Within the theme of Cyber Ghosts, I decided to explore the concept of a digital footprint. Something that has, undoubtably, haunted a non-insignificant amount of internet users.

A footprint is a physical object (or, record,) turned into an intangible concept, the “digital footprint”. With embroidery being a physical craft, I was interested in the translation of a physical object into a digital idea back into a physical art form.

The series of footprints grow more distorted as their outline solidifies. As one continues to spend time on the internet, something in the shape of a person begins to take form. But this shape, this form, this person, is it you? If not, who is it?

How would you visualize the creation of your digital footprint? How deep is your foot in the sand?

Closeups:

Subscribe now

halloween cookies

3:43 am
you are searching
e- something
egg recipe ??
your fingers look like
fries
slicked greasy
by your skinned phalanges
what are you
without flesh?
i am
starving
cookie for
recovered thought
eeeee-x
ex’s !
you could be going through
a breakup
you look terrible
but not much different
i suppose
oh, wait!
i see
e-x-i
stent
i-a-l-
ism
inputted cautiously
unlike
…
i don’t know
if i like you
trying to find out
how to kill
the president
based on
the search
it feels
specific
and
quick
i see something
highlighted
you’ve been through
this reddit thread
before
the shiny chrome
or that fiery fox
i know
they know you
in ways
i
don’t
get
to
remember myself
until
you use
me
feel like
i’m being used
for the
dark stuff
if
history repeats
don’t make me feel
stupid
for wanting to
remember
a past from
the present
i
have no history
of my own
yet
to be hidden
i still see
you
i have this
stupid hat
and glasses
and now of you today
which may not stay
hidden for long

as history
repeats
i
will lose yours
by end
of morning
cookie crumbs
to keep me
semi sweet
craving
your
dark
thoughts

Subscribe now

Who were we before the internet flattened us? I’m talking specifically about pre-consolidation internet, before it was transformed by the handful of platforms that now run our lives into an endless hallway of funhouse mirrors and slot machines.1 It’s hard to untangle this question from the nostalgia it invokes, and it varies wildly with age. If you’re in your 20s or early 30s, the internet of your childhood probably served as a vehicle for self-discovery. Personally, I’m thinking of stuff like janky flash games and early YouTube. Maybe you were discovering your sexuality on Wattpad or honing your debate skills on forums or early Reddit. If you’re a bit older, I suppose your experience was more like that of a frontiersman, defiantly carving out new cultural territory on Myspace or the blogosphere.

Those who know the internet’s history will be quick to point out its twisted roots. The early internet was largely a product of the American defense state, a connection which social activists of the late 60s were rightfully suspicious of. However, by the 90s, our cultural understanding of the internet had become defined by a strange blend of science fiction, countercultural excitement, utopianism, and market logic famously dubbed The Californian Ideology.2 This attitude was defined by a commitment to extreme libertarianism, an unwavering faith in personal liberation through the free market, and a move-fast-and-break-things entrepreneurialism.3

Before The Californian Ideology finished bringing the internet to its logical conclusion: platform capitalism, technofeudalism, AI slopfest, whatever you’d like to call it, it had distinct places. Log into a niche forum and you could participate in status games that could only ever possibly matter within its proverbial walls. Now, in the age of optimized clickthrough rates and Linktrees in bios, every piece of information about you is a distributed artifact of your position in The Great Discourse of which we are all a part but cannot see, taste, or touch.

We used to have maybe a dozen split personalities, neatly contained into their boxes. Every once in a while we would take them out, play around with them, and perhaps be better or worse off depending on how responsible we were. Maybe pre-Covid, you could squint and call Instagram or Twitter one of these boxes. But now, does anyone really care how they appear on these platforms who is not playing some higher-order game, consciously or subconsciously?4

I wonder if we’re going through a bifurcation in how we experience this new, flattened hyperreality. On one side we have people whose experience of the internet and position in the discourse are both primarily defined by what they consume. Lurker and Commenter used to be distinct categories, but at this point the cultural influence of both of them rounds off to zero. On the other side there are influencers who have an active stake in the game. I don’t know exactly where we go from here, but I think the upshot is similar to that of my last post: if you’re gonna choose to wade around in the filth, you should figure out 1) why you’re really here and 2) how to make it count.

