Pigments

A good wooden table is a stained wooden table. Not stained by order in its making, rather in its
aging, dissolution and creation. Crying, toasting, spilling and the binding drop of wax. Some of
these stains you can remove with water, some with soap and some with detergent. Some of
them you can not remove. Desires, individuals and the collective, get painted on the table
pigment by pigment, as the water runs out and the flowers in the vase turn sepia day by day.

When was the first time you saw your fingerprint? I was with my grandpa (dede) when I saw
mine and I was too young to remember how old I was. He handed over an old, yellow stained
stack of papers to me. This newspaper was from a time when he was my age and was one of the
first issues of this paper, he proudly announced. Flipping its pages over, my fingers were painted
black, the kind of faint paint only highlighting the waves at my fingertips. Old ink on old paper
tends to get washed in black and tattoo everything. Years later, Pearl Jam would remind me of
this memory.