Vanitas with Raccoon Skull
There are parts of this town where half the real estate is vacant lots.
Without fail these lots are strewn with trash, framed by ragged chainlink, enclosed by a tourniquet of highways. I’ve spent hours in these spaces and studied the unique character of each one. Like faces and sex organs: they always look the same, they always look different, I never tire of looking at them.
There’s one place, in particular, that I used to visit quite frequently — a small patch of dirt that might have once served as a parking lot for some long defunct business. It’s a space where the weeds are endlessly fighting their way through crumbling concrete, aspiring skywards, clinging to life amidst the ruin.
For a while there was someone living in this space.
Although his tent was set up only a few meters from a major thoroughfare, it was almost invisible from the sidewalk, concealed by tall grass and weeds. During the days he panhandled on a nearby corner. At night he camped amidst the rubbish.
The man disappear after living in that place for a few months — gone off to wherever it is people go when they leave a site like that. He left behind the usual detritus of human occupancy: pop bottles, cigarette butts, fast food wrappers. There were also stranger relics of his stay: a broken mini-fridge, an office chair, a dozen black plastic handles that seem to have been unscrewed from frying pans.
While inspecting the ruins of his encampment I found the dead raccoon that has, since then, become the basis for many of my still life compositions. Like Baudelaire’s infamous carcass, it was still fresh when I found it, and there was a strange beauty to the thing. I passed this site many times during my daily routines, each time checking in to see what new beauty the process of decomposition had brought.
When the snow came this treasure was buried.
And there it stayed until the spring thaw when, finally, I made my last trip out to that interstitial space to see what had become of my beloved carcass.
All that remained was the skull.
Where the head had faced the sky its skin was preserved, mummified. Beneath there was only bone. The teeth were loose, but most were still in place. And there was a smell. Not the foul stink of decay. But something else. Almost a sweet scent. Like damp earth, moss, the inside of a cave.
There’s a word for this scent, it turns out.
Petrichor.
It’s the smell of rain after a long drought.
For subscribers to my mailing list I’m going to make a physical version available at a reduced cost, and a digital version available for free download. The idea here is to offer a gift to say thank you to those who’ve already subscribed, and to try to entice new subscribers to join my list. If this sounds interesting to you you can sign up here.
I’m very excited about this project! My timeline for completion is still up in the air, but I’m hoping to have something ready in 2-3 weeks. If this goes well then I’m planning to make this the first in a series of narrowly-focused magazine projects.
Stay tuned!