Monday, October 05, 2009

Trestles



A plain of color over brown, water seeping into the tiny folds, rivulets, crystallized…

Taking their own path, then: apprehended…

Who is the guide?

* * *

No other life but this…

* * *

Stillwater…

* * *

To describe a painting, to return to that moment—where the off-gray will coalesce into a kind of mist—an atmosphere—without meaning, but understood…

* * *

A forest. Kampinos, outside Warsaw, early autumn. The Polish fields, taut air. An expedition, grzyby—Roman, his girlfriend (did she not limp?), myself, a bystander cow… Welcomed into a life…

And a past as well…

* * *

Later in the day…



(18 September 2009)

Stillwater



To be true to something specific—the beloved, the branch…

Trees on the coast at nightfall, a winding road. The Russian fort, rebuilt. Shale bluffs, indigo sea…

* * *

Colors over colors, pale and gray, articulated from within—the run of the eye…

* * *

Again, the specific, this. Unapproachable by words alone. They follow.

Like shale—“ a fine-grained, clastic sedimentary rock composed of flakes of clay minerals and tiny fragments of other minerals, especially quartz and calcite…” (clastic—“of or belonging to or being a rock composed of fgragments of older rocks…”)

Of or belonging to or being…

* * *

Words--luminous—a shimmering…



(18 September 2009)

Kippur



The silhouette of a man who, his arms half raised at different levels, confronts the thick mist in order to enter it. (Franz Kafka, Diaries, 1913).

Oakland studio, 1980. Downtown light, filtered through high factory windows. Guston’s drawings—the figure with the pointed hair, poking out in front like a sword, or a wand. Reappearing three decades later--unexpectedly, down below and from the side of the screen in a video of the Red Army Chorus, singing Kalinka… their uniforms and Soviet-era regalia intact, but no Red Army now, just the puffed-up voices awaiting a cause.

A father…

The summer following, in a shaded west Los Angeles living room, Pacific Palisades, there high on a shelf, a strangely elongated shoe—more abracadabra or boat—a genie-in-a-bottle—but recognizable from the same film footage. Part of the outfit—the pointed hair, the long pointed shoes…

Enter stage left, electric guitars… (Mayakovsky: Levy! Levy! Levy!)

Does one really want an explanation? Isn’t the fact itself enough—the apprehending, or the memory. Does it matter about the Leningrad Cowboys, D’s role as ambassador (Ambassa-Dude inscribed on a plaque—letters on thinnish square of bronze…), or how this entire spectacle was arranged…

Arranged…

His face as he tells me, quizzical, bemused by the events of the world—as always--but they haunt him now as well. Casey, now Brooke—both gone…

(Brooke. I see her name in my address book. It means she’s there; but she’s not… But she is…)

The good, strong way in which Judaism separates things. There is room there for a person. One sees oneself better, one judges oneself better. (Kafka, Diaries, 1913).

A self-assessment, is that it? Atonement? The Eritrean father and son, behind their 7-eleven counter, up on Stockton, while the louche highschool kids parade in and out. A dark-dark-skinned girl with golden band around her beautiful hair, large and immaculate white blouse, gathered at the waist. Nile queen…

This day…



(18 September 2009)

Sunday, April 05, 2009

For recent paintings see lugares sueltos