Sunlight Affected Disorder, I Hate Houseplants OR: Will Someone Please Buy Me A Potted Red Geranium?

The chili plant that taught me to love.

I hate houseplants.  They take up too much room in small city apartments and I want more interaction from something that requires so much to keep alive.  I want my plants to act like dogs.  We have quite a few plants in our apartment, and over the last few months I've been warming up to one of them:  a tiny chili pepper plant with tiny chilies hanging off its tiny stems.  My gf was surprised the other day when I said, "Look how good the chili pepper plant is doing."  "Oh, really?" she said, "Since when do you care about the plants."  But, it's cute, right? 

"Geranium #3 with S.A.D. (Sunlight Affected Disorder)"

Last night, I listened to classic rock on that tiny radio in the background of the chili pepper plant photo.  I tried to draw the geranium as I imagined it to be in Flannery O'Connor's story, "The Geranium."  Have you read it yet, gentle reader?  Stop wasting your life and read "The Geranium."  I don't even like classic rock, really.  But I like being alone in the house drawing under the glow of winter depression-breaking lightbulbs.  All of my geraniums turned out poorly.  Here's the last one I did.  It's hard to teach yourself how to draw.

The Christmas present I hope someone will buy for me.

I wanted my geranium drawing to look like this here geranium on the left.  And then I thought, I want a geranium.  I want someone to buy me a geranium that I can name Flannery.  But it must look exactly like the geranim here.  Three stems.  Red.  It's the Virgo in my chart that makes me say this, forgive me. If I one day get a potted, red geranium, I will move back to NY to an apartment with a fire-escape so each day I can put the geranium outside, in the hopes that someone across the way is watching.  If you have no idea what I'm talking about it means you haven't done your homework yet!  Read "The Geranium".  It will take less time than trying to get people to "like" something you said on Facebook.

Date Night, Van Gogh, and Today's Geography Quiz

How many countries are there in the world?  Don't Google this.  Just think for a second.  If you guessed 643 like me, it's clear you were also a teenage alcoholic passed out in Geography class.  The true answer is 195!  It seems like there are more, right? 

Once, I bought a shower curtain with a map of the world on it.  I was hoping to multi-task in the shower, but alas, here I am fifteen years later guessing 643.

Yesterday was date day.  We went to the De Young Museum to see Van Gogh's Starry Night Over the Rhone.  It was very dirty.  I mean you could see how he just really went at it and mixed the yellow and blue.  The paint is so thick.  There's this little patch of red on the lady's dress who is walking with a man at the edge of the river.  I love that patch so much.  Van Gogh's painting career lasted only ten years.  I forgot that despite that  I read his biography Lust for Life.  Like most biographies about hungry artists the thing that sticks with me is when they get to eat a glorious meal after being hungry and what they do to freak out prostitutes.

After the museum, we laid on the bench in Golden Gate Park in a sunbeam.  So nice, then we came home and ordered pizza and watched Law & Order: Los Angeles.  The best thing about Law & Order, and when I say the best, I mean the most insidious depressing thing, is how even if you finally get to watch an episode where the murderer isn't the fault of a feminist who lies about being raped, the writers on the show, manage to work that in somehow and also paint the ACLU as an evil organization standing in the way of true law enforcement.

"Countries I'd Follow You To"

I made this painting for my lady instead of cutting off my ear!

Flannery O'Connor

"Peacocks Flannery O'Connor Purportedly Raised In her life"

"Chickens That Flannery O'Connor Taught to Walk Backwards"

I started reading Flannery O'Connor's Complete Stories in an attempt to finish something.  I'm sickened by how little I read now that I don't ride a subway and have built-in reading time.  I thought short stories were more manageable since I read before bed, but quickly fall asleep or fall into "insane codependent cat cuddling."  The first story in her collection, "The Geranium" is unbelievable.  It was something she wrote in college.  Did you know Flannery O'Connor died very young?  In fact, she died at the age I am now, 39.  That made me light a fire under some of my many unfinished projects.  In addition to being a writer I began teaching myself to paint about ten years ago and about four years ago I started doing a series of "list paintings".  Last year I noticed some of my lists going in a literary direction.  As I began to read more about Flannery, I made these two paintings.

PS if you click below you can see the chicken walk backwards.

http://www.britishpathe.com/record.php?id=28819