Burroughs and Gysin await us in the After-Life Doubles Cage Match
I couldn't ask for a better cat. Last night I found her on my worktable, where she is Not Supposed to Be, but whatever, cats are cats, and mine wants to be where her mom is. And she's helpful. When I'm working, she tries to sit on whatever it is I'm painting. Ok, so not so helpful in that instance. But she doesn't sit on just any painting. I've noticed. She sits on the most recently worked-on painting, or the one I've struggled with the longest. It will always be the painting with the most amount of mommy packed into its two dimensions. Charged. Now I'm no dipshit hippy, but cats know things like this. So when she sits on a painting, I know it deserves attention:
Before I arrived on the scene, it was pretty clear she had been wandering around the table, weaving and stepping over objects. She's not a cat that knocks things over to be obnoxious, but she's a little chubby and ungainly. Casualties occur. For example, I have a little toy figure found on the street. She's ideal for a collage, but I haven't been working on any lately, so she waits. She happened to be propped up near my ink palette, but she's no match for a waddling cat. Lucky I had my camera out already. Some crime scenes should never go undocumented:
I moved the doll and the palette aside to pick up the cat for a hug, and survey the damage. None to speak of, and the painting did need attention. I set the bent doll facedown on a little box behind my pan of watercolors. I looked up to see Celeste passing through exactly that spot and of course, mistakes were made. Fortuitous mistakes. With tail. Celeste is a born Arranger:
"...on one end a large shining map, marked with all colours of a rainbow. There was a vast amount of red-good to see at any time, because one knows that some real work is done in there, a deuce of a lot of blue, a little green, smears of orange, and, on the East Coast, a purple patch to show where the jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer. However, I wasn't going into any of these. I was going into yellow."
-Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness
Before I arrived on the scene, it was pretty clear she had been wandering around the table, weaving and stepping over objects. She's not a cat that knocks things over to be obnoxious, but she's a little chubby and ungainly. Casualties occur. For example, I have a little toy figure found on the street. She's ideal for a collage, but I haven't been working on any lately, so she waits. She happened to be propped up near my ink palette, but she's no match for a waddling cat. Lucky I had my camera out already. Some crime scenes should never go undocumented:
I moved the doll and the palette aside to pick up the cat for a hug, and survey the damage. None to speak of, and the painting did need attention. I set the bent doll facedown on a little box behind my pan of watercolors. I looked up to see Celeste passing through exactly that spot and of course, mistakes were made. Fortuitous mistakes. With tail. Celeste is a born Arranger:
"...on one end a large shining map, marked with all colours of a rainbow. There was a vast amount of red-good to see at any time, because one knows that some real work is done in there, a deuce of a lot of blue, a little green, smears of orange, and, on the East Coast, a purple patch to show where the jolly pioneers of progress drink the jolly lager-beer. However, I wasn't going into any of these. I was going into yellow."
-Joseph Conrad, Heart of Darkness