10 a.m. // By random lot the next hour in my posting queue happens to include this day one year ago, November 13. And so, please remember that one year ago today the alley reeked of garbage and stale beer. It doesn’t always. Today — the first sustained sub-freezing morning of the winter of 2019 — odors are faint and distant. When the wind picks up, fresh asphalt, perhaps being trucked to a construction site, carries before resistance to the icy air overpowers my ability to focus on the sense of smell.
Also on this day in 2018, a friend and her boyfriend were on their way to the metro and I tried for the first time to explain why I was standing outside in the cold in an inhospitable place with a notebook. The explanation hasn’t gotten easier a year later.
Neither of these facts made it in to our collage for the 10 o’clock hour. Katherine’s lines suggest the cold puddles I’ve written about here, but the text sampled comes from an hour later on a different morning. We’ll encounter “mom with stroller / hey hey hey no jumping” again when it comes time to write about 11 a.m. The more mundane hours easily bleed together, and notes from early in the project were not as diligently set apart. //
I’ve not been posting these notes prompted by the Half/Life collaboration daily as I originally intended. There are 24 to post, and when I began there were about 24 days left before we’d intended to take the paintings off the walls and leave H-Space vacant. But leaving an art space vacant is a sad thing and a waste in a city so starved for such venues. With nothing programmed after us (the space’s parent organization Hamiltonian Artists is going through some restructuring), we’ve left the show up (viewable by appointment, send me a message if you’d like to stop by). Without the urgency of an end date, I’ve been giving each of these posts more time to marinate.
I am posting these writings both on Instagram and on the relaunched FutureCartographic.org. This new version of Future Cartographic will be a home for creative writing, for art engaged with place and time, and for building community with anyone interested in such things, including contemplation of last years’ stale beer puddles. It’s not for everybody. But it might be for you. Stop by, and drop me a note if you do.
One of 24 posts inspired by Half/Life, on view at H-Space in Washington, DC (on view indefinitely as of this posting). Contact Erik to schedule a visit. Paintings and zine on sale now in the Future Cartographic shop.