Relics

This is what I've been up to lately. Fighting the Aimless Bummer, I go to places and draw trivial items. I went to the Natural History Museum and ignored the animals and drew the hats that are displayed for the very small Teddy Roosevelt memorial on the first floor. What a complicated, strange man. He almost died on the River of Doubt, but managed to file stories of his travel with magazines. He is responsible for the U.S. having National Parks, yet he was an avid hunter and loved the thrill of "collecting" creatures for both museums and his own trophies. He was a writer and a warmonger. He created the Panama Canal without asking ANYBODY, including, um, PANAMA. He was a My-Way-or-The-Highway kind of guy. He also drew pictures in his letters to his children.

I've also gone to the New York Historical Society and drew Franklin D. Roosevelt's leg brace and a statesman's wooden leg from the 1700's. If I could draw Jackie Onassis' toothbrush, I would be beside myself.

I once sat in a library in Northampton, Massachusetts holding original, typewritten pages by the writer Sylvia Plath. This was exciting enough, but what got me REALLY excited was the coffee ring on the first page. She had left a coffee ring, and it was more intimate proof that she had existed and moved and breathed than all the typewritten sheaths of paper housed in two libraries.

Sometimes I think about how in the huge and immense basement of the Smithsonian Museum, in a metal box, is the last existing vile of radium studied by Marie Curie. If I went to the Smithsonian Museum I might pass out from so many ideas.

These things are just relics and are strangely exciting to me. They don't tell me to keep going, they just keep me going. After I drew these hats, I walked out into the world and felt like I must look like a vile of radium--glowing green in the dark box. It just goes to show, it doesn't take much to get me excited. I must try harder to remember that.