I was visiting some old friends in Richmond last weekend when I found one of my paintings from college prominently displayed in their entryway:

There’s a detail with easier-to-read text after the jump.

I can remember being the person that made this piece, and now I can see him from above. It feels like the me that is now ate the guy I was then — is made out of the elements, but arranged differently.

I can remember knocking this thing out in about an hour and a half, including time for the paint to dry. If you look behind the brown swirls, you may be able to see that this is a metal highway sign, one that’s used to show cars how to avoid a ditch or steep drop at night.

I didn’t steal the sign, though. I think I found it in the woods somewhere far away from any roads at all. It was ringed with old bicycle fenders painted with black and white stripes and scary monster faces … they’ve long since cracked off and been lost.

I remember just knocking this text out with a Sharpie with absolutely no preconceived idea of what it was going to say — no drafts, no nothing. Something just grabbed my hand and the words flew out of it, my hand’s movement like the twitch of a fire hose that’s been left unattended and on at full blast. Maybe it reads that way, too, I can’t tell anymore.

I know that ever since I was a little kid, I’ve been convinced that I’m living at the end of time — if not all time, at least for life as we know it. I never thought that I’d specifically see the seas rise and everything I love disappear in a series of filthy tidal waves, but the net effect is the same. Beyond the fact that I may be inheriting my father’s eye damage, I feel this relentless pressure to cram in as much of the world as I can before the seas rise and the beasts arrive from ??Elsewhere?? to drink us up like so much colossal, whimpering, overheated broth.

The following text is just a transcript of the painting itself for search purposes:

On that dark day when the sun rises in the West and sets in the East, these gargantuan striped giants will appear suddenly from ??Elsewhere?? and set to the business of devouring the Earth. Neither animal, vegetable nor man-made machine, they are insatiable and know no reason or moral code — they only know that they must perform the impossible: fill their ravenous GUTS. The Fantastic Four and the entire Marvel Universe subscribe to the belief that Galactus is the Eater of Worlds but I tell you with the straightest of all straight faces that Galactus is a mere DUST MITE compared to these black-and-white beasties.

We could, and probably will, hide, head for the hills, or lie screaming in storm cellars with paper sacks over our heads during that fateful time, but it will only make our moment of consumption more frenzied and embarrassing. We may as well die picnicking as pleading to a recently discovered God.

Mankind will finally realize what insects knew all along – nature knows no right or wrong. Our constant struggle with good and evil set us apart from the animals, but, on that day, we will finally be free from that boring struggle and I just hope that more people than just me have the sense to enjoy it.