FRED TOMASELLI, Cyclopticon 2, 2003, mixed media, acrylic paint, resin on wood, 24 x 24 x 1 1/2 inches
Since I've either been too busy to sleep or too fatigued to dream lately, I figured I'd go with something old but interesting. This is part of a reverie I had one time at this godawful bullshit job I used to have as a night security guard in a building in the Rockaways. There was nothing to do but stare at the ceiling and watch the paint peel for like 10 hours straight, and I would think of the most fantastical bullshit there. Wrote this one down once for a creative writing class I took, and thought I'd share it.
Staring down at the purple-gray, silver and black and off-white bespeckled fake marble floor of his Rockaway Island, glorified project, shit-hole co-op, Roy’s body slowly began to descend under the tiles. As the speckles, burning and becoming brighter, and appearing like the soft pale glow that surrounds a lightning bug’s bulb in a mist, spread themselves out in all the directions of Roy’s mind and became tangible, physical objects which he could touch and taste, and his feet began sinking deeper into the floor and the glowing, almost crystalline specks began to permeate his being, so that they glowed not only below and around him, but also inside and through him, 3 dimensions were raising up off of the floor to show space all around him and he stared ever more intently at this magical, never before explored underfloor dimension. In an instant of time, like falling into a black hole – happening instantaneously and yet frozen in eternity – he was immersed. The floor world now changed quickly to liquid space, and began to flow at him quicker and quicker, like his mind was a diamond being shot through the center of the unnatural space in a rush of streaking lights.
And as he traveled deeper and deeper through the crystal aurora, his mind went further and farther way from him, until all the crystalline space took on a twinkling purple, blue and green nebulous hue in the distance, light-years away. And at the end of it all, in silence and formless void, he came to a huge gnarled wooden door with two letters which he could no longer recognize etched – or it seemed, rather, burnt – right into it. The door had nothing on either side of it; it merely stood there, on nothing, alone in the senseless void. Not understanding why he had come there, to this black and solitary place, a low muffled pounding began coming from the inside of the door. As Ray moved nearer to it, the speckles living inside his face and head began swirling around and moving faster, like leaves in wind, and glowing brighter by degrees, as one sees in time lapsed photography of a rising sun over a meadow.
Now, as the pounding grew in intensity, the door began slightly moving, quaking as if being battered out from the inside –- but there was no inside. Fearing the increasingly violent thrashing and shuddering coming from the enormous wooden portal, Ray stepped his way around to the other side of it, and as he did, the latch and the master lock were broken open – in his direction – and out came pouring, in a savage rout, all manner of things from the recesses of his mind. Dreams, fantasies, nightmares, and realities – all manner of twisted perceptions flooded out at once and made a mad dash –- right for Ray’s face!! In an instant they were upon him, and pulling back very quickly now, so quickly that his perception was again revolved to the outside of his head, Ray, standing in the pallor of the co-op lobby lights, heard the low rumble of the tramping, rushing footsteps of a distant army approaching the walls of his eyes. Now standing there, slack-jawed and immobile, a single tear pushed forth from his right eye, as the figments of Ray’s raging, exploding mind rushed forth and pressed themselves against the glazed milk of his inner eye, so forcefully that when the flood first hit him and carried him off, creatures could be seen through the clear black spheres in his pupils, clawing over each other to escape. The world spun itself around now for Ray, and though his feet were still immersed in the floor’s crystalline nebula, floating, the room was upside down, and the creamy white tiles of the lobby’s walls and pillars were now flowing and alive, as if they were milk running out of a carton in the wrong direction. A shiver ran through his body, and a stream of white smoke, like cold, crystalline frost, emitted itself from his gaping mouth. And suddenly Ray found himself in a room with chairs and desks, and staring at gray-metallic, partially smashed in, dingy, bespeckled, half-rusted metal can. A can like any other you might find in a N.Y.C. public high school or elementary school, except this one had an old, extremely wrinkled and thin black bag tightly wrapped around the inside of it that looked like it was previously used on something else. Not wondering why or how he had come to be in his new surroundings, Ray simply continued to stare at the dingy metal can. He knelt down to the floor and peered his head over the top. Something was in the can. Something he had to find out. He did not know why, but he had to sift through it. At the bottom of the can, beneath the neat pieces of discarded paper which mask the true grime contained inside are soiled paper towels, damp with the bleedings of Ray's mind. What he sees there astounds him, shocks him into paralysis, and can only be described as........
as…....as............ysbgefewgyf.....ygbcauygbrygU.........OHNBUKBD .....FFTYFYTTGHHFGHGGEM............GGAWWWW....................
RAY!!!!!!!!!!!
There is a man standing in the front of the room, looking up at the ceiling, with a faraway look, eyes wide staring forward, fixed. Mouth only slightly agape, as if the muscles in his jaws just simply forgot how to hold themselves. Eyebrows arched up so that there is no furrow in the brow. Then, eyebrows smushed slightly together in a quirky sort of way so that the top of the brow wrinkles up, bottom lip protruding........That man is you!
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