Robert and Stephen

When I was very young my mom took me on a trip.  We moved slowly walking in the bright sun until we got across the street to more grass and we went into a clean house that smelled clean and a happy and good smelling man was there.  He was clean and smiled.

My mom handed me to him and they spoke in soft sounds.  I was tired from my long trip and Stephen laid me in a crib with my own blankets.  I slept for a long time until I woke up.  Stephen was there.  We were happy.  He told me stories and they made me smile.

Then I felt a loosening and I smelled goop.  Stephen laughed and laid me in the crib.  He talked and talked.  He very carefully lifted up my little legs and slid a diaper under me.  Then he slowly laid me down and undid my diaper and he wiped me and kept telling happy things and I stayed warm and he slowly pulled out the dirty diaper and laid me back on the clean one, and slower than slow, insert the big yellow pins that held my diaper together.


And he talked and laughed and gave me a warm bottle, and sang songs and smiled and I was as happy as I could be.  I got sleepy again and I slept.

When I woke the colors had changed some in the home.  Lights were on.  I was a tiny bit lonely but then Stephen's face was there smiling and laughing.

One day Robert was there with Stephen and music was playing and Stephen gently helped me sort of stand.  I liked doing that.  Then he swept me up and laid me in my crib.

One evening Stephen was in the back room of the house.  I was in the crib  I could sort of feel wetness.  I didn't like it.  I started to cry.  Robert was there of all things.  He walked up to the crib then to the back room.  He came back out and looked at me with sort of a disgust.  Then he held my legs up and undid my diaper.  And he went ugggh. and he held his face twisted with disgust away from me and slowly pulled away my diaper.  I didn't like the feel of it.  I was mad at him.  I cried as loud as I could.  He went in the back room again.  I could hear voices.  I was getting even madder, lying in wetness.  But then suddenly Stephen was there with looks of concern talking to me.  He cleaned me up.  Then he took off the crib sheets.   He held me and we walked around.  I felt better after awhile.  I wondered how long I could cry.  I liked crying.  It felt good to me.

I cried myself to sleep.

One day later they were both there again and Stephen stood me up again.  Then he and Robert stood at a great distance and Stephen called to me.  I took a long hesitant step at least it seemed long to me.  I started to wobble. I was honestly quite scared. Then in two giant steps, instantly Stephen was there and picked me up.  He was laughing.  They were both laughing.  They were joyous.  I felt triumphant.  I was happy.  It was the happiest moment of my life.  We all felt so proud and happy.  I was a very little boy. I could almost walk just like my dad could walk.  He could cross our entire room in three steps.

I miss my dad now.  And I miss Robert and Stephen.  They always smelled so good and were so clean and young and nice and smart.  And caring.  And peaceful.  And loving.

I wonder why no one seems to remember being a baby.  Why is that?  Some people don't seem to remember anything.  That seems weird too.  I was quite young when I began to forget.  But when I had to go in my mom's room and take a nap I would concentrate on remembering.  I would hold those memories.  I would try to imprint them in my permanent memory.  I would concentrate on every day of my life and run through it thought by thought.

my secret mathematical life

I can remember when I was very young and I knew nothing of mathematics how the essence of my life was always full and I glowed inside a deep and healthy pink.  Each day that account was full and it was filled with three words I heard many times a day.  They were I love you.

They had become much less, yet that was okay because I knew that when I did hear it I would be full and healthy again.  I was pink deep pink, I was an 8.5x11 sheet of even deep pink.

And one day, one exact day.  I didn't hear it.  I felt my soul fade to white.  I felt fear and sadness.  I felt emptiness.  I thought for the first time, life, then I thought life plus death equals emptiness. Nothing.  I thought about zero. What does zero mean?  I felt a fear of it. And I felt a weird attraction to it.  I hated it.  I was wounded.  I was lost.

The next day I heard it again.  And I realized after a time and thinking about it.  I was not completely full and not deep pink any longer.  Some of the 8.5x11 sheet was white.  Or dead.  I hated white then.  But then I realized white was only an absence.  I hated it then again or not or I thought.  No I pretended that it could be full again..But my mathematical sense told me I could not. Be full. Again.  I thought.  Do I love her?  Of course this was a much higher math than ever before.   I couldn't even understand the question.  It couldn't form as a thought.  Not a real thought.. It was too isolating to think. What could be her? Separate from me?

