Thomas Lloyd Qualls

the painter had no need for grammar.words fell from his brushes already knowing where to stand, sit, lie down.

You might think of a thought as an invisible, innocuous little thing. Something that barely exists. But a thought is something hard to conceal. Hold a thought and it melts all over your hands. Touch something else and now you__e left traces of it. Hide it under your shirt and it bleeds through.

Life is random. Life is complicated. Life is often unforgiving. And we must each live it anyway. And I don__ mean live it as if it__ a chore, something to be endured, survived. I mean, dig in, get muddy, howl at the moon, take pictures of sunsets, play in the rain, make love, savor your food, smile as much as you can. And cry when you__e sad. Live it despite the fact it pisses you off. Live it and pay as much attention as you can muster

The planet you inhabit is a single plane of infinite dimensions, stretched like a guitar string, and standing before you like a concubine waiting for your command.

words are a border collie__ worst nightmare.

The painter knew that color was not something you controlled but something you set free. He believed that color knew its way home.

The painter knew the mirror lied. And the canvas told the truth.

i am the lion and you are the lamb and as prophesied, we will lie down together.

It's true we all build imaginary prisons for ourselves. Believe that we are trapped behind the invisible bars of the lives we have somehow carelessly constructed for ourselves, despite our youthful promises to ourselves. We see adults who are stagnant and miserable as we grow up. They graffiti the walls behind them with their mistakes and we swear secret oaths that we will heed those warnings. We__e much too clever, we know all the shortcuts and the back alleys.

The painter folded back the heavy curtain, standing in the stream of light breaking through the damp thickness of the room. He paused, still holding the drape in his hand as he considered with suspicion that a world could exist outside the window.

To paint one must forget everything else. Where you live, who you know, what you eat, when to sleep. The landscape of the canvas becomes your only reality. The planet you inhabit is a single plane of infinite dimensions, stretched like a guitar string, and standing before you like a concubine waiting for your command.

It__ hard to say where a story begins and ends. You have to draw an arbitrary line somewhere. Somewhere between perception and reality. Between what is spoken and what is heard. Between what is written and what is edited out. I know this, you can__ have an ending without a beginning. Even if they are really just random pieces of the middle that tend to stand out. Staccato notes on the page. Points on a circle.

Life isn__ really linear. Although it__ generally perceived that way. The stories we tell are woven like snakes around a divining rod. A center of time containing all that__ ever been told and heard. Remembered and forgotten. Lost and found. Our pasts, presents and futures are unwound, stretched flat, cut into pieces and held up with human arms.