nonwork (& delulu & skeuomorph)

 

Wonderbread, 1962, serigraph, Corita Kent.

Dear Y'all,

So many good new to me words lately!  Non-work, or nonwork is all over my mind right now.  See, I have long struggled to make what I do seem like work to that annoying voice in my head that suggests I am 'doing nothing.'  I defined my reading or thinking as my 'research;' my bed as my 'lab' - but I think, my up and doing* friends and the rest of you comrades in nonwork, that I have got it wrong- backwards, even.  It is the nonwork I should be cataloging and cherishing- which, yes, is just a matter of definition- all the work I do at making things and thinking things and writing and playing that is all now, from this day forward, officially, nonwork.  I am taking my research hours back and putting them into this other pile!  It's like moving your socks and underwear drawer from the second drawer down to the top!  I expect great things from this new definition.  

It should be said, it should be emphasized, that I don't think I could have gone directly from indoctrination in The Meritocracy to nonwork.  (Even though I have read a lot of French authors).  No, I think the roundabout arrival via research and lab work was the better way for me.  For you?  For you, for you! I wish the world of goodness!  I wish you to go directly to nonwork as your sustenance and paydirt, your bread and butter, your raison d'etre.  Go, go now!  While no one is looking!  Let us be honest about what gives us meaning, what love is, and where love is.

Let's meet again soon, to take a nonwork look at delulu and skeuomorph!  It's going to be fun!

the rhymes of the flowers

 

Tiger, Corita Kent, 1965, Serigraph, 23"h x 35"w

Dear Violets Are Blue,

Yesterday, I skated past you, on the walk, over and over.  Ka-tunk, ka-tunk, when the wheels passed over the seams in the concrete.  Each time I could catch that faint scent; and of course, I saw you, too; just a few of you, maybe a dozen blooms?  But the scent see, that is maybe the thing.  Like night, like water, but faintly sweet, medicinal.   Like the smell of lightning.  Yes, and the color, well, it is one of the special purples of flowers- the tiniest hairs making a dense reflective nap like velvet. 

A project that would be fine is to collect these purples when I see them.  To match each one with a bit of paint on a square of paper; yes that would be a fine project.  A kind of world tour of botanical violet hues.

Watermelon, Corita Kent, 1965, Serigraph, 18"h x 24"w