twenty first century men, digital queer

For now, for half of the week I frame exhibits for the George Eastman House. This is not fiction, I do this. J got me the job. J likes art, likes me and now I do this part time. There are other details worth mentioning but I refrain. At work this morning I was reframing exhibition prints - Woodburytypes
by John Thomson from the 1900’s and came across one of soldiers standing on a street corner in London. I asked audibly “could I be one of these men?” J looked on and pointed to the one with the blonde beard. “You’d be that one.” I wasn’t so sure. I wasn’t sure if I could be another man in a different time. “So many lives,” I thought. I felt fortunate. The prints were of such extraordinary beauty that I wept in the privacy of the studio for the shear possibility of it. ‘A’ says they are not made any more, that it takes some twelve thousand pounds of pressure to squeeze the ink from etched lead plates. I now ache to make them. Tiny naked pictures of lovers standing in Michelangelo pose.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------


One night my girl brought some ear candles over, burned them to my skull, sucking the wax from the canal. I was skeptical and a fool, she was natural and in love. We were married in my mind as the heat drew out the excess waste.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Plastics hold the heat in and the toxic diesel fuel out from the yard below. This is facing South. The plastics are now a part of the view. It has a new beauty despite my loathsome feelings for artificial shit. Twenty first century men, digital queer.