Breaking The Canvas With “A Time Of Dragons”

Break it---

Stefania gave me a canvas.

Blank.

“When you’re ready---” she says, “----It will be just there.”

What I have been avoiding for the past five years---

It is here, just there.

I am intimidated.

I say, “I am intimidated” then and two nights later----

I say, “Stefania gave me a canvas. I am intimidated.”

Lava says, “You just have to begin---- make a dot, slash, or something…Of course, once you begin, it is now there, waiting, waiting, waiting to be finished---”

I say, “Shit, I deal with that already with what’s waiting to be written.”

Lava laughs, “Well… And you look like the concept-type…”

I laugh, “What the fuck am I going to put on a blank canvas? What the hell will I use? Acrylic? Oil? Watercolor?”

I remember my first sketches on paper a long time ago---- made from Mother’s brown eyeliner, stolen.

I remember that wall painted five years ago---

Exhausted from words, words exhausted

I will not cry.

“Wet on wet,” Gnomie says as she sees me painting the wall.

“Huh?”

“What you’re doing, that’s what the technique is called.”

“Ah,” I mumble, still breaking the white-washed-wall.

“Here, hold the brush like this--- so that you can do gradations---”

I laugh a mumble to Lava, “One of the best art critics I know is my sister and where is she? Knowledge Process Outsourcing…”

---- and still hearing Mother telling the housekeeper

“Salve, give this hat to her. She’ll burn her skin. It’s too hot outside.”

Chang, afraid to interrupt, holding out the hat, “Your Mother says to put this on---”

I sigh, “Yeah, yeah---”

----color mixed and made on the wall itself, anxiety mixing the colors almost all muddy black--- wonder if it’s still there, the pictures of that wall on my bedroom wall.

I mutter, “…I feel like a fucking virgin.”

Lava laughs again, “Just break it.”

Break it----

Enter the Dungeon of Enteng The Dragon

Enteng The Dragon Care Bear Editor and The Fantasy Anvil Publisher of “A Time Of Dragons” said, “To save the Dragon from cliché and mediocrity…To give these dragons a Filipino twist.”

Right-Then-So

Here’s the heart of the critical framework:

WHAT IS THE FILIPINO TWIST IN EACH STORY ABOUT THE DRAGON?

The brain:

HOW WAS THE “DRAGON” SAVED FROM CLICHÉ AND MEDIOCRITY IN EACH STORY?

The body:

HOW WAS THIS WHAT-FILIPNO-TWISTING-OF-THE-DRAGON-TO-BE-SAVED-FROM-CLICHÉ-AND-MEDIOCRITY WRITTEN OUT IN EACH STORY?

The appendix:

What’s the Real use of the 411-On-Dragons-Essay there?

Break it---

Break it

These stories of the Dragon were written in 2006.

Did you break the Western/ Cliché/Mediocre Template?

In 2009, HAVE YOU BROKEN IT?

I ask, “Where’s the canvas?”

“In the car.”

I say, “All right, let’s bring it up.”

I ask, “Magpie, what did you use when you used to paint?”

Magpie says, “…oil... But paint after the kids’ visit. The smell. We‘ll get you the paint after…”

I look at the canvas and quietly laugh, “Of course it’s nothing personal, just business.”

The canvas is still blank---

Propped against the wall---

Ticking---

And scratching from pages of---

A Time Of Dragons Riddled With Gel-Red-Ink-Notes.