Chess, With Clouds

The Scene:

An abandoned hotel* on 6th Street, San Francisco’s Skid Row, early 1970’s.

The Game:

Three-Dimensional chess, with clouds.

The Players:

Gabriel, a Ratter.

Freude, a Film Maker.

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Wounded Angel in a Broken World

How do you paint an angel if you don’t believe angels exist?

This story of an angel begins in Valencia, in Spain, in a public garden called Los Viveros, on the banks of what used to be the river Turia. My friend Antonio Gomis and I like to draw there because it’s green and cool and quiet.

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April the Cruel

Nearly one hundred years ago, T. S. Eliot wrote: “April is the cruelest month breeding / Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / Memory and desire, stirring / Dull roots with spring rain.”

Anyone who has lived through brutal winters in Northern Illinois has little problem in agreeing with him. April, with its dull roots and lilacs, hides a secret: before spring rains come to visit and sunlight breathes life back into the dead land, there will be at least one more snowstorm.

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