#weirdworld

tearing up

I keep tearing up. Teering, not taring. Sometimes I leave my job in the late afternoon as the sun is going down and the western sky is hinting at orange like the western sky does before the hint turns evident and the sky is pumpkin streaked pink, and I start tearing up. I tear up in my car when I put my mask over the gear shift and turn on the radio. I tear up as I drive down 6th Street and remember (I’ve forgotten, again) after I’ve already made the turn to beat the traffic and the left turns that 4th Street is closed and there’s a man an unhoused individual blocking the alley tearing and rending his clothes. I tear up when I hear that the Little Senator From West Virginia (Joe Munchkin) is holding out or expressing concern about funds for clean air and childcare and disability services. I tear up in my contemplation of the Little Supreme Court Man Who Might Be A Rapist But It’s Never Been Made Entirely Clear Although I Believed Her and the Little Smug Supreme Court Woman Who’s Faithful To Her Man And Is Ready To Swoop In And Take Your Baby Should You Be Forced To Be A Vessel And Carry It Through Your Body a Boat and the Old Obtuse And Silent Supreme Court Man Who’s Drunk Pubic Hair From His Coke Can. I suppose I shouldn’t contemplate these things, these people, but I do. I tear up even as I tear them up in my mind, tearing as I tear. Tear off a head. Collage them together and lay on gesso, black them out. I also tear up when I listen to my millennial colleagues discuss the impossibility of having children given the state of the world and I tear up when I tilt my head to the right and aim the camera up at the palm tree in my backyard swaying in the blue sky that is so goddamn beautiful and see that I’ve also captured in the frame the wildly yellow pungent flower whose name I can’t remember and it all looks and is so weird.