Foldy-caterpillar people and elections.
Yesterday I noticed that the sign outside of Sarasota High School says:
REMEMBER
FREEDOM IS NOT FREE
That made me feel so sad. So I'm not going to say that you should vote because if you don't want to, you shouldn't. But personally, I think it's important.
My earliest memory of voting was the presidential election of 92. My whole family went to Charles Towne Landing, to the weird auditorium type room. The man in line in front of us had sandals and these long toenails that were yellow and kind of curly.
We had been to that same place a few years earlier to see my brother's mixed-media artwork The Give Machine on display in a county-wide art contest. The Give Machine isn't one of those things that I think about every day, but it is a neat one. Basically it's a giant vending machine. Everything costs twenty-five cents and you put in your money and you get anything you want. There are two portals to retrieve your wish, one small and one large. In the painting, a crazy-haired boy (my brother, I think) has just gotten a car, which is flying out of the giant portal. There is a bird just a few feet above the Give Machine and he kind of looks as though he's been electrocuted. There are clouds and lightning and my brother's name is scrawled in pencil up there in the sky. It's kind of dramatic and crazy, but I love it. Maybe one day I can put it on my wall.
The other thing I'm thinking about today is my social security number. It's so weird that we all just memorize these nine digit strings of information and that it's written, right above my eleven-year old signature in a blue inky pen (with smudge) on a card that, for me at least, is perpetually lost. And I wonder when I became aware that I had a social security number. I didn't ever use it until I was sixteen and applied for my first job. And I wonder where it's recorded and if there's anyone whose sole job is to think about my social security number (and yours) all day. Probably not.
What I imagine when I think of social security numbers, perhaps since I was born in the eighties, is a small room with a computer running DOS-- all black screen and bright green, all-caps font-- and printing out a constant stream of new social security numbers on that weird paper that is connected sheet by sheet with a perforated seam, and has the weird punctured strips on the end that you can peel off to make foldy-caterpillar people.
REMEMBER
FREEDOM IS NOT FREE
That made me feel so sad. So I'm not going to say that you should vote because if you don't want to, you shouldn't. But personally, I think it's important.
My earliest memory of voting was the presidential election of 92. My whole family went to Charles Towne Landing, to the weird auditorium type room. The man in line in front of us had sandals and these long toenails that were yellow and kind of curly.
We had been to that same place a few years earlier to see my brother's mixed-media artwork The Give Machine on display in a county-wide art contest. The Give Machine isn't one of those things that I think about every day, but it is a neat one. Basically it's a giant vending machine. Everything costs twenty-five cents and you put in your money and you get anything you want. There are two portals to retrieve your wish, one small and one large. In the painting, a crazy-haired boy (my brother, I think) has just gotten a car, which is flying out of the giant portal. There is a bird just a few feet above the Give Machine and he kind of looks as though he's been electrocuted. There are clouds and lightning and my brother's name is scrawled in pencil up there in the sky. It's kind of dramatic and crazy, but I love it. Maybe one day I can put it on my wall.
The other thing I'm thinking about today is my social security number. It's so weird that we all just memorize these nine digit strings of information and that it's written, right above my eleven-year old signature in a blue inky pen (with smudge) on a card that, for me at least, is perpetually lost. And I wonder when I became aware that I had a social security number. I didn't ever use it until I was sixteen and applied for my first job. And I wonder where it's recorded and if there's anyone whose sole job is to think about my social security number (and yours) all day. Probably not.
What I imagine when I think of social security numbers, perhaps since I was born in the eighties, is a small room with a computer running DOS-- all black screen and bright green, all-caps font-- and printing out a constant stream of new social security numbers on that weird paper that is connected sheet by sheet with a perforated seam, and has the weird punctured strips on the end that you can peel off to make foldy-caterpillar people.