I felt a thin stream.  It coated me. It was very cold.  It was isolation.  I completely disliked it.  And I only heard the good thing again occasionally.  Very occasionally. Very rarely.  I missed it.  I couldn't figure out the formula for why?  Why equals something.  No it was too complex.  And I forgot all of mathematics.  It became a foreign language to me.  A secret code. It was a language that no one spoke. It had become extinct.  It had to be created.  Again.  Artificially. Invented.  Pretended. Not real. No more.  Much of the 8.5x11 sheet was white. Curled. Ugly. And a new word was invented.  It had to be.   Ugly.  But what could be?  Ugly?  It grew.  It became Need.  Was need ugly?  I thought so.

Was Ugly need isolation? A thin stream of Isolation?  Isolating.

Now i was much older.  It was time to understand the bleeps and blurps.  My father was much taller and separate from my mom.  I was separate from my mom.  they were doing bleeps and blurps. They said get Dick a beer and the other one said Get Dick a beer?  Their voices were the same.  I spoke. For the first time.  I said get dick his ear.  I wondered what it was. I wondered what dick was.  I saw dick smile.  He was my mom's little brother.

I was unhappy.  I stayed unhappy.  I didn't speak again for many years.  Except to my sister.  She was months older than I was.  I spoke mathematic.  Not well.  I didn't understand it.  Why it broke.

the empty world

And I like Jenny Holtzer.  She may be voided by the judges though not because she doesn't even paint, but because we were in school together.  I saw her a couple of times at my house actually, and Aethelred was there and a pile of artists like my friend Michael and the guy we lived with across the Huron river who studied with either Rafael or Moses, I can't remember, but I never said anything to her or vice versa, and it could of been someone else I suppose.  She left after awhile and I went to what I thought was her first show, with small phrases written in pencil on large well relatively large sheets of paper.  I was at that time a fool and an idiot, and I thought I could think of sharper cooler ways to say everything she said, god this is embarrassing, yet I was still very attracted to the show and I remember the exact placement of two pieces I wished to buy, both of which touched me with their sort of clumsy phrasing and touching sentiment -for what price of course I have no idea.


you just gotta love comments like this from you tube:

You are free to enjoy your proudly ignorant opinion and to wallow in your inability to hear music at any real depth. The music business is built on pushing product to millions of consumers and passionately-clueless fans exactly like you... and far be it from me to wish it otherwise!  Being a member of an informed Minority is its own reward.  The irony of your pseudonym is spectacular.  Have a good day and goodbye... life's to short to waste time speaking Latin to a goose.  Laugh.

lurking

It now seems eerie to me.  When I go on facebook there is no one there.  No comments no response.  It's like I'm walking around a giant store in the middle of the night.  No lights are on. No one is there.  But then when I'm at school talking to somebody, she will say oh I liked what you posted the other day.  And I think what did I post?  It is weird to walk around this confusing and empty internet.  

My blog is empty too.  No one signed up to hear it.  No one reads it.  It is writing for nobody.
These are paintings no one wants to see.  They inspire no one.  They do nothing for nobody.

I know that we no longer enjoy any privacy.  I no that no one and nothing has any value anymore.  But I like the echoes when I sing and I think someone else must be singing.  Somewhere.  But it is a sad day.  A sad world.  I guess it is a sad country.

The world now seems unpeopled.  No humans.  No birds.

I made a painting this morning.  A stupid baby Cy Twombly. A nothing for no one.  I made two others.  Early surrealism.  Another era. Another age. Another time.  I think I am a goose.  And I'm trying to understand Latin.  But I feel like biting.

Once belonging to Man Ray’s darkroom printer, Pierre Gassman, these prints reveal a subtlety that is often lost or overlooked in the prolific Surrealist’s work. Seen in their earliest, un-manipulated form, these still lifes and early examples of Man Ray’s portraiture evince a casual sensibility — a willingness to engage in trial and error — that feels, somehow, refreshingly at odds with the American-born modernist’s more widely known, finished works.

Read more: http://lightbox.time.com/2013/02/27/rare-contact-prints-from-man-rays-archive/#ixzz2MFWtLelx

I had a weird dream last night that I had a bad a seemingly endless coughing fit. And the upshoot was I coughed up a large blackish off-red goup in the shape of my lungs.  I then used it by gluing it down on a large sheet of Rives bfk.  And there it was.  My lungs were very tender.  Like a baby's lungs.  But I could, the next day, breathe huge lungfulls of air.  I was like a young teenager.  I couldn't understand how to breathe anymore.

I am my own clueless fan.