The Skin Trade – GRACELAND

137 Steps

“Everyone carries a room about inside him. This fact can even be proved by means of the sense of hearing. If someone walks fast and one pricks up one’s ears and listens, say in the night, when everything round about is quiet, one hears, for instance, the rattling of a mirror not quite firmly fastened to the wall.”

Franz Kafka, Blue Octavo Notebooks

I. 137 Steps to the Meridian

II. The Doors of His Face

III. The Drawing of the Four

IV. Who is this Woman that Beckoneth and Warneth Me from the Place where She is, and in Whose Eyes is Woeful Remembrance of a Love that has Departed?

Her Face I Cannot See for She Keeps Forever Behind Me

IV. Where The Worm Does Not Die

A Condensed History of the New Millennium

“Our history is an aggregate of last moments.”

Thomas Pynchon, Gravity’s Rainbow

555 — The Skull of Saint Mary Magdalene at the Basilica in St. Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume (2019)

888 — Montmartre Necropolis at Night (2019)

Chronostasis

“Under the spreading chestnut tree they leaned into each other for warmth that was escaping their bodies just as quickly as they could narrow the space between them.”

Dylan Fremont, Cheaters

All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace

“Alas, the gates of life never swing open except upon death, never open except upon the palaces and gardens of death. And the universe appears to me like an immense, inexorable torture-garden. Blood everywhere and, where there is most life, horrible tormentors who dig your flesh, saw your bones, and retract your skin with sinister, joyful faces.”

Octave Mirbeau, The Torture Garden

The Hanging Garden 9 — Tree of Pain (2018)

The Hanging Garden — The Harvester of Sorrow (2018)

The Hanging Garden 7 — Body Without Organs (2018)

The Hanging Garden 8 — Tunica Molesta (2018)

The Hanging Garden 1 — The Pear of Anguish (2018)

The Hanging Garden 5 — The Hell Libertine (2018)

The Hanging Garden 4 — How the Gods Kill (2018)

The Hanging Garden 2 — The Golden Rule (2018)

The Land of Rape and Honey

“One baby to another says, “I’m lucky to have met you”
I don’t care what you think unless it is about me
It is now my duty to completely drain you
I travel through a tube and end up in your infection
Chew my meat for you
Pass it back and forth in a passionate kiss
From my mouth to yours
I like you”

Kurt Cobain, Drain You

Fuentes 1 — The Correct Use of Soap (2018)

Fuentes 2 — Foot Fetish in the Basilica (2018)

Fuentes 3 — Amber for the Holy Ghost (2018)

Fuentes 4 — Scenes from the Second Floor (2018)

Fuentes 7 — The French Experiment (2018)

Fuentes 8 — Ladies Take Polaroids (2018)

Plymouth Rock.jpg — Plymouth Rock (2018)

The Eternally Collapsing Object of My Affection

“The wind kisses her breasts and unfolds in a wreath
Her great veils rising and falling with the waters;
The shivering willows weep on her shoulder,
The rushes lean over her wide, dreaming brow.

The ruffled water-lilies are sighing around her;
At times she rouses, in a slumbering alder,
Some nest from which escapes a small rustle of wings;
A mysterious anthem falls from the golden stars.”

Arthur Rimbaud, Ophelia