Tsunami

Philagrapfika invitation portfolio 2005
Title: Tsunami
Medium: Drawing with Photoshop coloring. Digital print collaboration with Silicon Gallery
Size: 15″x18″
Year: 2005

Text:

“In the beginning, we notice the light. The day is longer, and we as creatures that covet it feel more time is granted even though the clock still strikes at midnight. It is an awkward season. Young kids are dying to get their shorts and skirts on, while the semi-overly-self-conscious-too-careful-and-responsible types are still wearing their winter coats. Numbers doesn’t mean anything, Celsius or Fahrenheit. The surprise is always in how you feel. How nice it will be to write poetry about the beautiful air after winter thaws, when in reality it just smells bad. The river will rise and flood the rich man’s basement! Now, that’s poetic justice. You cannot possess beauty without paying a due. Trust me, I live in a magnificent old house with no insulation! Everything happens for a reason, and my cats sense it. They want to let me know by sitting on my head bright and early. Oh! How they love to grind their jaws when bees hit the windows. Tis’ the season of so much hope to kill. I was too young to recall when I was living in Hong Kong. I am most aware after those long cold Canadian winters. For an artist, the grass is not always green, and for a Canadian, it depends on how low the sky drops. My mother stopped working since the move, but she didn’t age a bit after her early retirement and earned the title “oldest bipedal icebreaker who braves the snow to walk the mall” from the teen choice awards. The rest of the family goes about their way during the day, but come back in the evening to our home where our mother waits. We thought how nice it would be that someone else could be there waiting for her to come back from the mall too. And since my brother and I were at the age of reason, we went to get our first cat. Besides the summer sand bath and his ambitious pedicure business, he brought the family so much laughter and joy that we lavished him with love and turned him into Elvis. When the snow melts, the river runs with him. The grass wasn’t always green and so my mother grew cancer. As if he knew what that meant, he slept beside her everyday. So when she was gone, he decided to grow cancer as well. Tragedy doesn’t come in single wave. It is always there, folding and unfolding. I wasn’t there. Half way around the world the news came electric. I cried and soaked the papers with tears. I held them tight in my hand before throwing them into the Tiber. I imagined that my tears would be one with the water and reach him somehow, someday. Everything happens for a reason and the river runs with him.”