Drawing (354) from THE BASIS OF MAKE-UP
"Following heavy bombing in 1944, the ruins of Monte Cassino now form a huge spaceship that floats over the Lilly Ponds in Forest Park, Springfield, Massachusetts in 1909. They are captured from a part of the ornamentation on a Persian garden rug dating from the 18th century, which symbolizes a system of ditches and resembles the legs of an insect. As a final resort, the ability to conceive of historical simultaneities felt somewhat uncanny, before it ceased to be terrifying. Most cosmologies are developed between four and five in the morning while looking at a clear view of the Milky Way from a terrace, when the cold freezes the animals and insects in their tracks. Then we are no longer at home and addicted to the depths of space, still loving, but already lifeless. Brains are the black holes they are in search of. It is from them that consciousness emerges, as if belched out of an alternative universe. And it is within them that everything is pulled back together again. Knowledge and memories breathe. Everything flashes forth only to disappear again." (From: arsenal, october 17)
(2007)