Sinn-Angel


		Sinn Bitumen and Oils on board 90×60cm Sold

	I gave this to my girlfriend. Sinn is her name. She is an angel. I wrote on it a distortion of a biblical quote, scratched into the paint the sharp chewed end of a paintbrush - “Take this as a seal upon thy heart, as a seal upon thy arm for love is strong as death.” CHRONIC PAIN AND PAUL… Why I ain’t been painting all that much (actually I have, just badly. No. Really.) This is the new part about why, that I wrote today (november 2008): Somehow… In the last few weeks… A New medication. And in the bizarre atypicalities of my neurochemistry, I have begun to rise from this hell. As I have from others. As I will fall and fight free to make and make and love and love… as I will forever fall and fight, till I fight no more. For the first time in 12 long months – In slow moments of a year composed of weeping with terror at each excruciating sliver of time… this year that has etched and aged its crawling minutes on my face ageless always until this; past its due. New meds. And. They are working. I will heal. I have a different kind… a new understanding of hope; This, unlike its sisters in their cruel pollution of horror and knowledge… Hope and terror are diametrically antipodean twins. They die without each other. Antithetic. And symbiotic. And now, well… My hope is as clear as the carbon lattice perfection of a diamond edge. that was the NICE PART that is NEW VERY VERY VERY NEW this is the REST. It is less nice and was written barely two weeks ago. I completely understand if none read this much. I can paint again! I am offering free hugs and ironic weird comments from an odd angle for EVERYONE too.



I don’t know if the pain will end. In truth it terrifies me. I am not one easily frightened. It has already cost me a year. Even when everything else, all the madness for so many years, were not enough to start aging my face. This has. It is too strong, too much. Without painkillers, there is nothing else. No thought. It clouds my mind so completely that I had blamed myself for its very existence and more than that, for the core of its aetiology. It is not my fault. There is a scene in the film ‘Good will hunting,’ where the genius Robin Williams and the younger genius Matt Damon are in Mr William’s office. He says “It’s not your fault.” Over and over. Will Hunting looks annoyed, then enraged, disbelieving. Eventually he collapses into tears and into the wise and knowing arms of Robin William’s character. His psychologist, believe it or not. Matt Damon and Robin Williams nailed that scene, and also in the same manner drove a steel spike into the heart of self-blame. Will Hunting knew in his mind that there could be no blame laid at his feet for being beaten as a child. But he could never, even with all his own genius, convince his heart that this was true. I blamed my SELF. I deluded myself that I deserved the brutal extremity of this pain. So, much like Mr Damon’s character, I lied to myself and subsequently suffered, and fucked up my life. Humbly. In this matter, I admit it. I am a fucking hypocrite. I understand self-loathing, spent so much of my life wasted in its claws and I find it difficult to take in others. I have spent endless hours with broken men and women trying to show them how wrong they are in the passion of their hatred for themselves. I have burned a year of my existence doing precisely that, in agony. I dated a kind woman, and she had some powerful painkillers that she had left from back surgery. I was at this point able to admit to myself that 1/ I was in FUCKING PAIN MOST OF THE TIME. and b/ it was not my fault at all. It allowed me the time to see without doubt that the pain I was and am experiencing has nothing to do with anything that I have done. In the mean time the pain has worsened. In the last few weeks this has increased by multiples. What I believe is happening is not truly a belief, but only a – suspicion? A guess, mildly educated. The madness has been contained. The damage to my thalamus has, to anthropomorphise a neutral biological process, found another outlet for its grief and rage. Instead of changing my moods and causing me hallucinations… it is causing me illusory pain. It IS an illusion only in the sense that my skin is not in reality alight and burning. But don’t you see, you must see, please look hard enough… it is much worse this way is worse this means more because I CAN’T I can NEVER put the fucking FIRE OUT! The worst of this situation is that the pain is more disabling than the madness was. It will not kill me, though sometimes I wish for this and would see it as a tender caress of mercy. It won’t, and the madness would have. So I am alive. But I cannot work. If I am in physical pain I cannot… it is impossible for me to paint. For the last year I have forced myself to whilst I have been in pain. I have produced more slowly than ever for manifold reasons, the chief of which being that I can’t see. Somehow I produce ugly lines and uglier colours. I have spent almost all of this time painting over the beauty that I had created whilst without pain… In those few hours that I cradle to my heart and hold so sweet (one form of True bliss is the cessation of pain.) In a state of some kind of grace I can barely imagine right now. Therefore. Yes. Draw the conclusion like pus from a wound. But draw it I must: that I cannot even draw. The dreams that I had that were not dreams at all but logical conclusions… of fame and fame and fame and fame. They have proven to be, for now, false indeed. It is breaking me. Breaking me. For right now, once again, I am an invalid. I have… little. For all that I have fought. It is… hard to hold on. I have a beautiful woman who looks after me. (This is a correction on a cultural misunderstanding on my part. I am NOT referring to her as a peasant! That's nuts!) This means more than I can describe. I have her, and that is a wondrous thing. A miracle that I should meet someone unselfish after allowing into my life so many who have taken from me and taken and taken. I do not know how to effect change. I have little time to plan wherein my thoughts are not torn from me by brutal physiological assault; by agony. I am giving up my space here in the city and moving to share with my father once more. The pain, unedited by the dilution of prescription medication, is colossal. It is taking my life from me. It steals my breath from me. I wake and – it is there. Stunning, so fucking violent and I can’t breathe, I cannot. I have fled from hope in rational terror as from a betrayer, traitor, monster. Sometimes, many times. Yes. There is no breath to scream. The last weeks… Somehow… In the last few weeks… A New medication. And somehow in the bizarre atypicalities of my neurochemistry, I have begun to rise from this hell. As I have from others. As I will fall and fight free to make and make and love and love… as I will forever fall and fight, till I fight no more. For the first time in 12 long months – In slow moments of a year composed of weeping with terror at each excruciating sliver of time… this year that has etched and aged its crawling minutes on my face ageless always until this; past its due. New meds. And. They are working. I will heal. I have a different kind… a new understanding of hope; This, unlike its sisters in their cruel pollution of horror and knowledge… Hope and terror are diametrically antipodean twins. They die without each other. Antithetic. And symbiotic. And now, well… My hope is as clear as the carbon lattice perfection of a diamond edge.