A PAPER CUP IN THE UNEASY SEA
when i was younger & poorer & more full of doubt & more full of promise & more sure of meaning & of everything unimportant… i marked the occasion of an absolutely epic winter storm by making these stickers & throwing them up all over my neighborhood in downtown portland. it was 2 thousand 5.
i doodled the design during lectures at school & painted them at my apartment using cutup promotional stickers for radio stations that i’d taken from somewhere. those are cursive buildings covered in thick city snows. cb was a mantra then, not yet a website… a reimagining of the skyline as a cursive (not rigid) line. magic.
i visited portland again for a few days over christmas. i hadn’t been back in years, & yet there was an epic snowstorm swirling all around me again. i went in search of these stickers one morning, slipping all over the icy sidewalks of stumptown w/new california feet. i found only one, pictured above in its tired but stubborn state. selah.
i write this here as a reminder that human gestures of endurance do not last. & do not let that get you down. such gestures, i think, mean more in the face of such vast empires of impermanence.
