On Hypatia Pickens

Hypatia is a flower, a female mathematician who was martyred by a mob of early Christians, a city in Italo Calvino's Invisible Cities, a movie that is always about to come out in my town but not quite, and the name of my avatar on Second Life. Hypatia is younger than I am (only two years and some months old--I suppose I could say the same), prettier, more robust (she doesn't hurt if she falls), she never wearies (although she wearies me), she is a builder of impossible things, a book-maker, a terrible clothes-horse, and she has an inventory that is more disorganized than my closet. She resides on a laptop; she is subject to the whims of the now unstable Linden Labs. She is costing me money. She forces me to think outside the box, to draw, paint, scan, upload. She has made me obsessive. She has forced me to become a poet, and a careful one, for which she takes all the credit. Sometimes when I walk around in her skin, I wonder if we are the same. I hope she is kinder, more elegant, funnier, more even-tempered, but the line between myself and herself blurs a bit. I pour so much into her, and she demands, demands, demands things of me--like wakefulness--that is hard to keep up with. I hope to show some of her (and my) artwork here.