I am less verbal day by day though I am fascinated by the language Lisa Robertson uses
in her new novel Riverwork, I’m told the language is English by people who speak it
I will be a demented horror in my old age to my wife and daughter who will both outlive
me after they survive me. I daydream of walking into eighteen-wheelers on the Beltway
My paintings suck. I have to give them as giftmas presents now and in return
get professional-grade ceramics and world-class hand-knit mittens. I don’t wear mittens
I hate revising not because revising requires erasures but requires fluency
absent of palimpsests I barely now and soon won’t bother to harvest
“My paintings suck.”
If yer paintings suck, then sucking is good. jeff, If yer paintings suck, then mondrian, klee, rothko, kandinsky, matisse, miro and ivan albright suck. what is actually happening is that meaning is slowly being sucked out of human cultural endeavors, like the air being sucked out of a sealed terrarium, because the owners of the terrarium want everything in the terrarium to be very still and very quiet. we must learn to remember the meaning of the air that is being removed because we can breathe that memory, of that air, forever, if we “all” (in the terrarium’s underground) agree to. being an artist now means being enough of an asshole to be militant enough to call seven out of ten people philistines who boast, smugly, how little they needed all that “extra” air in the first place.
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1/I like your paintings
2/maybe you don’t wear mittens now, but there may come a time when an older you lives in a colder clime – maybe MI or ME, e.g.
3/remember to be kind to yourself, to your loved ones, and to passersby – and if surcease of suffering is really what you want, just stop eating – if you’re really in a hurry, stop drinking too – it’s rather more gentle
4/long ago I would ponder in what order I would shoot certain professors – fortunately, I never took the next step of getting a gun
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