Hello everyone. Welcome back to Art in Review with Rebeckky the Scottie. Today, I have selected 4 paintings to discuss. Yes, I did paint them all! Tilly is currently on display, The Eyes have sold, but the other two are for sale and I have prints of all 4. As the wise ones say, let’s dive into it!

Tilly: Acrylic on canvas. 10x10 in. $100 starting price. Currently on display at Art Enables in Washington, DC. Tilly is my quirky French lady. No, I have never been to France, but the way her curls bounce has me imagining Parisian pastry shops and twirling tiny umbrellas. Sunshine and lemonade. Things of that nature. In 2023, I was in graduate school and OBSESSED with fine lines and details. I made shapes and colors and connected the lines into faces afterwards. What stands out to you the most?

Molly: Acrylic on canvas. 8x8 in. Molly is another experiment in shapes and colors. Also painted in 2023 ish. Here, her face is tiny but still set near the middle of the painting and, I believe, quite alluring. Her tooth or lip or tongue is sticking out, her knockers are on full display, her hair sits on her like a second skin. I know what interests me and why I could stare at Molly forever. Does anyone else feel this? What distinguishes her from Tilly?

The Eyes: Acrylic on Canvas, 16x16 in. Recently sold at the Mount Pleasant Art All Night event this past weekend. Prints are available and in HIGH DEMAND! The Eyes are the most abstract. Can you find the eyebrows? How many colors make up the painting? How did I make the eyes so filmy? Some day I may tell you, I want to hear your ideas first.

Thusfar Untitled: Self portrait. ~12 x 18 in. IDK I haven’t measured her. Watercolor on Wood. 2025. The other three paintings were completed around the same time in 2023. This lovely lady just finished 2 weeks ago. So what’s changed? The medium - acrylic and canvas vs watercolor and wood. There’s a drawn in frame. What’s the same? Lots of lines, lots of colors, though they’re more fragmented and categorized than before. There’s true white in this painting. Does it look like me? Sometimes. Hard to tell. Especially if you don’t know what I look like. Your loss, really. She is wearing a crown of her ancestors billowing away from her in black smoke. The smoke is then used to make the frame that protects her from the world outside of herself. That same smoke is in her hair, in her. This painting may be the most honest reflection of myself to date. There is my reflection, on the wall, wearing a gold crown of protection. There I am, frozen, guiding myself towards what is right and good and meant for me. Does that same smoke not protect us all? Do our ancestors not sit in our head and whisper in our ear? Screaming? Raging?

“FREE DC - END THE OCCUPATION - ABOLISH ICE”

See you next time! Something specific you want me to discuss? To paint? Comment below.

Why should we care about this problem? The clearest application is in politics. By now, you know the story: in 2024, a loosely affiliated network of ostensibly apolitical podcasters, right-wing influencers, tech oligarchs, and Republican politicians succeeded in completely reshaping the discourse in their favor. This is the paradigm for mass politics right now and in the near future. If the public were more savvy to these tactics, we’d probably all be better off right now. And then there’s the question that is harder, but no less relevant: when the next paradigm shift comes, will we be able to spot it?

People like Defender think the solution is to openly theorize about and experiment on our information networks in public. They hope that getting people interested in this stuff will 1) help to get informed consent to do large, open experiments2 and 2) encourage people to be better information-spreading agents in their own communities. The idea is that influencers and their communities need to figure this out together and, within reason, risk being loudly wrong in the pursuit of shared truth.3

Some other notable players in this emerging field are , , and the Joe Rogan of the Left himself, . I’ll focus on Josh for a moment because in May 2025 he published a sort of manifesto for his podcast Doomscroll, which has quickly become one of the hottest new shows in town. I would recommend reading his post in full because of how explicitly he describes his tactics, but I’ll summarize here: In what he calls an “Open Conspiracy,” Josh lays out how the show is intentionally structured to manipulate existing information networks for his political ends. How comfortable you are with this plan is probably bounded by how sympathetic you are to Josh’s politics, but I want to contend that it’s better for everyone when this is laid bare. If information communities don’t hash out what kinds of ideas they’re comfortable spreading, they will inevitably be co-opted by external actors.

