the Zen Buddist

This is another one of them large ones.  You know it's funny, because my brother sent me a collection of his favorite large ones from 2013 and you know what?...I didn't recognize any of them not one darn painting...thank god I sign them usually the next day or so or I wouldn't know they were mine.   Or maybe I would. Just looking at it, I'd go hey there goes one of my little fellas.  Now I know this one has a watermark from 2013, but that is just a goof ball thing I don't know how to fix.

But I wanted to say that I think it's my unwillingness to judge them that allows me to keep so many, even crummy ones.  I just can't tell em apart.  They're kind of like children who all seem so beautiful, even when they're in a crummy mood.

I used to like some of Franz Kline...and I've looked at a bunch, as many as I could.  Now I like all of them, each and every one.  It seems I've gotten to know him.  So I am always glad to see him.  And I've gotten to know more about how he worked, thanks to de Kooning's wife.  She is always so real, so down to earth, and she says prosaically, well he did this with a board, then moved the top a bit and then really slopped on some paint.  I love that stuff.  You know I got that same feeling from Donna Tartt...well -whatever...

He laughed at the mighty efforts made by the artists of earth to reach beyond the boundary of human imagination (which must visualize everything); at how little, really, they departed from platitude, though straining to the utmost to depart...-Stanislaw Lem

There's something Zen-like about the way I work -it's like raking gravel in a Zen Buddist garden. -Chuck Close

athazagoraphobia

We live in an age where the artist is forgotten.  He is a researcher.  I see myself that way. -David Hockney

All the things one has forgotten scream for help in dreams. -Elias Canetti

When one of my characters becomes aware of a magical element, it might be because the world is wider than we assume it to be, but it might also be a reminder to pay attention to what is here already, hidden only because it's been forgotten. -Charles de Lint

The near stillness recalls what is forgotten, extinct angels. -Georg Traki

Is there something we have forgotten? Some precious thing we have lost, wandering in strange lands? -Arna Bontemps

dormiveglia

Now you know I've never written a word on these posts before without having first posted the pictures I want to show.  And I mention it because I just realized it myself.  It's like I can't think of what to say without having some visual trigger.

Now there was one post when I used something I had written years and years ago.  But I had thought about that piece for a long time before suddenly it seemed the right time to use it.  So I think it's fair to say I simply don't know how to think or express in words without finding some visual expression of it first.

Now that I've said that I will tell you that though I already know which pictures will be posted here, I am writing all this without the pictures, just this digital ink on ugly ugly ugly death white nothingness.  As I look at it, it all adds up to nothing, just sheer stupidity on nothing, going nowhere for no one.

And it has such a pure stamp of temporary existence, all of this ready to fade out forever, until it is thought of once again by someone who has a sharper linguistic temperament and a much greater passion for saying the exact right thing.  He will need no pictures, as his writing, done on paper, will command out attention a spell out our dreams and nightmares, wake us from this sleep,  help us to see inside ourselves.

I write differently from what I speak, I speak differently from what I think,  I think differently from the way I ought to think, and so it all proceeds into deepest darkness.  -Franz Kafka

Jacques Derrida/Charlton Heston

The surplus of responsibility of which I was just speaking will never authorize any silence.  I repeat: responsibility is excessive or it is not a responsibility. -Jacques Derrida

A limited, measured , calculable, rationally distributed responsibility is already the becoming-right of morality; it is at times also, in the best hypothesis, the dream of every good conscience, in the worst hypothesis, of the small or grand inquisitors. -Derrida

It seems the most difficult thing in all this stuff is spelling correctly -not that I find it difficult to spell. But when I am writing using a pencil, let's say, I think of a word like Damocles, and with a sudden apprehension I begin to write it...and I start to wonder -does it have a capital D, or should it be a small d, and should it have like something fancy at the end of it like an e...

...or maybe it is oec or eoc. -a little more dramatic...I picture Charlton Heston in an early scene in a movie he never made, slowly eating while hanging directly above him is a dreadful heavy wide sword...I wonder, will he use that giant sword in his last battle with this dreadful king...will he get the girl, is that how you spell Charlton, wouldn't it look prettier with an e after the r?

...and I realize I'm writing with scrolling doo dads all over the place, I'm not spelling anything, my pencil has gone crazy in an instant, the battle has overflowed and we will be lucky to get out alive...

The end credits have run...the gallant letters have scrolled down the screen...romanesque, gothic, like an illustrated bible that has drank to much Hollywood and is vomiting all over the place.  I look at the paper, oh yuck, what a mess, the word is all crossed out -not once but twice, and now every word after that one is misspelled, all the soldiers are wounded, the field is a mess...

such sadness.   

1 or 2 elsewhere thoughts

To pretend, I actually do the thing:  I have therefore only pretended to pretend. -Jacquess Derrida

"We loved all the words in your manuscript, but we were wondering if you could maybe put them together in a completely different order." -from a cartoon

Listening to music I always have the exact same feeling: something's missing.  Never will I learn the cause of this gentle sadness, never will I wish to investigate it.  I've no desire to know what it is.  I've no desire to know everything.  -Robert Walser

I don't want a future, I want a present. to me this appears of greater value.  You have a future only when you have no present, and when you have a present, you forget to even think about the future. -Robert Walser