entanglement

 

Dear You Again,

Here's the thing, you are sticky, and not in a good, cinnamon bun way.  I wish you no ill, but whenever we have contact, I regret not telling you off, as it might have prevented our meeting.  I can make no use of your friendship. It does sound harsh, but, isn't this whole thing about you, actually?  Aren't you calling me so I can tell you that you are good and whole and socially acceptable?  Well, you may not be any of those things.  Also, I am not an expert, so getting my approval should be cold comfort.

And so.  Now what?  Do we agree to keep our distance?  Do we pretend this never happened?  Do I keep on crossing to the other side when I see you coming?

Yes, it is a pickle, that is sure, but, I guess I will go with one of the half-truths: my road is out, my dog is sick, and my car has carburetor trouble, but you be sure to have a nice day and we'll catch up one of these days!

smaller, bigger

 

Smaller oak tree, camera, & photographer (me).

Bigger oak tree, camera, & photographer (Ansel Adams).

Mulligan

 

Still Life with Garlic, 1949, oil on canvas, William Scott.

Dear Fairies, Merrows, Kelpies, Banshees, & Pookas,

Meet in the meadow, make a community stew, dear ones!  Play this on your radio, and later on, when you are back at home after the celebration, check out fabulous artist William Scott, your countryman, and my latest crush!  

PS

Viewing tips:  Notice the way his beautifully observed still lives flatten into dynamic abstraction.  This, friends, this indwelling of two worlds, the 2 and the 3 dimensional, is the glory of painting.

value study

 

Dear Looking,

Oh!  Regard this lovely formal exploration of rectangles, texture, and value:  isn't it terrific?  

I love finding these amazing compositions that just happened from actions of an entirely different nature.  This wall has a long bracket of some kind, which used to hold something (a sign?) that is long gone.  There is also a lovely dark stain around some kind of placard that was attached to the wall with maybe thick double sided tape?  All that is history, of course, and it hardly matters that someone might have been quite frustrated over weeks and months, trying to keep a stuck up onto this rough stucco.

The staining of water and time and wind, and the tapings and signs and brackets are now just exactly what they are: a very lovely composition.  They interest me for their poetical connotations, yes, but also because they are the kind of marks that happen in the course of life, they are not self-conscious marks.

Sticklers & shutterbugs might argue that they are self-conscious now, here, as I have 'taken' them and 'presented' them to you, but, I think we can enjoy them together with or without semantics and semiotics.

Points South.

 

snow!

 

writ/read

 

Dear Reader,

To the Bat Cave, Robin, I must write!   Because, you were always on my mind.  Sometimes, I ask myself:  what goes here?  In fact, it might be my most asked question of myself.  What an awkward sentence!  

A week or so ago, I led a little group in a meditative drawing exercise, and I felt so clearly the wave of concentration and, hmm, what is the thing?  Not just concentration, not just intention, not just care, but maybe, maybe it was love.  It was ecstatic like that, so it might have been.  A little field guide would be handy here, wouldn't it?  With a cross-reference of 'feels like' and then a page with what it is you might be experiencing?

On the topic of my writing you, I think you should know that I never use auot correct when I write you here, be cause it would be less true for my hurrying, let alone what denigration partnering with a machine might feel like when you are reading.  This is funny, of course, but also, my true feelings on the matter.  I think we get some out of whatever we put in.  

Which leads me to two things: this digital tool is not a threat to anyone, or any notion of quality or honesty.  If you don't want to use your thumb to scumble out 't h a n k  y o u' on your device, I still believe you meant it.  And if writing is a chore, or even tortuous for you, I give you permission, utterly and completely, to use as much AI as you you like.  I won't even complain that it tastes like canned.  It's all Gide* anyway.

Second thing, is that I have some old blue ink on lined paper writing of mine, and I love to note things like this:  BE cause.  Now, that doesn't look like it is; I used (and still do use, but less) a weird (& expedient) mix of capitals, lower case, and cursive in my penned writing.  If, as a human, it is possible to lift our self loathing even a tiny bit, I would do so, in order to tell myself how sweet and charming a mistake BE cause is.

PS

You 

were 

always 

on 

my 

mind.

*Toutes choses sont dites déjà; mais comme personne n'écoute, il faut toujours recommencer.

Everything has been said before, but since nobody listens we have to keep going back and beginning all over again.