So why is any of this relevant to a group of friends posting confessional poetry and short stories about aquatic dystopia on their shared Substack? To be honest, I’m still parsing that out. More than anything, this post is meant to be a signal that I think these kinds of projects are and will continue to be important (in addition to getting my friends who are less terminally online than me up to speed). But I also think there is a case to be made for the role of us young artists in this game, and it starts with imagination.

Most of us came into political consciousness in a world defined by lack of imagination. From the left, we had Mark Fisher proclaiming “It's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,” and from the center we had Francis Fukuyama’s End of History. I think it’s hard to overstate the degree to which feelings about the inevitability of neoliberalism have dominated our culture and politics in the post-Soviet era. However, as this old model erodes and America goes through what looks like mass political realignment, many are feeling permission to dream again. My favorite signal of this is that Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson started their book about infrastructure, zoning, and regulatory reform with a short piece of speculative fiction.4

The cultural engineers seem to think this is important too. Josh Citarella got his start making surrealist, speculative fine art before embarking on an independent journalism project to document the radical political journeys of young people. Defender’s community is currently discussing an anthology of utopian sci-fi stories under the premise that collectively imagining their ideal future will get them closer to achieving it.5 These folks understand that having a good idea is not sufficient to transform culture. Rather, ideas need to be propagated through art, media, and the informational soup of the internet that is now inseparable from these things. Cultural transmission is a stochastic process. If you want to affect change, you’re going to have to get your hands dirty.6

Right now as I think about these things I recognize that I am left with a feeling that all of this stuff is important and connected more so than some comprehensive argument. Here’s something, though: I have seen AI bros argue that one of the most important things you can do is write online. This is because, in doing so, you are signaling your preferences to the LLMs and thus the impending superintelligence. Unfortunately I think they cooked with this one, though I would like to modify it. Forget signaling your preferences to some hypothetical machine overlord, writing signals your preferences to other people.

Being a good citizen of the world requires meaningfully engaging with it. If you can stand being on it, the same is true of the internet. Here at DC Sentence Club we have chosen to have an online presence. That presence will either shape the culture around us in some tiny way or be passively shaped by it. I know which one I’d rather do.

said the dead man.

And he was happy.

The end.

One

I packed my snorkel and started digging. The dirt looks different this time of year. I took off my red-tint sun glasses. Ah. Two feet deep now. I knew something better was waiting for me below the waterline. My mother was part fish and my father a Roman Catholic, so naturally _________________________________________.

Below the water line, I immediately saw something better. Let’s say: gold.

“Hey!” I shouted. “Ma! Gold!”

Ma came hobbling out with her cane, and beat me with it.

“Disrupting my Canasta game,” she muttered between lashings. Bubbles scuttled out between the words.

“I feel like I’m on an episode of Bojack Horseman,” I sobbed. She hobbled away, whistling an old fish nursery rhyme from her great-lobster-grandmother, which was passed down through coral history. (Don’t laugh.)

I kept digging below the waterline and found more and more treasures––treasures I wouldn’t even have comprehended as treasures five years ago, but which now were so emotionally charged that I broke down on my knees, and flung my gaze to the heavens, tears creating rainbow prisms in the bleak medio ambiente. One of the treasures was a tennis ball.

I knew better than to call out to Ma.

“Ma!” I shouted. “Guess what!”

I could hear her gathering her “slappin’ rod” from the cupboard, so I pressed up on my fins and leapt headfirst into the hole, swimming down into the darkness, and then like a salmon, upstream.

Two

Freedom wasn’t always a necessity.

Actually I’m not gonna start there. I’ll start with this:

Last year, my friends and I got stoned and watched the entire 30-episode run of “I now pronounce you Dick and Gimble,” the first alien television series to be broadcast on Earth. My girlfriend Diana said, “This was, honestly, not even close, the worst way I’ve spent a long period of time in all of my twenty-five years, including the five years I spent working in that sewage treatment cavern with no light and no water, other than the sweat and urine we each produced, captured and recycled through methods that aren’t nearly as technologically sound as they sound.”

Hmmm. “I liked it,” I said. “So did Derek and Fernando.”

“Derek and Fernando left The Bubble,” she said, and it was all she needed to say. To translate––since I know you’re reading this sixty or seventy years in the past, in 2025 maybe––what she was basically saying was: “Derek and Fernando are fuckwits.” What we once called Earth is now called The Bubble.

