Nothing I Wish to Own 15X38 Pastel and pencil on paper
The title Nothing I Wish To Own is a line from Bob Dylan's Boots of Spanish Leather
No, there's nothin' you can send me, my own true love
There's nothin' I'm wishin' to be ownin'
Just carry yourself back to me unspoiled
From across that lonesome ocean
The text comes from To Orpheus by Blas Falconer.
Excerpts from To Orpheus
...The bed can wait. I go to the pool instead,
strip and step in, the smell of smoke and sweat
washing from hair and skin. The wet kiss:
his mouth pressed here, my neck, and there,
my chest--in the end—went nowhere.
Cars pass with coupled strangers. I wade.
The brick wall stretches into the sky,
the sky empty, save the constellations,
whose lives I love—yours most of all...
...you’re the swan, lost among pinholes of light,
your throat bitten by a black hole
that takes and takes and never fills. I kick,
stroke my tired arms to buoy this body.
It makes ring after perfect ring, but each one
breaks along the edge. You who never were,
did you look down on the world at last
and see that more won’t be enough? Not now.
Not ever. Want picks the human heart.
You’re the lie I won’t believe forever.
The dark "rings" and bright center come from an image of MyCn18, planetary nebula that is about 8,000 light-years away, which contains a slowly dying Sun-like star in its center. It is known as the Engraved Hour-glass Nebula and is found in the southern constellation Musca.