Today’s letter is going to be more visual than verbal, that’s just where my brain has been lately: thinking in images.

I'm stalling on a project right now so instead, I've been doing a lot of sketching from life and working through the exercises in Lynda Barry's books. I also did my very first life drawing session and it was a bizarre first time since it was on Zoom. I did really enjoy it though. I think these days any excuse to be making art alongside other people virtually is invigorating.

love note 04: fractals naturally occurring

We are going into the archives for an obsession I had a few years ago when I produced the following series, Fractals. As you can see by the name, it was heavily influenced by my research into the concept. In an unscientific definition, fractals are a neverending repeating pattern that continues as it gets smaller and smaller and seemed an apt visual for a poem I had written about anxiety and how the brain can get sucked into a loop.

It’s still one of my favorite pieces so I’m glad to have another excuse to share it.

Here’s a video that can explain fractals probably better than I could attempt to.

Zone out to a model of one of the most famous fractals.

And here I present to you, Earth’s art:

Readings

Poetry Nook

Mahamudra Elegy
by Alice Fulton

Then emptiness grew more empty,
the scent of scentlessness.
       How could it be?
When emptiness is that which can’t be

emptied any more, neither malicious nor
       a state that welcomes us
with munificent alohas.
I fingered it like an incision, fondled it

        like a rosary of thorns, thinking
if every instant holds
the maximum abridged, tranquillity must be
       somewhere in the mix. So concentrate.

A live volcano is the recommended site
for certain meditations. Think time
       exists because a dropped glass
breaks and here we are existing,

witnessing the ornaments,
       decorative yet dear. Mundanities
that dazzling seem extruded by a star.
       Stellifactions. Mahamudra.

Words to conjure with. The great
seal, great gesture, the mahamudra
       holds snowflakes to their certitudes of lace.
While fire thinks fire

is what everything aspires to, time thinks
       through its helpless locks: its ambergris
flocked with a sailor’s buttons, its mud wasp
buzzing like a mini vac. Every solid is a clock.

Currently reading:

Re-Dressing America’s Frontier Past by Peter Boag

Boag attempt to reframe the hypermasculine idea of the West by illuminating the many stories of trans folks and other people who found (more) freedom to play with gender and sexuality in the West. Fascinating. You can get a taste of this by listening to History is Gay’s podcast about trans cowboys.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Somehow I’ve never read this and it is really wrecking me.

Should I have made this edition of a newsletter called “Love Notes” have something to do about love since that holiday is coming up? Eh, just not where my head is.

Anyways love to you and yours,

k