Studio 13--Owl's Hill

"Really, Julian?" Amy Thorvaldsson looked at the sign on the wall beside the door, then she looked at me.  "No girls allowed."  It was the same look she'd been giving me since we were in 6th grade, and first got to know one another.  "Fuck you.  I'm going in."  And she did.

Amy Thorvaldsson parked her little ass in the nappy old chair I kept in the corner of the little room in the back of the basement that was, for all intents and purposes my office/studio/place to hide out and get stoned & dreamy-headed, warm in the winter months.  A nice place for gathering wool.  We all need those.

She wanted me to smoke her up, and she'd been curious about what I did when I was squirreled away "working."  We had differing definitions for that one.

"Very cool energy in here, Julian," she commented after awhile, the weed smoothing the splintery edges of a rough morning at Shorty's Barbershop into a mellow curiosity that took in the images on the wall, the visual experiments and the equipment used to make them.  I showed her the new book manuscript.  She dug it.  Flipping through it slowly, she said, "you do do stuff down here, don't you."  Amy picked up a portfolio of prints and took her stoned time considering them.  "I think I get what you're doing, Julian.  This is cool."  I gave her a few fat buds, just for saying that.

"It's like I've stumbled into something magic and everyday, Amy," I told her.  I didn't have any real explanations for the shit I do, other than that I am me and this is what I do.  "And everything's taken its merry sweet time in happening, but it's all happened as it should.  And all a this," I rolled my eyes around the room, and out further, "is the end result of stuff that's been going on since I was a child."  Fuck, I was stoned myself.  "Like the right and proper point on the continuum, you know.  Where I oughta be, and all that shit."  She gave me that look again.

"Touched by the faeries as a young child, were ya, Julian?" Amy Thorvaldsson's huge hazel eyes danced.

"Something like that," I said.