My woman is staring back at me with golden specks in her brown eyes. My woman, of course, is the painting I’ve been working on today. It is something old and ugly, and maybe, I thought, I can make her beautiful today. So I gave her specks of gold and a few more defined strands of green hair and a better environment and then, I drank a cup of reheated coffee. 

We’re poor now, so I guess I should embrace doing something out of character like drink a reheated cup of coffee.  It’s not very good. The coffee is too strong this morning, and something about a reheated coffee is just intrinsically gross. 

I don’t think I even love to paint anymore, but I do it anyway out of a distrust of any other mediums I would otherwise be interested in exploring. What if I started sculpting? Embraced sewing and fashion? Who cares. I have all this paint, I might as well paint over the same stuff several different times until they are as perfect as something I create with my hands could possibly be.

The graffiti in surrounding London is quite lovely. I’ve always had a taste for it. And then, there’s the graffiti I’ve never seen in person. The pieces in Germany and Spain and the Netherlands.  South America. The “rakugaki” or grafitti of Japan, and graffiti in other Asian countries. I have worked on my art inspired heavily by graffiti and art from great manga makers of the 80s and 90s. 

I gave up on the coffee a while ago. Some things are just not worth sacrificing. It’s a fine time for tea anyways. And so I go about, staring at my woman and she stares right back at me. I’ve got to keep working on her. Refining every strand of hair and every curve of her body until she’s as perfect as possible and I am exhausted and content.