ad0610the

@@@@@ The Ship paintings were goodThey certainly felt that way when I finished themThey were also bad, powerful medicineI think I knew that from the first one, executed during the small hours of Valentine's DayDuring the last night of Tina Garibaldi's life ii The dream wasn't exactly a nightmare, but it was vivid beyond my power to describe in words, although I captured some of the feeling on canvas In that dream and all the ones which followed, it was always sunsetVast red light filled the west, reaching high to heaven, where it faded first to orange, then to a weird greenThe Gulf was nearly dead calm, with only the smallest and glassiest of 390 rollers crossing its surface like respirationIn the reflected sunset glare, it looked like a huge socket filled with blood Silhouetted against that furnace light was a three-masted derelictThe ship's rotted sails hung limp with red fire glaring through the holes and ripsThere was no one alive on boardYou only had to look to know thatThere was a feeling of hollow menace about the thing, as though it had housed some plague that had burned through the crew, leaving only this rotting corpse of wood, hemp, and sailclothI remember feeling that if a gull or pelican flew over it, the bird would drop dead on the deck with its feathers smoking Floating about forty yards away was a small rowboatSitting in it was a girl, her back to me Her hair was red, but the hair was false - no live girl had tangled yarn hair like thatWhat gave away her identity was the dress she woreIt was covered with tic-tac-toe grids and the printed words I WIN, YOU WIN, over and overIlse had that dress when she was four or fiveabout the age of the twin girls in the family portrait I'd seen 391 on the second floor landing of El Palacio de Asesinos I tried to shout, to warn her not to go near the derelictIn any case it didn't seem to mat