Household II, The Explaining

Okay, so the photos below. The mask is my brother's work. (The lamp, I just dig like a double-wide grave.) It's smooth and rough, facial but unwearable, comical and kinda profound, un-personable but wonderfully beautiful. (Like me, the mask is a creature of dualities, not trinities.) It is in my home, but it's always my brother's. His work, his creature, his possession, his gift.

The pics of my kitchen sink are likely trickier to explain. If you click on the bottom one, you can just see that what you're looking at, on those white tiles, is a small gold foil decal, with red writing on it. I believe they're from beers, but the fact is, they've been a part of my kitchen so long I really don't remember. Could've been strange snacks Bro had from the islands. Could've been labels off of a wrapper for chinese food, or chopsticks. I don't know. But I've always had somewhere in my head the idea they came off of Japanese beer.

When I first bought this house - I can't believe, almost nine years ago now - it was a family project. Mom and dad and Bro would all come over while I was at work, and I would come over to find some new piece of work done. I'll never forget the day I returned home to find a large piece of drafting paper, with the note (I think in crayon) that said: "Greater love hath no mother ... than that she tore out your peepee carpet." And lo and behold - when I opened the door and looked into the downstairs bathroom - my mother had sacrificed her gastrointestinal wellbeing, steeled herself, and braved the WALL-TO-WALL indoor/outdoor carpet gracing that room for thirty or so years, and ripped it free of the floor and discarded it.

I'd come home to find my grass mowed, and had actual arguments with Bro about who would GET TO CUT my grass.

I'd come home and find little gold labels insouciantly stuck to my kitchen tiles.

Eight and a half years, at least, those little guys have been there. Probably adhered with a lick of the thumb. They have no "meaning", they're an observation of nothing. They're just something my Bro did because onion-skin-thin mylar feels funny on the fingers, and sticks easily to anything with practically no adhesive. They reassure me of nothing. They're just kind of silly, and they are my brother's work. No greater justification of their presence required.