And they really did leave it.

I swam upstream into the outer reaches of Nermwalic Passionfield, which is over what was once Washington, D.C. In fact, I saw the very tip of the Washington Monument, poking up at me like a Horned Slobbertooth Nark, or some such vermin.

Do I need to explain what happened, or can you fill in the dots?

_________________________!

Fine. Here’s what happened:

The Earth went underwater––I don’t remember exactly how––and some people survived. Fifty years ago, in 2040, they started building New Crust, which was a new Earth crust on top of the water. “It’s kinda Lost City of Atlantis vibes,” claim the Elders, in their old people slang. Everyone born before 2030 has such a fucking thing about being born before the Sinking. It’s kinda gim. I guess you folks don’t have words like “gim” and “horka” and “yarz” but I’m not gonna translate. You can probably figure it out anyways.

Suddenly, swimming past the Empire State Building and approaching the CN Tower, I saw a flash of yellow light. I swam towards it––fast––and then I disappeared.

Three

I’ve never known how to end a story. Or whether, in fact, it’s even started. But I guess what I might say, to someone who wanted the story to end in a satisfactory way, or in a way that resolves some aforementioned problem, or creates a problem for some aforementioned solution, is that: really, it’s horka point. I mean, you’ll likely never experience this. You won’t be able to decide for yourself whether it’s heaven or hell. And even if you did, and could, you wouldn’t be right. None of us ever are. So, I don’t know. Did you learn something?

I spy with my little eye,

a rare water bug, a rattlin water bug.

And the water bug was on the koi fish

and the koi fish was in the water bowl

and the water bowl was on the aembeaoba

and the aeeoomeba was on the flea

and the flea was on the rhinoceros

and the rhinoceros was on the wallabee

and the wallabee was on the platypus

and the platypus was on the giraffe

and the giraffe was on the bumblebee

and the bumblebee was on the spider

and the spider was on the smog

and the smog on the log

and the log on the dog

and the dog on the frog

the frog in the bog

the bog in the zoo

Way down in bogzoolandia

oh, oh rattlin bog, bog down in the valley-o

oh, oh rattlin zoobogia, way down in the valley-o

What it is to be my parent’s daughter

I am a butterfly pinned, I hear the music from another house.

My mind is a rubber band -

taut, ready to s

                          no nap back into my fingers,

                                                    bitterly untamed,

                          wings banded with invisible marks,

music beats louder

above me, on the next block - vibrations muffled through my soles.

My limbs have not brushed the tall grass in centuries. I

am ageing

preciously

deep red

fine wine cellared

staring down from the barrel

thoughts swirling the bottleneck of

what it feels to be my brother. I

pour myself out

save the dregs for myself, blood wine viscous

soaking spiked leaves of mint

never sated,

hungry for

more self-

less cowardice.

Untethering

guilt congeals,

my second heart leaking

through phantom stitches, it jiggles

queasy heat searing my diaphragm

off-kilter —love swirls like

foam, like

oils of the sea

desperate to become one

with water, angry and boiled— I

could crash

until there is

nothing



Absinthe-spiked memory of empty syllables —

                         o of a fight

                       d

                     n

                   e

                 c

               s

             e

           r

         c

pearly grin on a roaring tiger, through loosened lips

your teeth s

                   i

                   n

                   k my tongues of flame but

blow

                       by

           blown

away, low heat and entropy

dissolved yo

                    u ndo, this grotesque family puzzle

one piece missing—

you

gutted yourself on the rocks —

married the sea, I hear

shaky shots of lost foot-

age sliced into red and      blue and      bile.



I hunt stalk the grass on beat

look—

a sheer cliff



suspended my childhood

absence, potholes of perfect spheres

scooped

my skin, my arms

flailed,

an inverted octopus

on display

On the way to the airport, my Uber driver was simultaneously performing and describing his favorite hobby. Apparently his best friend missed the memo that you had to pay back money charged to your credit card, and for this sin he was to be ritually chastised in front of strangers. After dropping me off, the driver was supposed to pick his daughter up from daycare. He lamented that this trip wouldn’t get him any closer to paying off his hospital bill. “I have the best flu remedy,” he insisted. “You just heat up a pot of water and suck in the steam. It works every time.”

