“We are never so defenseless...

....against suffering as when we love.” 

― Sigmund Freud

...and so we don't. We divorce ourselves from our emotion, our community, our family, our humanity.

We insulate ourselves with violence and cruelty. We work carefully to cover our soft spots with an impervious layer of sarcasm, bandage our wounds with too-quick laughter and  endless self-derision. We hide our pain and hoard our pleasure, panem et circenses, forever and ever, Amen. 


Let this be the awkward introduction to my Humanity series. This is, in case it is not incredibly, painfully, obvious, my interpretation of the relationship between us, the keepers (of language and art) and them, the givers ( withoutwithoutwithout). 

My guts smeared about the canvas, piece 1:

Civil War 

Inspired by a map of the boundaries of the Civil War; where the yankees began, and where they ended. This is just one wife, below the Mason-Dixon line. She has lost everything. Everything but her convictions. Present, and Free.