Obliquely 4:05

It is not home, but it is inside. A fragment of a cutaway view protrudes from the wall into a windowless interior, which is perhaps a surgery in a basement, perhaps an atomic shelter. It is anything but a safe and cozy home. It is an interior space that you did not choose. A place that holds you in, but you are supposed to feel “normal” and free in it, and you act as if nothing is happening. Courage, resilience, and a desire to experience the world as you choose. On the other hand, it is a place to survive, a place full of life. But it is also a place to survive with the promise of hope for finding a full life. The body cannot lie.

4:05 is the time I wake up. Not morning, not night. It's either late or early for everything. I don't wake up because I want to, but because my world is terribly loud. The thought of what´s happening in it and what´s not is waking me up. To me, to loved ones, to strangers, which I understand. What happened, what could happen. My body needs to keep sleeping, but at the same time it can't. I paint in my head. War, school lunch, horrific violence, dinner with friends, terrible abuse, overparking the car, monstrous injustice, back pain, paying for after school club. I need to sleep. I must sleep - but I can't. I ponder. All certainties are tilted, uncertain and unstable. The world is crooked. It can straighten out and it can collapse. Maybe it has always been that way and I just missed it before falling asleep. How come I don't know? Am I still afraid, or am I getting used to it? Should I? Can I? Am I not allowed? Every morning. For over forty years. The world is more serious and urgent than I remember, it is tighter and tighter. I don't sleep, I ponder. How to silence the world, how to silence myself, how to silence myself internally, to silence the flow of thoughts without medication or being cut off in a atomic shelter.I paint in the studio. I paint sideways. I paint fragments of emoticons. I paint brooches. I paint design. I paint materials that I like to touch. I paint them and the painted ones cannot be touched any more than any emotion. I paint other soft materials next to hard constructures, I paint other fragments of emoticons that make me uncomfortable. I paint beautiful ornaments and jewelry of a dead woman, I paint symbols behind which attitudes can be hidden. I paint and repaint. I clean, retouch, cover. I check, repair. I paint, clean. I paint playfulness and it is hard work. I paint stairs made of paper, I paint a blue soft thing next to a hard chestnut. I try not to paint the wars that I hear about every day, but I paint our mother´s hairstyles and then I paint a collision with an explosion and then I paint an evil explosion and a cheerful vomit to it. I paint a grenade with an earring instead of a fuse. I'm painting three beans lying on a bent piece of foam with a wire levitating above them.I paint certainty, I paint safety, but it doesn't come. Sleeping men must sleep. But it doesn't go well because they are not safe. Because we are here with them.