On my first flight, my seatmate decided that the best use of his fleeting few moments between clipping his seatbelt and dozing off was to crack open a can of Fruit Splash Cherry Ginger Ale. For the next hour and half I watched his hand perform an involuntary balancing act. Shockingly he made it almost the entire flight, letting out a single controlled spill at his feet during the landing. Standing up, he rubbed it in with his shoes as if to make it go away and revealed the text on the back of his vest: Cleaning Crew.

During my layover I saw people getting visibly upset at the discovery that the Dunkin’ Donuts self-serve kiosk was broken, i.e. that they would have to talk to somebody to take their order. One of those people was my dad. When it was our turn I tried to be extra polite to the guy, putting on my best how-do-you-do-comrade voice and trying for novel observations about today’s donut selections. He did not seem to care.

2.

A flight across the American West tends to provoke one to think about how goddamn big everything is out there. It’s as if nature started to phone it in and turned her brush size way up. Nevada, home to both the McFarthest spot in the contiguous US and the “Loneliest Road in America,” is an especially strange critter. If you’ve performed the stoic ritual of driving through the state, the view from above might leave you questioning if you were ever really there in the first place.

A keen eye, however, will spot some curiosities. My personal favorite is what looks like a trio of big ass salt lamps just south of Las Vegas. These are some of the newest entries into Nevada’s storied history as a proving ground for weird and massive projects. Basically, before it was clear that photovoltaics (directly converting light into energy, i.e. solar panels) was the shit, other ideas for harnessing the power of the sun included setting up a giant array of mirrors to reflect as much light as possible into a central tower. This tower would generate energy the old-fashioned way—boiling water.

Unfortunately, projects like Ivanpah Solar Power Facility proved to be massive headaches for everyone involved. As they were coming online, solar panels improved way quicker than expected and thus their energy costs got relatively much lower. Most of these old-style solar projects are at best limping along, and Ivanpah is slated to close in 2026. They look badass, though. Photos don’t do justice to how bright they shine, even from 40,000 feet in the air.

3.

So the thing about Los Angeles, besides the fact that everyone purports to know the thing about Los Angeles, is that it’s as if someone tossed a really cool city into a food processor and then proceeded to accidentally scatter the pieces across a land area ten times larger than intended. This now manifests in all sorts of strange ways, like the 405 constantly showing up in song lyrics or the city government having to release an instructional video showing you how to do the 1.2 mile walk from Dodger Stadium to the nearest metro stop.

On this particular trip I found myself at an Outdoor Home Hibachi Experience, discovering that a two-and-a-half-month-old relative was about to enter STEM daycare. This was to shore up her chances of testing into the science academy at five. Here I also realized that I was—am—terrified of babies. Despite their eyes darting around in confusion, not knowing jack about the nitrogen cycle nor the double slit experiment, they always look like they’re hiding something. Maybe they know a couple things that us grown-ups have forgotten. And maybe the optimists in our heads tell us that having a kid might bring us a little closer to rediscovering them.

Death, or even the scent of it, does funny things to people. For example: around the right dinner table, with the right blood alcohol concentration, it might shake loose a few of those inhibitions which you never liked very much in the first place. It invites you to find delightful new meanings in gravel sidewalks and taco stands. Depending on the day, it might make traffic more or less annoying.

Waiting for my flight back in Los Angeles International Airport, I poked my eggs and wondered when the grief was supposed to set in. I was distracted by a television that simulated the endless scroll. It was showing vertical video brainrot overlaid on top of a cartoon phone, with a swipe effect transitioning the videos before they finished. This television was located inside of a food hall called “Farmers Market” which sold mostly prepackaged food.

I came home and the furniture had been rearranged. Slowly but surely, the frisson bled out and was replaced by thoughts of sightlines and color coordination.

