleavage, a sparkle in the left corner and a sparkle on the hand. And behind them is all of Eugene where you ask yourself twice, "Is that a costume or normal life?" Because sometimes it's hard to tell. Blest is the idiot who "dresses up like a hippie." What are you thinking? Be a racketeer, be Zeus, be a reel-to-reel tape. In a valley of the blind, the man with sighted eyes is king.

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After a good talk with a good friend in which goodness was discussed and conversation often dissolved into the literary and we had to pull it back to plain English (noun-verb, heel-toe), and in which the question was posed "What do you want to do with your art?" and collaboration was volunteered, I've decided to state in a public forum, my intentions toward my work.

Dear Work,

Too long we have sat apart
in separate chairs
facing other walls
with all the lights turned off
and I have drawn by looking at my paper
and not at the object I am drawing.
So now is the time to declaim and declare
and perhaps fail spectacularly.

Love,
Kate

Projects (in no order except the order of association):

1. The illustrated dictionary, books bound by door hinges. A visual exploration of the root and ridicule and visceral experience of the fears of a) getting fat, b) being pregnant, c) letting the wrong person in, d) and others.

2. A short illustrated story-ish. To whit, a serious-minded comic.

3. A cycle of short stories. One of which is finished and longing to be edited in a ruthless, conquering manner.

4. Plot out a book that is graphically-designed. Please see: House of Leaves. This will give you an idea of what I am talking about. Also: Boring boring boring boring. I am fascinated with this idea and I think it could be done better with an ear towards the People. An act of both literature and design where both are understandable and one does not ask oneself, "Am I stupid or am I dumb?"

5. A newspaper story of social and environmental importance in which the Freedom of Information Act will be strewn around like candy.

6. Collaborate with T. (Tobias/in/y: I don't know if you ever read this, or know it exists, but it was your conversation and I will attempt that children's book and maybe take you up on the camera)

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To close:

"People don't live or die, people just float"
- Bob Dylan