I started drawing pictures when I was 4. All horses. That's how they knew me at school. In elementary school my mother began submitting my drawings to youth art contests. Sometimes I won. Cash, or a certificate or something. The best prize was a weekend getaway with tickets to the Monterey Bay Aquarium. This is the first time I've talked about this in writing. They always say not to include childhood accomplishments in an artist bio. I had no idea at the time how special that trip was for my family--why we were gifted this chance respite from the survival warfare that we waged on one another. That's kind of what it came down to: making sense out of the atrocities committed against us by people who love us and that we, like clockwork, would go on to commit. Learning to file and order shitsoup unawares. The hollow breeds and grows in complexity. Introduce the art of war: its trickery and demagogy; the eloquent power struggle; and how a whole chunk of time can just disappear. I lie in drawn bathwater, in contemplation as I always have. Revelations trickle in. Brain lights up a flurry of electron blaze then dulls as energies disperse in languid post-climax effervescence. What beautiful colors, if I could only see them. I watch my limbs stretch out long, my presence fill out in space. I feel the vantage point of my finger tips.