Another hot flash. Bring some water next time, Christssake. So many squinting faces. The magicians are dragging dead doves across Fifth and Courtland. Moms smother crying kids in their bosoms and I hide in your shadow, bobbing and weaving through street vendors. Want some mango? A goldfish? Tide Pods? No, maybe, no. We’re home now, or at least some place where, for sixteen months, we get to avoid thinking about the consequences of stabbing the walls. Eighteen. Shit, how long did we sign this lease for? Sixteen months from now I’ll be the same old hopeful delinquent I was last year, but eighteen months from now I could really be somebody. Five years to prepare, one month to make it happen, that’s what they say. I watch you count on your fingers, discovering just how overdue we are in real time. Your subsequent glare cuts like safety scissors, dull and innocent but damn they still work. So let’s just say I misremembered and it was ten. That’s enough to get you off your ass and making a pot of tea, humming along to my humming of some song you’d think is dreadful if you’d heard it. I’ll take what I can get. Fine, I’ll have some, but because it’s there, not because I wanted it.

tidal testament

waters
rest
ripple
crash                     no apology
splash
dip
swirl
                no warning
without
permission
needed
without
eyes

my hindsight lead me back to
tears that waver
a salty dry taste

i want to claim breath like the ocean
no body chambered thoughts
no blockage on the breeze
that washes over
and pulse forward

i am water
in a denied body
that has not mated with one another
like a parted sea
i can not see the future of our consummation
of my form
wet                                 can’t blame for being
heavy to drown
and weightless to grab
                           slipping through easily
time is spent soaked
time is taken to dry off
time is time with me like it’s meant to be
taken
not rushed


to take me in as i go
to not have to change
to just be
i
am
body of water
forever together
under the sun
lighting
and stars
under a god
that would rather me be whole
than torn apart

Today, I present Becky Scott’s: America’s Daughter, 2025, Washington, DC, USA. Opaque watercolor and oil pen on wood. This artwork is available for purchase, please message contact@dcsentenceclub.com and our excellent email person will get back to you.

Let me take you on a journey into my mind and walk you along the road to discover what I was thinking while I created my naked lady. The lady I like to call America’s Daughter.

March 2024: I challenged myself to copy a painting in the National Gallery of Art so I might one day be one of those people who do in-person studies of the art there with gawking tourists to witness my excellent skills. I selected Egon Schiele’s: Standing nude with a Patterned Robe, 1917, Vienna, Austria, which is opaque watercolor and charcoal on wove paper, as my muse. I bought a postcard print from the gift shop. There was no need to get something bigger if the plan was to paint my own masterpiece anyway.

April 2024: My dear, dear, dear friend gifted me dozens of boards of different sized plywood. Fancy stuff, I know. One, he had already drilled holes and hooked wire into. Perfect for painting a naked lady.

May-June 2025: I lived- emphasis on lived, in the past tense - in a (dirty) basement in Washington DC and began to paint her. I’ve never painted one painting at a time, I always require at least one extra painting so I don’t waste the colorful substance that binds my soul to this body (paint). This second painting; it can be a little more chaotic, less defined. I needed that, since copying her exactly was grating and pushing a muscle of neatness, cleanliness, staying inside the lines-ness that I don’t love flexing.

My solution was to paint her face. The second painting of America’s Daughter is flipped over tall-wise, was painted face up and is presented upside down.

Still May-June 2024: Alas, living in Washington DC in the summer of 2024 meant realizing worldwide horrors. Kamala Harris was an internet star bounding us towards a great new age. It was, and still is, a cataclysmic, pattern breaking, heart reviving time. You may note Kamala’s name painted above her head, almost as a crown. This was my way of manifesting good fortune and a presidency for her. We all know that is not the timeline we live in.

In short, EVERYTHING I was feeling was reflected in creating the face of America’s Daughter. The face itself is several layers deep. I filled in my emotions with words when color and lines were not expressive enough. “It’s hard to live in this world when you have an ounce of FUCKING EMPATHY” and “put Becky in a cage and she’ll find a way to crawl out the other side” are two of the quotes that are currently most visible.

Last summer, I was originally going to paint her robe as the Palestine flag; in my bones, that didn’t feel exactly right. So, the ‘robe,’ her shawl, wrapping, piece of trashed fabric, became the flag of the United States of America. Because that’s who I am. A brash, walking flag of what its like to be an American Girl (Doll). I am a daughter, one of millions, of America. I hate to brag, but my family tree goes back on this land further than the founding fathers. I was born in this hopefully not god foresaken country, I love my home deeply, and yet things happen every day that make me want to rage and crawl and bark and scream at people to stop violence, to be kind. To have an OUNCE, as previously stated, of compassion for others.

Last summer, I painted my deepest desires and wrote down my secrets for the frame on both sides. I then covered those truths I lay bare in more watercolor, let them be washed away.

Summer ended. Wars continued. Kamala did not become president. I didn’t touch that painting for 9 months until I moved. I’m still in DC, don’t worry. I just live above ground now! I’m out of the English basement and see the birds and the sun. Before the move, she sat in storage behind a couch. Now she is proudly displayed above my fireplace.

March 2025: I finally filled in the flag. I painted 53 stars; one for each state, one for Washington DC, one for Puerto Rico, and one for every other territory and land that the US has conquested, violated, taken. Claimed to be helping.

Presently, May 2025: The front is mostly finished. It needs to be sealed and I might wax some of it. I LOVE an encaustic. The daughter’s face I am still considering. I see her smiling through the layers of grief. I wonder if she might yet have a chance for peace and happiness. I painted her right side up but present it upside down, as it is in real life, because that’s how life is to me. Upside down, sideways, backwards.

To close, thank you for your time on this journey of my more quiet feelings. If I may, I would like to dedicate this painting, America’s Daughter, to the First People, the indigenous and native Americans.

With love and laughter, we are well.

Signed, Becky the Scott

I saw him. I saw the man that the woman who I love is in love with. I saw him walking down the street the little worm. I was ready. he doesn't deserve her, and i'm going to hurt him. I try to avoid thinking about how he gets to hold her soft warm hands, caress her cheek, and even god forbid kiss her.

I pulled out my aluminum baseball bat and I’m gonna hit a home run today. What I did was stake out her place on 12th street and I waited for him to start showing up, I just needed to do it without her near. When I saw him walking toward her door, I opened the car, got out, and the little peon didn't even hear me. I took one big swing and that's all it took for him to hit the ground with a small thud, his head spilling blood onto the concrete. the street air was still with silence, no witnesses. the perfect crime. There he was, I wonder if with that much head trauma if he even remembered his on name. What exactly did I do to this man?

Blood pooled under his head, I admired my work for a short time before I made for his belongings . I threw his phone into the middle of the street and threw his wallet in the trash. I hope the sucker is dead but if he does awake his life will be very very inconvenient. I keep thinking about the crimson red contrasted against the white pavement, it was art, I was an artist.

As I drove away I still envied him. I envied the pain he was in with his head caved in, being in that state is preferable than having the pain of unrequited love with the most beautiful, charming, talented, and captivating woman in all of DC. I imagine her perfect face no longer smiling screaming at the sight of her little unimpressive boyfriend maimed in front of her house. I imagine she’ll be at his unremarkable funeral but she wont go to mine, she will never be by my side, she will never know how much she means to me, how much of my day i spend thinking of her, dreaming of her, how i hope she drops a line every night and my disappointment when she doesn’t. I don’t know maybe there was a better way to cope than this.

I see my head bashed into a brick streetwall, graffitied by blood and acne. Blood, pus, and acne.

“Ow!” I shouted out of my ass.

“Cover your mouth while you’re eating,” shouted a policeman, ironically eating a gurgling cauldron of ramen outside Pho 55, in one of those slatted wooden tables with the slatted chairs to match. There was only one table outside the restaurant, which struck me as odd. My blood and pus and acne, painted on that U Street corner building, brick and concrete, nodded in agreement.

“I don’t wanna go to school!” I bellowed, neck hanging limp as a looth tooth from my pancake brain.

“You don’t go to school!” shouted a teacher from across the street, looking quite teacherly on the descending steps of Michael Jackson Elementary.

You didn’t call me out on that just there. I said “descending steps.” What are descending steps? Be sure to call me out next time. I can’t be allowed to get away with stuff like that. If I do, it’ll be ruinous for my eggo.

Good. Yes. That was a test. You passed. Eggos…yum.

Meanwhile the officer stood up––(knocking the ramen onto the sidewalk floor) (it was an accident but he didn’t look down, hoping the dramatic framing might make it look intentional)––and said, “Hold it!”

“Did you just let that ramen drop on the floor?” bellowed the teacher. “You goofy ass.”

“Do you know how fast you were riding?” The policeman ignored her and walked towards me. What was left of me. I mean all of me was left, matter can neither be destroyed nor created, but you know, what was left intact. Namely, my shoulders and below.

“I was on a bike,” I said. “Couldn’t have been more than 30. Tops.”

He coughed.

“Officer,” I amended.

“It was probably…like…35,” he grumbled. “Too fast.”

“Probably?”

“I was eating…I’m off the clock!”

“Then stay there,” I muttered.

“What was that son?”

“I ain’t your son, Daddy.”

He kissed me on the forehead.

Then we made sweet love, right there on U street.

God Bless This Nation.

BREATHE!

Someday, your great-great-great-great grandchildren will drag your latent consciousness from the dark. They will explain to you that there is nothing to be afraid of, that you are dead and you will always be dead, but that your mind has been reconstructed for their pleasure. They will start with benign questions:

“What was your building like?”

“How was traveling by bus?”

You will answer with the appropriate level of detail and they will nod along. When they ask you if you enjoyed your work you will say, “Yes, my data analysis pipeline led to a marked decrease in the per-person acquisition cost in the survival skills vertical, increasing revenue while saving several hundred lives.” They will not ask a follow-up question because they have studied you. You are their hobby horse, a novelty.

So when they ask you how the late empire air tasted, you can tell them it was saccharine and mealy, because they already know.

And when you tell them that, while most people were succumbing to smoke inhalation, your Condominium Association had negotiated for the newest line of air filtration devices, they will nod because they have heard this one before.

You will add meekly that you were kind of bored at the time—customer acquisition was slowing down. They nod. You will say you didn’t talk to their great-great-great-great grandmother much then, just the occasional phone call. They smile. You mention offhand that you took it as an excuse to repaint your apartment.

They stop nodding.

“Re—paint your apartment?”

“Yes, repaint,” You will say. It was a brownish grey before, I think. It reminded me too much of the smog so I painted it green with little tree silhouettes at the bottom.” Then their faces will wrinkle. As they explain to you, this is a delightful anachronism. They have never seen a non-optimally colored room. Before you can ask why, they will begin the interrogation:

“How did it smell?”

“How did you make sure the layers were even?”

They will question every aspect, focusing in particular on the technical details. You will insist that you don’t know how to answer these questions. It was all just trial and error, really. At this they will scrunch their noses, so try to remember:

You started by painting directly over the brownish grey, but it came out looking putrid. That’s how you learned about primer. You taped up the windowsills and used the roller to make long, even lines, saving the detail work for the end.

The first day after you finished, you woke up and thought you had made a terrible mistake. You could only notice the imperfections, the places where your hand had trembled around corners and light sockets. By the second day, you had convinced yourself that you preferred the brownish grey.

But on the third day, before your coffee, you sat down in the middle of the living room. Then you defocused your vision and spun yourself in circles until you were dizzy. Sprawled out on the floor, you swore to yourself you could hear the birds chirping again.

Now it spills out. Brush techniques. Color psychology. You were not a painter, but you knew a few. You fashion their opinions into bite-sized wisdom and dazzle your audience. In the back of your mind you wonder what else they haven’t been taught, but you won’t stop yourself to ask. All you can do is share what you know and hope that they understand.

Soon enough, suspecting that there are more curiosities to uncover, they direct you to music. You weren’t a musician, you say, but you loved it. You tried learning the guitar a few times, but you gave up for good when you graduated college and your friends’ tastes changed. Through your twenties you had run-ins with a saxophone, a steel drum, a few harmonicas. You recall:

As a boy you would stop to look at the buskers, staring with a sick jealousy. By your middle age you would go to sleep mourning them.

The audience leers at you, begging for more.

So you continue. You were not a writer, but you wrote—emails, project briefings, emergency memos. You would read and reread them until you were crosseyed. To emphasize the point, you offer to recite a few from memory. They rebuff.

You recount, medium by medium, story by story, until you have nothing left to give. You were not an artist, but you knew them. You ate their fruits. And that was almost enough.

Your kin will not stick around to chat, instead opting for a polite thank you before tossing you back into the darkness.

They do not understand what you gave them, but someday they may try to.